World of Warcraft
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. It is the fourth released game set in the "Warcraft" fantasy universe. "World of Warcraft" takes place within the "Warcraft" world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events at the conclusion of Blizzard's previous "Warcraft" release, "." The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the "Warcraft" franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, "World of Warcraft" has had seven major expansion packs released for it: "", "", "", "", "", "", and "".
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans
Following the end of "Warcraft Adventures" development, Blizzard Entertainment publicly clarified that it would revisit the "Warcraft" universe in the future. In May 1999, the company announced an impending agreement with an unnamed publisher to release three "Warcraft" novels, alongside novelizations of "StarCraft" and "Diablo". The deal was ultimately signed with Pocket Books. Early in the development process for the "Warcraft" book trilogy, Bill Roper hinted that "Warcraft Adventures" story could reappear in one of the novels. This resulted in "" in October 2001, written by Christie Golden and intended to set the stage for "Warcraft III". The book is considered canonical. According to Golden, "Chris Metzen liked the story line and wanted to see it live in some format." Receiving the assignment after its first author had failed to finish it, Golden was given a six-week deadline for "Lord of the Clans", based on a modified version of Metzen's original plot outline from the game. She proceeded to write several other novels for Blizzard because of her enjoyment of this project, among them "", the company's first "New York Times" Best Seller. Blizzard hired her to a full-time position at the company in 2017.