Alright, I'd like some advice.

[Rendrake]

Hello! I'm new to the forums. I would like to know what I have to collect, read, ect. to learn a decent amount of Warcraft Lore. I am astounded by how much information there is that is not even mentioned in the games. So, could you help me out here?

[Yuber8900]

Well the six books will help

Day of the Dragon
Lord of the Clans
The Last Guardian

War of the Ancient Trilogy
The Well of Eternity
The Demon Soul
The Sundering

and reading Blizzard's site lore will help

[Warlock]

There are those books as well as the Magna trilogy, "The Sunwell" ("Dragon Hunt" is the only one out right now, the next is due Spring 2006).

If you are willing to spend a bit of money, the WarCraft RPG (WC Dungeons & Dragons) books have a ton of lore too. In particular, these are the best:

1.) Lands of Conflict - this book has a detailed timeline of events as well as lore and info on every zone in the Eastern Kingdoms (including a few not in WoW right now like Quel'thalas and Kul'tiras). This is my personal favorite of all the D&D books.

2.) Shadows & Light - a great book for information on basically all the major legendary heroes.. people like Lothar, Khadgar, Thrall, Jaina, Malfurion, Cenarius, etc etc. as well info on all the major eternals (demigods) such as the Titans, the Dragon Aspects, high-ups in the Burning Legion like Sargeras, Archimonde, etc, and more. This book also has a lot of info on other planes like the Emerald Dream, Outland, and the Elemental Plane (though not as much as I'd like... hoping there will be a full book specifically on those with maps and stuff).

3.) Manual of Monsters - great deal of lore on most of the monsters in Azeroth. Some entries are more detailed than others (i.e. for example there is a ton on the Nerubians, their society, class structure and soforth.. but some other monsters have only a small paragraph or two about them).

4.) World of WarCraft RPG Core Book / WarCraft RPG Core Book - the WoW RPG one is the newest.. sort of a revised version of the original WCRPG Core Book. The original core book has *some* detail on Kalimdor and a little bit of history, though the history stuff is covered in more detail in Lands of Conflict that I already mentioned. It does have some really good writeups of all the playable races (Humans, Night Elves, High Elves, Dwarves, Goblins, Orcs, Tauren, and some half-races like Half-Elves and such). The WoW RPG Core Book has more, and another timeline, though there are a few errors here and there (i.e. Thrall killing Grom) that might throw you if you don't pay attention. But it's in color :D

The other WC RPG books are more mechanical RPG-specific stuff than lore though there is some in there. Alliance & Horde Compendium has some stuff but it's pretty hard to find, and probably not worth it if you just want the lore. Magic & Mayhem doesn't have that much other than a ton of spells and stuff like that.

These books range from like $20-$40 though depending on the book so you may not want to fork over that much cash.

You should also read through this (http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/info/story/) if you havn't yet.

Also, if you have any questions feel free to ask here :)

[Cantus]

If you don't have the money/don't want to spend it on the books, you can pick them up in places like Barnes & Noble or Books a Million and read a few pages in the store without angering them...too much anyway.

If you don't want to buy the books at a store/can't find them, there's a website that sells a .pdf file of each as well.

[Rendrake]

Thanks for the advice so far. I may look into getting a few of the RPG manuals over time. I guess anything I'm unsure of I could ask here as well.

[Demkar]

You can always check the Warcraft articles on Wikipedia, and if you come across something that's wrong, fix it.