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[John]

"To Blizzard Entertainment,
for the three months of my life I will never get back."

Basic information

Developer: that limey chap
Publisher: Dark Horse
Platforms: words
Genre: adventure/fantasy fiction
Release Date: September 14, 2010 apparently (no one told me)
Price: $8
Players: debatable

screenshots

GAF impressions

Finished Mogworld yesterday. Genuinly funny book, wasn't really expecting anything good from it and was really surprised at how good it was.

Should finish up Mogworld in the next few days and am unsure what to read while waiting on Towers of Midnight to ship from Amazon.

I'm more than half-way through Richard Morgan's The Steel Remains just after reading Abercrombie's Best Served Cold and they are both pieces of shit. I'm starting to hate fantasy, well it may be a good thing that my next book is Yahtzee's Mogworld

(there are only like five posts on gaf with the word "mogworld" in it)

enough with that shit

About

I generally can't stand "gamer" humor. You know, where there's a guy doing something, but it makes no sense, but you do it in video games so haha! This isn't one of those books. Mostly.

The relation the novel has to MMOs (which I'm omitting to preserve potential readers' experience with the book IRONY) doesn't even really become prevalent until a good fifty pages at least. it strikes a comfortable balance between being bitingly clever and adventurously adventurous, which shifts as the story demands, bottoming somewhere around three-quarters in, when a bunch of characters show up who were kind of transparently only there to throw the protagonist from one plot point to the next. but even in this dark spot, it scans well and i was eager to see where the threads were going.

(apparently reviewing is really easy with visuals I WENT THERE)

so i guess the point that i'm trying to make is that this isn't a novel that only warcraft veterans will appreciate, or even only gamers -- though it kind of expects the reader to have some experience with the instant messaging culture. it's just a really witty, charming, clever, original, hysterical book that's perfectly accessible to bookworms and... non...bookworm.... people alike. it humor never feels cheap, the themes never feel too forced.

the critiques

Unless you've spent the last year on some faraway planet with an alien parasite stuck to your face, you've no doubt heard of Mogworld already...[...]...

The one thing I don't like about mogworld is that it's almost too good

Interviews with the developers

http://www.gamepron.com/news/2010/09/08/mogworld-launch-interview-with-yahtzee-croshaw/
http://www.comicsalliance.com/2010/01/05/ben-yahtzee-croshaw-talks-about-his-debut-novel-mogworld/

For everyone out there, what is Mogworld about?

It is a discovery of a role in life and set around an NPC in a sophisticated near-future MMO (Massively Multiplayer Online) world and the book is basically around him transcending the role he has been given and experiencing the oddities about the world and eventually learning the truth behind it.

CA: Is there going to be an audiobook version of "Mogworld," and if so, will it be read by a man speaking very fast into a headset mic?

YC: You'd be surprised how many people ask me that question. We're concentrating on the print version for now, but I wouldn't write it off completely. I might enjoy doing something like that, if I thought my throat could hold out for 100,000 words.

Features:

First-person perspective! Read the action the way Jim sees it!
Non-phallic similes! Clever comparisons between largely unrelated things!
Phallic similes! Cock jokes up your arse by the world's preeminent peenthusiast!!

Give the prologue a scan!

not related to this weird fan fiction thing i found on google

also it's not an 800-page lambasting of MMOs. it's only like 400 pages and there's a little more to it than that.

 

[John]

reserved

 

[Kimosabae]

Awww, I wanted to make this thread.

My copy comes tomorrow. I love Yahtzee. I'm surprised no one's been talking about this book here. Did you finish it?

 

[John]

finished it at 3am last night (i always finish books at 3am somehow). and i'm happy to say that it ends graciously, and with a supremely cheesy line (that's a good thing!)

 

[Kimosabae]

Is it just me, or has he and the publisher been pretty bad about getting the word out regarding this book? If it weren't for the cover's brief appearance in his last review, I'd have completely forgotten about it. I planned on getting it day one.

 

[epmode]

I had no idea this was even being written. Digital release pls!

 

[John]

Is it just me, or has he and the publisher been pretty bad about getting the word out regarding this book? If it weren't for the cover's brief appearance in his last review, I'd have completely forgotten about it. I planned on getting it day one.

yeah i didn't even know it was out until last week, not that i'm usually on top of these things. his last review was probably the biggest publicity the book has gotten.

 

[John]

oh ALSO

thanks to this book i actually went and played the wow free trial again after a few years of post-wow regret to find that i actually really enjoy the solo pve levelling game now that they've changed it so much, so i went an undead priest, explicitly did NOT join a guild and levelled up to the trial cap, 20 without it ever feeling like i wasn't having fun playing a video game in my spare time. then i went and played some instances and they're p good too.

ain't he cute YES I'M PLAYING IN 800x600

luckily $15 is too expensive for any game for me let alone a one-month sub so i won't have any problems not playing when the semester starts tomorrow

 

[graywolf323]

what server did you end up on John?

 

[John]

"Echo Isles."

 

[Ratrat]

shit, I should start reading this again. I chuckled here and there but I'm feeling my lack of Wow knowledge may hurt here.

 

[Colocho]

Didn't Yahtzee promote this book at the end of every one of his reviews around the time it was released?

 

[RadioHeadAche]

Didn't Yahtzee promote this book at the end of every one of his reviews around the time it was released?

Yes, and I think he referenced it again in his WoW: Cataclysm review.

 

[Kimosabae]

"This is it" said the Priest. "I am returning to my father!" He kicked me in the leg. "Stand not so close to me, demon, and stain not my soul!"

"Ow."

 

[Nymerio]

Read it last year. Loved it.