I am certainly not shameless enough to encourage people to visit this site by posting gratuitous pictures of Ms. Day all over the front page… Why are [...]]]> Don’t get me wrong, we’re thrilled to have Felicia Day as a guest on our track this year, but surely you didn’t think that we had stopped there, did you?

I am certainly not shameless enough to encourage people to visit this site by posting gratuitous pictures of Ms. Day all over the front page… Why are you looking at me that way?

Ok, maybe I am that shameless.

Or maybe, just maybe, we hear a rumor that Felicia will be participating in our Machinima panels in addition to participating in our Q&A panels on “The Guild” this year.  And yes, before you snark away, we had Machinima panels last year, but made the rather foolish mistake of scheduling them late at night.  As a general rule,  folks don’t seem to be interested in panels late at night, they want to party.  Lesson learned.

But this is “Not another Felicia Day post“, right?

And so it is…

If you’ve been paying attention, you may have noticed a while back that we were working on getting a couple of authors to sit down for a “Lore of Warcraft” panel with us.

We are pleased to announce that Richard Knaak and Keith R.A. DeCandido are both confirmed as guests for Dragon*Con this year and that they are scheduled to talk with us about the “Lore of Warcraft”

Mr. DeCandido is the author of Cycle of Hatred of which he summarizes

At the end of Warcraft 3 and Warcraft 3X, humans and orcs were allies on the continent of Kalimdor. But in World of Warcraft, the two sides are enemies again. My task with the novel Cycle of Hatred, was to help explain that change. It takes place during the four-year gap between the two games, and involves the humans on Kalimdor lead by Lady Jaina Proudmoore and the orcs on the same continent lead by Thrall. Of all the characters in the Warcraft universe, I found Jaina and Thrall to be two of the three most compelling characters. Jaina is a powerful female wizard, who is put in a position of leading a small group of humans in a hostile land in the wake of a brutal war against a demon horde. Thrall is an orc raised by humans as a slave, who leads a rebellion of orcs against human bondage, and inspires the orcs to return to their old ways before they were cursed by demons. Both leaders are trying to forge a new future, moving past the old hatreds. Unfortunately, the old hatreds don’t die easily. If you’re wondering who the third character is, you’ll have to read the book to find out — the character is also in the book, but who it is is a surprise.

Mr. Knaak has written several novels set in the World of Warcraft universe including

• Day of the Dragon (2001)
• War of the Ancients Archive
  • The Well of Eternity (2004)
  • The Demon Soul (2004)
  • The Sundering (2005)
• The Sunwell Trilogy Ultimate Edition
  • Dragon Hunt (2005)
  • Shadows of Ice (2006)
  • Ghostlands (2007)
• Warcraft: Legends
  • Fallen (2008)
  • Fear (2008)
  • Fiend (2009)
  • Fate (2009)
• Night of the Dragon (2008)
• Dragons of Outland Trilogy
  • Shadow Wing (2009)
  • Volume 2 (TBA)
  • Volume 3 (TBA)
• Stormrage (2009)
• Mage (2010)

We have yet another best selling author who will be joining us for an MMO-related Q&A session.  Rather than give you a list of Timothy Zahn‘s bonafides (because there are too many), I’ll just leave you with a visual image that should explain everything, unless, of course, you live under a rock.

(If you do not know who this is, turn in your geek card and sell your Dragon*Con ticket on EBay or something.)

But wait!  There’s more!

Aaron de Orive is joining us at Dragon*Con this year.  His writing credits include

• Anarchy Online
• Star Wars Galaxies
• Tabula Rasa
• Ultima Worlds Online (UO2)
• and the upcoming Star Wars: The Old Republic (see trailer)

And while this may sound like a macro at this point… We’re not done yet.  We’ll bring you the latest additions to our track this year as soon as we get them scheduled.