Award: The Best Lore of All Times

[alexei]

I watch Star Wars a lot of time and it never wrong to me to say that IT IS THE BEST EPIC LORE of ALL TIMES!

George Lucas is really great. To write something so futuristic back in 1980. And the design is very sensible to me. Only with 6 episode it create a really vast universe with many races, tech, group and guild, culture and many more.

My favorite lore rank:
1. Star Wars
2. World of Warcraft
3. Dungeon Siege
4. Starcraft
5. Diablo

Pretty much blizzard fan but they really made up such great story behind their games. I hope GD will add to my favorite lore. /hopes

[andreyy]

The poll is horrible, as it limits the choice.

I'd award this to the Fallout series, whole of it, along with the recent Bethesda Softworks creation.

[alexei]

I agree. It only limit to only 10 options and I couldn't think about many titles. And of course, Fallout is a great series!

[Father Squid]

While I think the lore of Star Wars is pretty good, for the work of an individual I think you'd be hard pressed to beat Lord of the Rings - the guy invited whole creation mythologies, as well as spoken and written languages for the people in his world, plus the myriad of novels all written by hand. And I would expect if you look into it, he probably had less time working on his world than Lucasarts and co. has had to work on the Star Wars universe now.

Now the Star Trek universe is also incredibly fleshed out and developed as well... as for the computer games in there, you also left out the Elder Scrolls world which has tons of background lore - just try collecting all the in-game books... but again these are not the work of a single individual. Dungeon Siege and Diablo don't strike me has having particularly a ton of lore, and Titan Quest uses mostly common mythologies - not a whole lot of new lore - Starcraft doesn't strike me has having near as much as Warcraft... Heck, the Heroes of Might & Magic series has a ton of lore, as well as the Ultima games as far as original works go...

Oh well....

[Renevent]

Warhammer 40K

Maybe not be the most elegant lore ever written, but it damn sure is cool :D

[alexei]

Wow Father Squid, you sure remember tons of stuff. As for me, I'm not only forget stuff, but i don't even know some of them and never played them because of some reason. Truly, all what you suggest is right. It is not my place to put up this pool.

Oh well....

[Malpheas]

Yeah, Lord of the Rings was definitely Tolkien's magnum opus. Far outstripping the combined works of any of your other choices. As far as accomplishing content goes.

WH40k is far darker than Tolkien, which is why I chose it.

[yerkyerk]

Myeah, I'd go for Lord of the Rings from this poll.

Frankly, I'm not impressed by any of the others, even if it would have been the culmination of a single person working on them.

[Iggy]

Lord of the ring of course!

Now WoW shouldnt even be on that list, honestly. They make up whatever Lore they want to excuse the silly concepts they add in the game.
Tell me, would you have seen gnome warriors, tauren paladin/priest, NightElves warriors/priest, dwarven shamans in warcraftIII?? No, none of them belong to the warcraft universe.

Disqualified i say!

On the other hand, Warhammer should be there >.>
A great universe/lore if you ask me.

[zidders]

You'd be hard-pressed to find lore more impressive than Tolkiens. So much went into the creation of his mythos, and so much has come about because of it. Modern fantasy wouldn't be where it is today if it weren't for him. Without Tolkien, there wouldn't be dungeons & dragons, and without dungeons & dragons, modern RPG's as we know them might not exist...or, if they did, it wouldn't be in the form that we know them.

LOTR online is pretty sweet, and manages to capture a little of the magic from Tolkiens works. I'd still love to see an action/rpg based on Tolkiens works. Tho, having learned a bit about what Tolkien was like, I think he'd be a little upset about all the fuss that's been made over his works (he really didn't like being a celebrity) and might be a bit horrified at most of what has been done with it, tho I would hope that after learning just how much his stories have meant to countless people, he would look a bit more kindly on those who's own works were inspired by the lore.

Or, he'd sue EVERYBODY XD

[jiaco]

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/7/7f/Lore_on_Descent.jpg

This Lore?

[yerkyerk]

Is Star Trek lore even consistent?

[Panthro]

I'd suggest either Dungeons and Dragons (even just Forgotten Realms has a vast amount of lore), or the Ultima series, which is possibly my favourite series ever...

[jiaco]

Is Star Trek lore even consistent?

I do not really consider Star Trek to have "lore", but there at least was a "Lore" in ST. I do not really find much "lore/Lore" in the other choices, with the LotR exception of course. But of course, being me, I had to vote for an underdog.

[medierra]

Was a toss up for me between LotR and 40k. I think the 40k universe has an amazing amount of lore written about it and it is very well done. However, I just had to give the nod to J.R.R on account of the fact that he was one guy, he had no idea that anyone would ever want to read his works, and he was just doing it out of his own creative passion.

[shawnmck]

I don't know if this counts as lore, but I have to say the Conan lore as Robert E Howard wrote on the character. Each race (or whatever) had it's real life counterpart that the author drew from but exaggerated & built on it. For example, the Stygians were basically derived from the Egyptians, and in the world (lore) of Conan, they were the practitioners of dark magic.
His character of Kull was basically inspired by tales of Atlantis (I think).
I am also partial to Solomon Kane, who was the puritan who vanquished evil with sword & pistol.
Lot of good stuff, even though most of them were just short stories. His horror stories were also great (pigeons from hell comes to mind).

Sorry if I couldn't pick anything from the list. Warhammer seems cool, but I haven't really read much about it, other than what I've seen in the White Dwarf magazine. Never was a big fan of Star Wars, although some of the written stuff is pretty good. Like Father Squid has mentioned, TQ uses pre-existing myth. I tried reading some of Tolkiens work, but it just never clicked with me. Liked the movies though, & can't wait for the Hobbit, which is going to be directed by Del Torro.

I also really like the Gears of War lore. I really like the games & the two books that have been written by Karen Travis.
Please don't make fun of me.
:rolleyes:

[Father Squid]

Tho, having learned a bit about what Tolkien was like, I think he'd be a little upset about all the fuss that's been made over his works (he really didn't like being a celebrity) and might be a bit horrified at most of what has been done with it, tho I would hope that after learning just how much his stories have meant to countless people, he would look a bit more kindly on those who's own works were inspired by the lore.

Or, he'd sue EVERYBODY XD

He doesn't strike me as the type who'd sue... I do agree with the being horrified part though... I don't think he was after fame - just to create a world where his stories could come to life - and I would think it was more for his own purposes than for anyone else...

[Father Squid]

I don't know if this counts as lore, but I have to say the Conan lore as Robert E Howard wrote on the character. Each race (or whatever) had it's real life counterpart that the author drew from but exaggerated & built on it. For example, the Stygians were basically derived from the Egyptians, and in the world (lore) of Conan, they were the practitioners of dark magic.

I like R. E. Howard too, but if you are looking for another writer from that era who created a quite a bit of lore to go with their created world, I'd have to suggest taking a look at H.P. Lovecraft - again, quite a mythos created there for his Old Ones - and he was only writing these stories for 10 years or so... then again Howard only worked on Conan for about 7 or 8 years... both died quite young, so one could only imagine where their worlds would have went if they had lived longer and continued writing...


Is Star Trek lore even consistent?

Whenever it isn't they always chalk it up to the time travel paradox - I remember the episode of Deep Space 9 with the Temporal Investigations agents that commented on how many problems Kirk had caused with the time line that they had to fix, and how they revisited the ship with the tribbles and the original crew and brought up the fact that Klingons in the 23rd century didn't have the ridges on their head that Worf had....

That's the fun of time travel... you can always explain stuff away, just try looking at any comic book universe...

[yerkyerk]

That's the fun of time travel... you can always explain stuff away, just try looking at any comic book universe...
Time travelling will usually just create more questions than they answer; especially if it creates new dimensions, because than it takes a human construct (time) as something real.

And when time travelling comes into play, it's a guarantee that there's already huge discrepancies everywhere, which will only increase in size.

But I take your post wasn't meant to explain it, rather to show the silliness of writers trying to maintain consistency :)

[Father Squid]

Exactly - it became the Star Trek way to get around whatever problems arose in continuity - it all had to do with a time paradox... just like whenever Marvel kills a superhero it turns out to be a clone or something...

[medierra]

Any of you guys read any Steven Erikson?

His writing can be a little cheesy at times but the scope of his worlds are amazing. I guess he originally developed the story-world for a game he was developing with another guy named Ian Esslemont.

I actually have a tough time reading most fantasy. I read Tolkien when I was about 10 or 11 and after that I reread it and then after that, I started looking for the next closest thing I could read. There wasn't a whole lot of fantasy available back then and most of it was horrendous drivel. I was really put off by most of the other fantasy I read. I ended up just going back and reading Tolkien a bunch more times.

Unfortunately, I still haven't found much fantasy that I'd classifying as being anywhere remotely near the caliber of Tolkien. His prose I actually think could use a little refining as he tends to go off on overly long, self-indulgent tangents but his world-fiction is just really tastefully done. All in all, Tolkien is really a classic that transcends the fantasy genre. I heard it was the second most read book of the 20th century just behind the bible. I look at most fantasy like the geek equivalent of trashy romance novels though. The writing is sometimes quite good but the content is usually embarrassingly cheesy. However, it still can be fun and fulfills my occasional need for escape from reality.

[The Old Farmer]

I have to vote for Warhammer 40K as a number of the novels have been quite good, I especially enjoyed some of the Gaunt's ghosts and the Eisenhorn series by Dan Abnett. Though I am a bit of a fan of sf military fiiction. Such a dark war ravaged future for man kind. Hey! Kind of like Grim Dawn!!

[gdansk]

I hate to impede, but does real history count as lore? If so, then my favorite lore is Earth. If not I have to say Timeline-191 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline-191). (It is still historical... just divergent). As for popular games I find the Warhammer 40k universe to be 'freaking' awesome.

[ExNomenDei]

It'd be a tough pick between Mass Effect and Fallout, and there's a lot of games I'm just forgetting right now. Mass Effect 2 and the books add so much to the world and the feel of it that I really do feel connected to the world, an epic, epic tale.

Metroid, too, has some nice lore, definitely not to be ignored.

[Betrayer]

I was about to be deeply offended that 40k wasn't winning, but then I realized LOTR was on the list. Fair enough, but I do prefer the 40k universe. :P


Edit: I also want to put my name behind the Conan universe. It reached me in a way that no other fiction has because Howard grounded it in an almost plausible reality (the slight twists on history, geography, lineage, etc.). Also the way he and Lovecraft borrowed from each other, so he was able to get the evil and foreboding Lovecraftian insanity and pair it with his own animalistic primitive setting just makes the coolest goddamn lore ever.
Too bad he didn't get out that much material before his death. I refuse to read ANYONE else's treatment of Conan because it can't possibly live up to Howard's original stories.

[Betrayer]

I read Tolkien when I was about 10 or 11 and after that I reread it and then after that, I started looking for the next closest thing I could read. There wasn't a whole lot of fantasy available back then and most of it was horrendous drivel. I was really put off by most of the other fantasy I read. I ended up just going back and reading Tolkien a bunch more times.

I felt the same way, until I read Howard's Conan... You should really check it out if you haven't. It renewed my interest in Fantasy!
I even prefer Howard's writing to Tolkien's in that it isn't so saccharine. Howard didn't censor his world for his audience or for kids or for political correctness, and I feel like it's just a much more mature fantasy treatment.
Which you wouldn't expect considering the ridiculous image Conan has today, probably thanks to the comics, movies, and stories written after Howard's death.

Get the three book collection:
http://www.amazon.com/Coming-Conan-Cimmerian-Original-Adventures/dp/0345461517/ref=pd_sim_b_2

:D

[4987354987]

Lord of the Rings. That's impossible to beat. And that's epic lore. Actually legendary. With 2347660934658 dual affixes and 23572068276347 sockets. Beat that game&movie fans!