Official Blizzard Quote:
The Sin War trilogy was really the beginning of what is now considered canon for the lore of the series. While the previous books certainly have a lot of great stories, information, and even bits and pieces that may indeed hold true in the series as it is now, they aren't held as canon and thus the events in them may not always hold true moving forward.
So for all intents and purposes, only the information in the Sin War Trilogy (Birthright, Scales of the Serpent, The Veiled Prophet) should be taken to heart. Information in the Diablo Archive (which consists of Legacy of Blood, The Black Road, The Kingdom of Shadow, and Demonsbane) and Moon of the Spider may contradict what we see in the future. This isn't that big of a deal, because Blizzard is keeping true to some information written in The Black Road. Another user spotted that the Diablo 3 World map originally did not coincide with facts from The Black Road, which is actually going to be fixed.
Official Blizzard Quote:
That's actually an error we intend to correct with the map and are holding the descriptions from The Black Road as correct.
In no way would I consider the books prior to The Sin War trilogy false or not worth reading, I think Diablo fans can still get a lot of pleasure from them, but you can consider them to be... tales, and not necessarily reference material.
However, things found in the Diablo Archive should be taken with a grain of salt. If Blizzard decides to overrule something written in those earlier books, they can now do so without problems... Problems that anyone who played WoW in it's early days would remember, when there was a slight discrepancy in the WoW/War3 lore about the Draenei and Sargeras, which caused massive uproar back in 2006. Diablo fans can now rest easy when reading about upcoming Diablo 3 lore.
But hey, I highly encourage everyone to go read the novels if you haven't yet. I personally have read through them all and as a Diablo fan, they were great reads. If anyone is interested, head over here for short summaries of the books and a timeline in which they should be read.
I really just wan to read a book that feels like I'm reading about the diablo game. Any suggestions?
Ahhh well i need to get reading then. But anyways still, there's always an issue when there's a 'retcon' of the lore.
I too think that this is not an good idea since i'm an ultimate fan of what Diablo used to be and usually revisionism tends to fail imo.
However i'm glad that this time Blizzard decided to be honest. Fiunally they had the guts to say "we are remaking Diablo". It's alot better then what happened to warcraft. Finnaly the fans can use the forums without having to argue "they are changing the universe". It's official, noone can deny it now.
Legacy of Blood and Kingdom of Shadow are specifically D2 according to the thread Atrumentis made. I believe Legacy of Blood is about Horazon (the Summoner) and Bartuc.
Well, I suppose it isn't that they're remaking it... It's more like, if they choose to change something, they can do it without outrage, :P.
Yes, atleast it not another Warcraft event, I remember 'The Last Guardian' by Jeff Grubb and I'm still saddened that the the majority of the book has been retconned due to the introduction of Burning Crusade.
(Although, yes, I will accede that Kabraxis, in name and in his true form which appeared for only a moment in the beginning of the story, were very WoW-esque. Brigands and pirates, besides, are and should be commonplace in Sanctuary with its heavy stress on coastal cities, trade routes, and the like, as even evidenced in the games, and so in that mindset I was not put-off by what he chose to stress: an often overlooked but essential component of the Diablo world.
On the otherhand, Kabaraxis' smooth corruption of his servants, which was never outright said by the author though it was implicit--I really respect this and this is what made it so enjoyable to read, Knaak spells everything out--was perfectly in-tune with the series, as were the themes of darkness, despair, and death.)
The Black Road are no weak in lore. It only shows a differtent part of the world subject to different kinds of evil. It actually kind of an "small" event compered to the main games and the other novels. But this is not bad imo.
But i agree that the Sin War is the worst. Actually i'm not a fan of how the flavor of the game drastically changed from that point. Heaven suddenly lost it's mysteries and became somekind of evil wich basically ruined the background of many other aspects of the universe.
HOWEVER (only applicable to story, itself, and NOT lore - LORE is culture, facts, and so on, whereas STORY is the tragic pitfalls and heart-warming successes of characters, singular and abstract)
If a good story is really being written, all of that Western stuff should not matter. You can take a good story from post-colonial Indian literature and translate it in to some Western form without losing relatability, depth, etc.
It's a similar concept to a good website design. If a site was designed correctly, with W3C conformance, etc., you should be able to simply swap out the CSS (ergo, the "Western stuff") with a new CSS and still have a fine site.
Imo this is not what it's being done. To add non-western themes does not have to change the past western themes. They could simply add the other side of the world with totally new culture, lore, etc... They can easilly creat other parts of hell with other demons that reflect the eastern culture.
I see the goatmen as a perfect exemple of how they will change bits of lore now and then. The creature's lore from D1 and D3 are drastically different. By not beign a pure blood demon, the goatmen gained some human asoects. You can see then livinng in camps with huts and fireplaces in D3 videos.