Robert Jordan says it like this: "I can say with absolute certainty that the tenth book of the Wheel of Time will be available as
soon as possible after I've finished writing it."
In other words: We don't know. Now stop asking!
Actually, "as soon as possible" won't be entirely accurate for book 11,
as Jordan is apparently insisting on a "full editorial process", which
will mean that there will be 6 months, rather than 6 weeks, between him
handing in the manuscript and the book hitting the shelves. Based on
Jordan expecting to finish writing in spring 2005, Knife of Dreams will
be published in autumn 2005.
(Please
don't start yet another thread asking for more information... As the
time of publication of the next book draws closer, we tend to see such
threads weekly and will get more than a tad annoyed with them. The
forum has a decent search function that should give you an answer quite
swiftly, though chances are it'll be "we don't know yet".)
The title of book 11 is Knife of Dreams.
Next to the main sequence books, Robert Jordan will also be writing
shorter works exploring some of the back story from before "The Eye of
the World". The first of these is a heavily expanded version of "New
Spring", the story which details how Lan and Moiraine met each other,
which was published in January 2004.
The other two novellas that are planned will deal with how Tam al'Thor
found Rand, and with how Moiraine and Lan managed to arrive at the Two
Rivers just in time for the events from TEotW, both of which will be
written and published after Jordan has finished Knife of Dreams
and book 12 (which will be the last book in the series).
Many people have noticed a book called "Prophecies of the Dragon" at sites like Amazon. This is not a book in the series. This is the first 'expansion' for the WoT Roleplaying Game, which features six adventures for that game, as well as extra information about the Seanchan and the like.
To attract younger readers, Tor has started a new imprint under
which several books will be published targetting this audience. Ender's
Game is one of the books scheduled, but TEotW has kicked things off.
Probably in an attempt to not scare these new readers away immediately
(besides the obvious goal of earning more money), the book is split is
two parts. The first part is called "From the Two Rivers" and features
an extra chapter called "Ravens", in which we have a look at Rand and
co. as they were as children; the second part is called "To the Blight"
and has an updated glossary. Both books come with black-and-white
illustrations taken from the WoT Roleplaying Game.
The Great Hunt has also been published in a similar fashion, and subsequent
books in the series can be expected to be next in line.
The other books in the series are:
The Eye of the World (TEotW)
The Great Hunt (TGH)
The Dragon Reborn (TDR)
The Shadow Rising (TSR)
The Fires of Heaven (TFoH)
Lord of Chaos (LoC)
A Crown of Swords (ACoS)
Path of Daggers (PoD)
Winter's Heart (WH)
Crossroads of Twilight (CoT)
The World of Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time (the Guide)
New Spring (A short story about the time when Moiraine met Lan. Appeared in the bundle Legends edited by Robert Silverberg)
The Strike at Shayol Ghul (a fictional bit of "non-fiction")
Be sure to have read the entire series before you visit, if you do not want to see spoilers. We freely discuss any and all events from the books, and even thread titles are often big spoilers for important events in the series. In fact, if you haven't read at least up to A Crown of Swords, even this FAQ (especially the next section) can spoil some things for you.
There are a few theories which have been around for ages and
discussed more often then we'd care to remember. If you come bursting
on the scene with the same basic theory (which you discovered
completely on your own), the best you can hope for is for some rotten
tomatoes to be thrown at you. 
The most important of these theories are:
- Moiraine is alive
- ... killed Asmodean (Graendal, Rand, Lanfear, Moridin or Slayer are most heard)
- Taim is Demandred
- Olver is Gaidal Cain
A good starting point to learn about these theories is the WoT-FAQ.
If however, after reading this FAQ, you still feel you have new
evidence, please do post it. We can always use a good on-topic
discussion.
When he was still our Administrator, Sam Brown was the best admin
anyone could wish. However, he set some rules to keep the board as fun
as it is. These forbidden topics include: Race, Nationality, Sexual
Preference, Religion, Politics, "Get rich quick"-schemes and Piracy.
No matter how debates about these topics start, they are too
controversial and always end up in name calling. If you absolutely have
to discuss them, the message board has a forum specifically dedicated
to it, the Community Chat
forum. On the book forum, however, we like to keep things friendly and
so threads on these topics are not allowed. Beyond the forbidden
topics, just use common sense before deciding if something belongs on
the forum.
For a long time in the live of the book forum, posts didn't show
member titles or post-counts since these seemed to give a sense of
accomplishment based on the wrong things. Unfortunately too many people
wanted some reference by which to judge how active someone had been on
the board, so titles were returned to us.
There are four basic member titles:
- New Member (less than 50 posts)
- Member (50-199 posts)
- Community Veteran (200-999 posts)
- Über Member (1000 posts and more) [Über is the german word for over (superior)]
If you have more than 50 posts and have been registered for more than 100 days, you can give yourself a custom title. Go to edit profile in your user control panel and look for the field called "Custom User Text."
In the past when you had a sufficiently large amount of posts, you
could request a special custom title with effects. This however has
ended as the moderators who dealt with these requests got completely
fed up with all the whining about it.
Many of us feel that there is sometimes put far too much emphasis on
post count, that titles give a sense of authority and respect that is
only based on quantity of posts, rather than on the one thing respect
should be based, namely quality of posts. In fact, this is a large part
of the reason you will see many people who have requested their custom
title to be empty.
In the final equation, are titles cool? Yes, they are. Are they
important? Absolutely not. Spamming to get a 'better' title will not be
tolerated. If you want to be respected, well thought out posts are a
lot more effective than a large number of posts, or any of the
paraphernalia that come with that.
As we discuss things you'll often see us using abbreviations. Some are common on the web, some are specific to
WoT. I'll try to give a complete list:
AFAIK - As Far As I Know
AOL - Age of Legends
AS - Aes Sedai
BA - Black Ajah
BF - Balefire
CotL - Children of the Light
DO - The Dark One
FF - Fantasy-freak (A forum that split off from ours back in may 2000 and doesn't have anything to do with WoT anymore)
FYI - For Your Information
IIRC - If I Recall Correctly
IMHO - In My Humble Opinion
IMO - In My Opinion
LOL - Laughing Out Loud
LTT - Lews Therin Telamon
OMB - Oh My Bela
OMG - Oh My God
OP - One Power
OT - Off-Topic
PoV - Point of View
RAFO - Read And Find Out (Robert Jordan's most common answer to questions asked about the major plot-elements)
RJ - Robert Jordan
ROFL - Rolling On the Floor, Laughing
ROFLMAO - Rolling On the Floor, Laughing My Ass Off
RPG / d20 RPG - RolePlaying Game (using the d20 (from twenty-sided dice) system by Wizards of the Coast)
SAS - Salidar Aes Sedai
TA - Ter'Angreal
TAR - Tel'aran'rhiod
TAS - Tower Aes Sedai
TEotW, TGH, TDR, TSR, TFoH, LoC, ACoS, PoD, WH, CoT, KoD - The names of the different WoT books
TP - True Power
TV - Tar Valon
WoT - The Wheel of Time
WotC - Wizards of the Coast, who published the WoT roleplaying game.
The forum automatically makes smileys when you use their code. Some general examples:
;) =
:) = 
:D = 
Here is a more complete list of smilies.
You often see people using other smileys too. These are just normal images they have on their website, or on a random site.
You can use images with the image tag: [img]http://juima.org/eyeless.gif[/img] = (
)
Making text bold is easy by using the [b]bold[/b] tags.
Here is a more complete list of tags you can use.
Underneath each post is a link (Reply w/Quote) that allows you to reply to a post with the text of that post quoted in your own post.
We also have a spoiler tag that will hide text so you have to highlight
it to be able to read it. Use it like this: [spoiler]text of the spoiler[/spoiler].
With each message you post, you can choose to include a
standard-signature. You can change this signature in your profile (see
link at upper-left corner of page, just below the book forum image, or click here)
You can not change your name. If you really want a different name you
can send a private message or email to one of the administrators,
including your current name and name you want it changed to, and if
they're not too swamped with work, it might be changed for you.
When you register at the forum, the option Use \'Email Notification\' by default is checked.
For normal, quiet forums this option is quite useful, but the Wheel of
Time forum is so active you'll get tons of email in just a few hours.
If this happens to you, go to your profile
and turn the option off. Unfortunately there doesn't seem to be a way
to stop these messages being mailed to you for threads you replied to
with this option on. The best you can do is simply hope for the thread
to die swiftly.
A large part of the regular posters here can also be found on IRC.
What is IRC? IRC stands for Internet Relay Chat, and allows us to talk
to each other real time. The topic usually isn't wot related (although
every so often, it is), but that's what we have the book forum for.
It's just nice to be able to chat with people you already know a bit.
To get at the #wotbf channel at IRC you can follow these simple steps:
1) Download IRC (go to http://www.mirc.com, download, install)
2) run mirc.exe, get rid of that pop-up screen, type in a name,
nickname, emailaddress, select a sorcery.net server at the pulldown
box, hit the 'connect to server' button
3) type in #wotbf when the program asks you for a channel (alternatively you can also type /join #wotbf in the main screen)
A few remarks: Be cautious when using IRC, it's almost as safe to use
as ICQ. (Which means absolutely not.) Don't give your real name or
email-addy, unless you don't care about privacy issues and security.
At times there are and have been other channels frequented by people
from the book forum; #wotbf however is the 'official' (since it was
set up by Sam) channel for the book forum - and seems to be the
gathering place for pretty much everyone.
Using this mIRC program is far from the only way to chat on IRC, there
are dozens of other programs, java applets (that work without
downloading anything), etc. mIRC is just the most used.
You will sometimes want to quickly see how long someone has been on the board. The most reliable way to do this (not counting people like myself who registered with a new name after having been present as someone else for a long time) is to hover over the link to someone's profile (the left-most icon underneath that someone's post). The url of this link will appear in the status bar at the bottom of your browser, and the last part of this string will say memberid=###, with ### being the Member id. The lower the number, the longer the person has been registered. Very roughly speaking it's 1000 for April 1999, 10,000 for November 1999, 20,000 for April/May 2000, 30,000 for November/December 2000, 40,000 for April 2001, 50,000 for September 2001, 60,000 for January 2002, 70,000 for May/June 2002, 80,000 for August/September 2002, 90,000-110,000 for October 2002 (a certain popular game was about to be released back then), 120,000 for November 2002, 130,000 for January 2003, 140,000 for February/March 2003, 150,000 for May 2003 and 160,000 for September 2003. If you subsequently click this link, a page will open with general profile information about this person, including total number of posts and registration date.
In June 2000, Nathan switched the board from UBB to vBulletin. Doing
this, he imported all the member profiles of the old board. However,
this caused all the registration dates to be set to the day he did this
(May 31, 2000). It is not possible to gives us all our old registration
dates back, since that would have to be done by hand.
The few people with an earlier registration date either came from other
message boards that were at a later date merged into our forums, or
specifically requested it to be changed during a very short time period
that some moderators honored such requests.
I've mentioned several of these places elsewhere in the FAQ as well, but here they are all together:
The Wheel of Time FAQ: The
resource of what is considered to be 'general knowledge' about common
theories. Don't trust it blindly, but be sure to be aware of what's in
there before you discuss any subject.
Tor: The US publisher of the Wheel of
Time. This site is almost never updated, but occasionally they give a
schedule with expected release dates of new books, or perhaps of places
Jordan will be signing.
Orbit: The UK publisher of
the Wheel of Time. Orbit usually is quite up to date and reliable with
WoT news, and if they know about anything worthwhile about a new book,
they'll mention it in their newsletter.
The Wheel of Time: The site for the game where the Wheel of Time Book Forum belongs to.
Community Chat: The forum for discussing off-topic things that are likely to lead to flame-wars or at least pretty heated arguments.
The Wot Book Forum Yearbook: pictures and short blurbs about qutie a few people who are or have been active on the board.
Thus Spake the Creator:
Leanna's site has a large section with reports from many Jordan
signings. If you want to confirm Jordan said something about WoT, this
is the place to start.
Tellings of the Wheel: Quite probably the best and most comprehensive chronology of the events in the Wheel of Time.
WoT characters: the list of lists:
Quite probably the best and most comprehensive list of characters found
in the Wheel of Time. Not completely up to date for CoT as its creator
is traveling the world for a while, but that should be rectified when
he gets back.
Ideal seek: Search the
complete text of the books for mentions of specific words. The text
snippets returned are too small to be useful in debates, but it works
as an index by which you can then more easily look up the specific
quotes in the books.
Want to know the age, location, date of birth or icq number of someone here? There's a very good chance you can find that information in the user profile supplement list. These lists are a tradition on this board, maintained by members with far too much time on their hands. I believe the very first one was made by Gray Avatar, The Car'a'Carn took over after a while, and currently I am continuing the list: http://ataricommunity.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=317452
One of the main elements in the culture that knits the people of
this board together is the belief in Bela as the Creator. 'Bela?? That
horse??,' you might say. Yes, that Bela. We have some pretty serious
evidence that Bela is the Creator. People knew something fishy was
going on
with Bela at least as far back as 1994. Larry Homer was probably the
first to reveal the truth to us in this famous essay. Later we learned to worship Bela as The Divine Comma: ,
Although previous incarnations of the board existed (if you get one of the
real oldbies drunk on Taint, ask him or her about the gay porn spammer someday),
the history of the board nowadays is generally said to have started on 17 March 1999
with the introduction of the UBB Board. (Before that it was WWWThreads.) From then
on, the board has gone through a number of Breakings, but remained essentially
recognizably the same. The First Breaking was during the summer of 1999 as
we upgraded to a verion of UBB supporting multiple pages per thread (! Ancient
threads such as Nym's original Land of the Doubles were at least partly as famous as
they were because they contained hundreds of posts on a single page - in these days
before commonly available broadband, the thread took minutes to load).
The Second Breaking took place during the autumn of '99 as the servers for the forum
were carted halfway across the USA, causing an unprecedented three day downtime. The
Third Breaking was the move to vBulletin 1.0 in early June 2000. A fourth happened a
few months later as the color schemes changed dramatically, and a fifth as we upgraded
to vBulletin 2.0 - I seem to recall a sixth one as GT Interactive became Infogrames
(now known as Atari), but these events didn't have as much impact on me personally as
the earlier ones, and as I'm reconstructing this from memory years later, I can't place
the timing exactly anymore. Anyway, each Breaking had in common that it introduced a
large element of change, somehow revitalizing the board and causing a flurry of activity
as all the old discussions were dragged up again for another round. The last Breaking
which was ackowledged as such is now a long time behind us, and we're living
complacently in the Seventh Age of the Board.
Yet who can know when the Wheel will begin a new Turning?
An initiative started by The_14th_Forsaken, a large part of our
community has sworn to continue with what once was simple common sense:
The First Oath: By
the Light and my hope of salvation and rebirth, I <insert name
here> swear to respect all other members of this board, old as well
as new, and respect opinions other than my own, or may the Creator's
face turn from me forever and darkness consume my soul.
The First Oath itself has currently disappeared into the mist of time
again, but I continue to include it in the FAQ because it does a good
job putting into words somethign which should be self-evident, but
sometimes sadly isn't, namely the importance of just showing some
respect to the other people on the board, no matter who they are.
We also have a few common 'rules' on this board:
- If you don't like it don't read it. (Don't post to criticize another
post. If people agree with you they won't reply either and the topic
will quickly sink down into oblivion. If they do like the topic, just
don't read it.)
- Do not SHOUT!!! Using ALL CAPS and exclamation marks may seem like a
good way to get quick attention, but doing that is considered extremely
rude. If you do this, you'll probably be asked to keep it down a few
times, but after a while people will just begin to ignore you.
- Take a minute to check your posts for obvious grammatical errors and
typos. Nobody is expecting perfect english, and we certainly understand
when english isn't your native language, but good grammar and
formatting can make a post much more readable.
- Do not user 'gamer slang.' Saying u r k3wl
may seem like a very nice way to express yourself, but all of us have
read the Wheel of Time, and can thus be expected to have a good grasp
of basic language. Saying 'you are cool' will get the point across just
nicely, while it won't damage our opinion of you.
[If we have the idea you obviously spend a
lot of time on your posts, show that we are important enough to take
some trouble, then naturally we will come to respect you for that, and
take a bit more time to respond than we might have done otherwise.]
- Keep your sig small. From time to time people feel they have to say
so much in their sigs, that they become dozens of lines long. As you
can probably understand if you think about it, this can be quite
annoying. It forces people to scroll a lot, and they certainly won't
read it all. Think about what is the most important thing you want to
tell in your sig, and stick to that alone.
- Try to limit your use of images. There are still a many people with
slow modem connections. If everybody starts to use images all the time,
load times will become unbearable for them.
- WARN FOR SPOILERS
- If you're discussing any of the content of te latest book (preferably
before the paperback of that book has been published, but at least in
the first four or five months after the hardcover), put a
spoiler-warning in the subject of the thread. Keep the subject somewhat
general, and at least make sure not to use any subjects like 'OMG! I can't believe Ingtar came back and was revealed to be Asmodean!' (something like 'A surprising return and identity'
works just as well and doesn't spoil anything). Books are not released
everywhere in the world at the same time, and not everyone might have
the money to go and buy it right away. Giving spoiler-warnings doesn't
cost us anything and helps them a lot. Plus, it's simply the polite
thing to do. Also always keep major spoilers for any of the books out of the thread titles.
- Do not be baited. Occasionally, seemingly out of nowhere, flames will
erupt. Do not respond in kind. No matter how justified you may be, no
matter how much you desire to explain in excruciating detail how
incredibly stupid this other person is behaving, the only thing flaming
will lead to is more flaming. If you feel something is way out of line,
simply report it to the moderators (using the "report post" link found
underneath each and every post) and let it slide. This is the only
course of action that will have any effect. The only thing flaming back
will accomplish is to get more people involved, quickly spoiling the
atmosphere on the board, which sometimes takes weeks to get back to the
friendly mood that's usually around.
- Be original. That is, when a certain kind of off-topic thread has
proved popular, don't make another one just like it in the hopes of
becoming popular yourself. This sort of behaviour will cause an
avalanche of those kind of threads, quickly spoiling the mood on the
board.
Nobody will force you to adhere to any of these rules, but in the
interest of continued harmony and friendship on the board, we ask you
to try to follow these guidelines. It is the best way to start on your
road to respect of the community.
The
original Wheel of Time Book Forum FAQ was created in October 1999 by
me, Aan`allein (at the time still known as Aviendha) in a few bored
moments during a computer graphics lab (which lab was finally finished
roughly two years later). :)
This version of the Book Forum FAQ was last updated: 2004-10-24 and tries
to be general enough to continue being useful for a long period of time,
as I am in the middle of traveling around the world for a few years and
will quite probably not be able to do much updating.