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FileFront suspending operations indefinitely
Our old friend Moo Money wrote in a little earlier today (along with a few readers) to alert us of some news that has the potential to hit the WoW community pretty hard: FileFront is closing its doors, citing poor economic conditions as the reason why they're indefinitely suspending the site's operations. As of March 30th, 2009, FileFront will be gone.Countless WoW videos are currently hosted on FileFront, including some of our favorite machinima, many that we've highlighted on the site previously. It's not just machinima, either. I know many of my friends that arena heavily find and host their videos on FileFront, and my raid has linked to strategy videos that were hosted there, too.
WoW Moviewatch: A very Northrend Christmas contest
Today, Moviewatch would like to give a shout out to its old keeper Moo Money. Moo is working over at Machinima.com now, and posted up a video last week about a new contest they're running called the Christmas in Northrend.Submit a holiday video featuring Northrend by December 20th to Machinima.com and you could be a winner! The video that Moo posted is, of course, well put together and has a simplistic version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" playing in the background. Gnomes are represented too, so all you gnome lovers out there should be happy.The content itself has a pretty nice grand prize: a Frostmourne Sword replica. I want one of those. And if you do too, head over to machinima.com for the full rules and enter. Good luck!
WoW Moviewatch: EPIXX, or Too Fast For Love
Back in July, I wrote about the Warcraftmovies Synergy contest. Machinimators were given the choice between two unintentionally horrible scripts and were asked to follow them to the letter. In honor of that contest, Baron Soosdon, half of the winning duo, decided to create his own imba machinima contest. Offering up a top prize of being uuiU'd by Soosdon himself, he cranked out a script in just 15 minutes!It's been a while since I wrote about Kilh, of Rock 'n' Troll fame. He noticed the contest with a little over three days left until the deadline. Of course, being the talented filmmaker that he is, he decided to give it a go -- with amazing results. When asked for comment, he stated that the script made no sense, so he just followed it as if it were step-by-step instructions. Featuring a voiceover by yours truly, EPIXX - Too Fast For Love is ... something else. Try to imagine toilet gnomes, a ruined PR campaign (a nod to one of my Moviewatch posts), an epic purple Wand of Not Burning Books (the part that I voiced), a Titanic spoiler, and a bad 80s song in the credits that isn't a Rickroll. Those are just some of the highlights of an intentionally awesome script![Thanks for the laughs, #machinima on Quakenet IRC!]If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
Dell announces machinima contest to win a XPS M1730 WoW Edition laptop
Earlier today, I posted a huge roundup of links to get you started on your first machinima, or just polish your current work. The reason behind that post was to announce the incredible contest that Dell is having! They're offering up not one, but two systems as prizes, but I'm getting ahead of myself. WoW Insider is lucky enough to have two of their staffers, Dan O'Halloran and myself, as judges for this event.How to enter: Download the Dell XPS asset package from their site. Create a World of Warcraft machinima under 3 minutes long that features their system. Upload the video to YouTube and put it in this post on their forum. The submission deadline is September 23rd, 2008 by 11:59pm EST. The prizes: Grand Prize: Dell XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition laptop Second Prize: Alienware desktop, Dell monitor, and Logitech gaming mouse, keyboard, and surround sound system Third Prize: Complete first series of World of Warcraft action figures, plus a Logitech gaming mouse and keyboard Read on for the fine print and some things you should know before entering ...
WoW Moviewatch: Video Games Live performs a Warcraft Medley
With the flurry of activity surrounding the Worldwide Invitational, the live stream was the best thing that you could watch if you weren't in Paris yourself. During the closing ceremony, Video Games Live performed a Blizzard-centric symphony. For those that missed it, VGL is organized by Tommy Tallarico, the MC, and Jack Wall, the conductor. Both have composed music for video games for years, but now also travel around the country working with leading orchestras to perform that music live on stage for audiences.After viewing the closing ceremony, I checked out their website and discovered that they were performing in Austin, Texas two weeks later! Armed with ticket and video camera, I wasn't sure what to expect, but was thoroughly pleased with the performance. They can only play about 20 of their roughly 50 arranged pieces per night, so I was treated to music from Final Fantasy, Warcraft, Starcraft, Super Mario Brothers, Halo, Metal Gear Solid, and many others. In between the segments were games, costume contests, and commentary. At the end, they offer a meet and greet with the crew, as well as some video game industry professionals occasionally. In all, it's about a 5 hour event.If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...Read on after the jump for more tidbits about Video Games Live ...
About the Bloggers: moo Money
Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more About the Bloggers.What do you do for WoW Insider?I write the daily machinima posts for both WoW Insider, and its broader MMO sister site, Massively.What's your main right now?This won't make me very popular, but I actually don't really play WoW. I did for a while after it came out, but I'm not a very good grinder and it just got lonely.This is an outrage! How dare you write about WoW without playing it?That's actually a really good question. I got my start in machinima roughly two years ago when I was hired to promote it in Second Life, an oft-mocked virtual world. Through experimentation with machinima, as well as the education that I provided to others, I became known as one of the "It" people for machinima in SL. When Second Life Insider folded into Massively in November 2007, I volunteered to write the daily Cinemassively. After about 45 days straight of blogging them, WI asked me to do the same for WoW Moviewatch!Read on to find out more about the Notorious M.O.O. ...
The Traveling Avatar's useful tips for SL inventory management
Your inventory. It's something that's extremely easy to ignore, because Linden Lab doesn't force you to acknowledge how much stuff you're carrying. What this means, however, is that you're likely to accumulate quite a lot of junk during the course of your stay in Second Life. Oh, sure, most of that junk started out as interesting, useful, fun stuff, but after wearing a dancing cow animator a few times, you'll tuck it away and move on to the next fun toy. In the meantime, that cow's still in there, taking up space, adding to the total number of objects -- a number that will likely give you a heart attack when you take the time to look at it.So what's to do? Well, there's no way around it: you'll have to do some weeding. And while there's no tool to magically get rid of the things you know you don't need anymore, The Traveling Avatar has come up with an article full of great management tips. Some of these tips may seem like no-brainers to some of you, but that doesn't mean that you exercise them, Ms. 20,000 Inventory Items Girl. I'm looking at you, Moo! GO check out the article and make 2008 the year you conquer the Inventory Beast!
Vodafone makes it easier to contact Second Life from the outside
Moo Money covered this story initially, and from Rivers Run Red comes the news that the beta for this service is being extended to March 31st, 2008. This means that you can still sign up for free, and experience what it's like to receive messages from your Second Life friends on your cellphone.Until we get the ability to IM someone in SL, this seems like the next best thing, though frankly, if I'm mobile, I'm probably not going to be texting people in general. I'm not one of those with my thumbs callused from frequent texting, but this could be useful for people on the go who have events to manage. Has anyone tried this? How well does it work? You can get more specific information from Vodaphone's site.Incidentally, I really like their commercial, which you can see on the site. Cute![Thanks, Margaret!]
Cinemassively: BloodSpell
Here at Massively, we take movie clips and Machinima very seriously. That's why we're introducing Cinemassively, your daily dose of video goodness. It's fitting that our launch today would be complemented by an equally massive Machinima; BloodSpell.Filmed in Neverwinter Nights, this feature-length epic tale follows the story of a young monk, Jered, who is trained to hunt the Blooded, or people whose blood has been infected with magic. When he realizes he has magic coursing through his veins, he must flee from the Church of the Angels. As he is pursued by his brethren, he is taken on an adventure with plenty of action and even a hot chick or two!The director of this film, Hugh Hancock, must have been created by putting Joss "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" Whedon and Peter "Lord of the Rings" Jackson in a blender. Hugh is one of the pioneers of Machinima, and his experience really shows. His script is by turns funny, intense and sometimes moving, the cinematography and direction is excellent. He has created a Machinima feature film that's involving and entertaining compared to other feature films in the cinema, not just Machinima.Check the full movie (you may need a Divx plugin installed) after the jump, or go download it over on the website.
Facebook deletes account with pseudonym; Second Lifers could be affected.
Jon Swift, a 2007 finalist for the Weblog Awards in the Funniest Blog category, operates under a fake name. Many of us do this today. I blog, Twitter, and use many other social networks as moo Money, my Second Life name. For Facebook, though, virtual identity isn't enough. Jon logged into his account this week only to discover that it had been deleted, citing a Terms of Service violation for not using his real name.I know many Second Life residents that don't use their real names for Facebook. In the end, Jon's account was reinstated, but is this an ongoing process? Weren't his 200 friends enough evidence that he was a real entity not out to dupe anyone? What happens when they determine that Akela Talamasca is fake? Leave a comment and let us know what you think about this one.
