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Wings Over Atreia: TORn away
*suits up in full firefighters gear* Alrighty, now I am ready! The topic for this week's Wings Over Atreia presented itself when I logged into Aion at prime-time on Thursday night and found the very odd occurrence of both an empty legion list and an empty friends list. Considering how full the latter is (plug for larger lists here), I've never seen both be completely empty simultaneously, even when I pop in during my odd super-late hours. While I saw some life over the rest of the weekend, overall numbers stayed pretty low, even during the hours of the new arena instances. To what do I attribute this? In some cases it was the usual attack of the Real Life (tm) that got ahold of people, but two extra factors contributed to the population insta-decline: the release of Skyrim and more weekend beta invites from Star Wars: The Old Republic. Now in the case of Skyrim, it can't be helped (but maybe we can have a little spacing between the release of so many games?!). We know that once the game is played through, people will wander back to their MMOs. TOR, however, is another matter: Besides the shininess of of a new game and the fact that it is both Star Wars-based and made by BioWare, does Aion have a future of vast, empty lands to look forward to at the release of the latest OMG-it's-the-second-coming-of-games title? Some are certainly screaming doom-and-gloom, but we hear that from dissenters about nearly every little thing. Is it possible that there is room enough for both games to survive after the initial hype has passed? *checks and readjusts all gear again* Come on and join me past the cut for some thoughts on the matter.
WoW Moviewatch: Ties That Bind
Yesterday, Romire released his newest video, Ties That Bind. You can see how Romire's been focused on improving his technical skills, stepping up his color mastery, and otherwise refining the visual effects of his videos. Ties That Bind shows huge improvement in that arena. Since Romire takes his work seriously, he's asked for some constructive feedback. I'd start with some tight narration and plot editing. While Romire obviously had a story in mind with Ties That Bind, it's easy to lose track of the plot point over 11 minutes. While long-form videos are certainly viable, it's usually best to maintain a very tight narrative focus in machinima. Famous pieces like Tales of the Past and Return are masterpieces for a reason; not every machinima can mimic that level of complexity or epic narration. There were a few jokes in the video, like a brief Mortal Kombat shout-out. Stuff like that is awesome, but it felt out of place in a longer, more serious video. Visually, I think Romire's come a long, long way. But for the next piece, I'd aim for a short, simple plot to start polishing the storytelling. Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.
