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BlizzCon 2009: WoW.com interviews Felicia Day, continued
That's the last money question that I have. You work with all of these actors, the first season it was like you were kind of the face of the show, and you were talking to everybody, and the other actors have kind of come up. And this BlizzCon I think is one of the first ones where people are really diving in and saying this person is my favorite, I really want to talk to Robin, I really want to talk to Jeff. You wrote the stuff, you even talked on the panel as well about how the actors are kind of taking over your characters. How has that been, in terms of how your actors are becoming the characters you're writing about? As of the third season, I've written them hundreds of pages, at this point. So they've as actors really helped me define, it's kind of a metamorphosis. Every TV show, if you watch a pilot, a lot of characters change a lot, from the time they do that first pilot. For this one, the actors though, they bring so much to the table, Jeff and Sandeep do a lot of improv, and ad-lib a lot, they're adding a lot of ideas with their characters. At the same time, honestly, I've been pushing them forward as far as press and stuff and meeting fans and stuff, because I'm out there on the Internet a lot, I get sick of myself, honestly, I'm sure some of your readers are like, "I hate this girl." [Laughs] No! They do have trolling tendencies. Which is cool, they will, but that's cool, everybody doesn't have to love me. [laughs]
The Guild shooting season 3, fires director (not really)
Our friends over at The Guild are hard at work on season 3 -- if you've been following their Twitter feeds, you'll have seen that shooting is underway en masse, and while we haven't yet heard when they'll be done, it sounds like they're already keeping some long hours over there. Such long hours, in fact, that tempers are apparently flaring on the set -- as you can see above, director and editor Sean Becker has become a victim of Felicia Day's (substantial?) wrath, and been fired from the show.Ok, not really -- they're just joking around. But even if he's kidding about what's in that "guild 3 master" box, we at least know there is a season 3 master, and that sooner than ever, we'll be able to see just what happened when Codex took that out-of-body sprint at the end of season 2. Can't wait to see it.
Guild Season 2 DVD preorder available now, out 5/19
The Guild's second season is now available for preorder on DVD, and apparently it's an Amazon Exclusive -- yes, the ever-more-corporate folks at The Guild are going with the big online retailer to distribute their second DVD collection. But we can't blame them too much -- surely it's a chance at a wider distribution, and probably less work for them in general. You can preorder the DVD set right now for just $12.99, and according to The Guild's site, the set will have commentary tracks, subtitles in English, and Behind the Scenes and Audition footage. If you're as much of a fan of the series as we are, it sounds well worth the purchase.Amazon has a release date of May 19th, and it also looks like they're doing a re-release of season one on the same day (though we're not sure if that new season one cover demotes new material or if it's the same version of the season one DVD they were selling before). And of course if you're not interested in picking up any extras, you can still just watch the episodes online at their site, or by downloading them in HD from Xbox Live for free.
The Clan: like The Guild, but a lot less endearing [Update]
Update: Producer Scott Patch let us know that 'The Clan' was a test pilot developed for a contest Microsoft held in Mid-2007 for an original comedy program on Xbox Live Marketplace. No subsequent episodes were developed or are planned.One of the great things about The Guild is the diversity of the cast. Right from the pilot, viewers learn something that differentiates each of the characters and makes us question how this "family" survives. The series pokes fun at gamer stereotypes, but also embraces them, using dialogue only those who play MMOs would know and understand in context. If you're a fan, you appreciate that about The Guild.If you want to see something that isn't The Guild, check out The Clan, a web series that isn't even diverse enough to cast someone who isn't a 30-something year old white guy. Sure, there's a lot of The Guild humor in The Clan ... but we've never wanted to punch The Guild cast like we want to throttle some of these guys. Check it out after the break and tell us what you think.
The Guardian on The Guild
British newspaper The Guardian has a look at our favorite web series, The Guild, and how it has taken the MMO community by storm and vaulted its way up into one of the most popular television series that's not actually on television. There's no question that The Guild's popularity online was fueled by the fact that it follows a group of people who spend most of their time online, and with a built-in audience the size of World of Warcraft's, you might think that all they had to do was get the references right.But as The Guardian notes, success for The Guild isn't just a matter of hitting a niche audience. Felicia Day and Kim Evey say they spent eight hours a day emailing the show around when it first came out. And while the show is of course sponsored by Microsoft now, the whole first season was powered by hard work and donations. The Guardian attributes The Guild's success to "direct marketing of content to a niche peer group" -- find an audience, and then make sure they know what you're doing.And of course, as a Guardian commenter notes, it doesn't hurt that the show is funny, and as Felicia told us herself, they've gone out of their way to explain and convey the WoW-related stuff to an audience that might not always play MMOs. The series is attracting a lot of attention these days, not just as an MMO story, but also a how-to guide of how to get a television series off the ground without actually being on broadcast television.
WoW Insider Show Episode 66: Felicia Day and her show
Yes, our podcast is a little early today (due to the holiday, I'm going to be traveling on Saturday, so no live show as usual this week), but we've got a bonus for you anyway: Felicia Day, creator of The Guild and star of Dr. Horrible's Sing-along Blog, joined us to talk about the second season of her web series, which just started up the other day, and the deal they've recently made for Microsoft to show it exclusively on MSN, Zune, and Xbox Live.Since most of our bloggers were out for the holiday this week, it was just me and her, but we had a lot of fun -- there are some good hints in there about new characters coming to join our favorite guildies this season, the third season (!) of the show, and how Felicia is able to get MMO concepts (like "DKP" and the idea of a "guild" itself) across to people who may not play MMOs. And I also got to read some emails and get a little bit of WoW talk in there -- if you'd like to email the show a question or comment for next time, you can do so at theshow@wow.com as always.We'll be back as usual live on Ustream on Saturday, December 6th at 3:30 Eastern, so make sure to tune in then when we'll get back to the WoW talk. In the meantime, enjoy the show, and do go check out the first show of The Guild's second season (or watch it in HD on Xbox Live) -- it's great.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
The Guild posts Episode 8, wins awards around the 'net
Episode 8 of The Guild is up for your viewing pleasure, and the whole cast rebounds in the aftermath of Zaboo's rash action last time around. And tragedy strikes when a familiar face returns. In fact, it's a familiar "toolface." Funny.And in other Guild news, you can probably chalk us up as hitmakers now -- they won that series YouTube award they were up for, and in fact picked up another award as well over at Yahoo! Video. And Felicia Day, writer and star of the series (whom we interviewed back in the beginning), is picking up some buzz as well -- she's not only shown up in that Cheetos commercial you've seen like 500 times now, but she's going to be starring in a (trust me, if you haven't heard this yet, your mind is about to be blown) a musical web series called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog," which also stars Nathon Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris, and written and directed by none other than Joss Whedon. No, I am not kidding -- it's a fanstravaganza.So exciting times for The Guild. Hopefully they can figure out what to do about the "toolface," and hopefully Felicia won't get too famous to remember her little web series about World of Warcraft. Save Zaboo!
The Guild up for YouTube series award
Our favorite little web video series, The Guild, has been nominated for a 2007 YouTube award in the series category, and voting is going on right now over on YouTube's awards page. There are a lot of different categories to choose from, but if you click on "Series," you can see all the nominated web series, and The Guild is in the list down at the bottom. This isn't the first award they've been up for, but on the blog they claim it's one of the biggest.In the interests of fairness, we should remind you that you should vote for the series you like best -- Collegehumor's "Street Fighter: The Later Years" series is a funny bit of video, especially if you're a fan of the old fighting game. But we here at WoW Insider have a soft spot for The Guild, not only because it captures so perfect (and so weirdly) what it's like to have friends you've only known through Azeroth, but because, you know, they're WoW players, too.
