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15 Minutes of Fame: Vive la resistance
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. When there's a dozen of Them for every one of You, life on a PvP server gets ugly. PvE progression crawls when your faction's population is so minuscule that you can't seem to assemble a PUG even during peak hours. You can't craft your way into better gear, because an anemic economy means no materials on the Auction House and no players in Trade waiting to craft with them. Log in on a night when the few of raiding guilds don't happen to be active, and you could find yourself looking at something like 40 other faction-mates online. Welcome to the Alliance of US-Cho'gall. Current player activity levels average an abysmal 1 Alliance hour for every 12.7 Horde hours played -- something like a 1:7.5 player ratio, down from 1:15 earlier this year. An incredible community effort and guild named The Resistance rallied rerollers and transfers to infuse new life into the Alliance-side of this notoriously imbalanced community. While the campaign made an impressive stab at pulling the Alliance community up by its bootstraps, the severity of the situation took its toll, and things are not so bright for everyone on the blue side of the tracks. We visited with Aleksey, GM of another Alliance guild, to find out how the beleaguered Allies are holding up and what might help this Horde-crushed realm.
15 Minutes of Fame: Mixlering it up in world PvP
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. Safety is serious business on US Feathermoon (RP). The Guildwatch, Feathermoon's Alliance global defense network of guilds and individuals, strives seven days a week to protect Alliance towns and territories from Horde attack. Sound like something that's taken pretty seriously? That would be affirmative. Says Guildwatch leader Mixler of the group's some 400 members, "Most of the major players Alliance-side have been members at one point or another, all of the Horde PvPers have fought us, and I believe we're still the largest organization on Feathermoon." While Feathermoon is not a PvP realm (it is one of the game's original realms, created before there were such things as RP-PvP realms), world PvP is in fact a significant part of the Feathermoon experience. The Guildwatch has played no small part in developing that legacy. 15 Minutes visited with GM Mixler for an inside look at the mechanics that keep the sprawling network working like a well-oiled machine.
15 Minutes of Fame: Caitlin R. Kiernan
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. I've wandered around inside the fiction of Caitlín R. Kiernan, and I'm not at all certain I'd feel safe wandering around in her version of WoW. As it turns out, though, Kiernan plays WoW much like many of the rest of us do - smacking the "brain off" button at the end of a long day, tooling around various zones with a significant other, and somehow finding ourselves utterly embroiled in the microcosms that are the lives of the characters we spend so much time with. So an interview with Kiernan turned out to be a long, WoW-centric turn that she attacked with relish. "Truthfully, I think it's one of the most interesting interviews I've done lately, if only because I spend so little of it talking about writing," she blogged. We think it's pretty darn interesting, too.
15 Minutes of Fame: Quadriplegic player attacks progression raiding
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about. Tales of players who succeed at WoW despite disabilities (physical disabilities, mental issues, you name it) always attract a certain amount of fascination. How is it that we can spend so much worry and effort grinding trivial hurdles while disabled players are taking care of business in situations that would Alt+F4 most of us? Worry is one thing you won't hear much of from Quadilious, a quadriplegic player (yes, quadriplegic -- you read that correctly) who's into progression raiding (yes, progression raiding -- you're still reading things correctly) in ToC-25 Heroic and Ulduar hard modes. Ever have one of those days when you wish your in-game struggles and real-life hurdles seemed a little less daunting? Have a good dose of perspective -- Quad certainly does.
15 Minutes of Fame: Mr. Big
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.This guy's is bigger. Really. In fact, this interview is expressly designed to provoke e-peen envy. Because really now, if I have to interview this chap while squinting at my (admittedly not-so-tiny widescreen) monitor (because it's still T minus 5 days to my optometrist visit, and respeccing my prescription is definitely in order) in the face of this visual largesse, then all of you people need to hunker down along with me. Misery loves company, and once you get a look at this WoW setup, we'll be able to finish this 15 Minutes of Fame in green-eyed envy together. Because this is an impressive view of WoW. We're sure there are plenty of you out there nodding along right now, muttering, "Oh, that ain't nuthin', little lady – mine's easily as big as that one ..." Well, folks, I've got pictures of this one. And it's big, really big ... 133 inches worth of big, to be exact.
15 Minutes of Fame: WoW, Eh?
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.It's not every day that your interview subject offers to whip up some custom artwork depicting the 15 Minutes of Fame interview process in action - but that's how WoW, Eh? creator Cadistra/Kelly Aarons rolls. She's cool like that. That's Cadistra above, chatting with my retired priestess (who's normally found flitting about Darnassus in a Festive Green Dress with my daughter, chasing Wisps and leaving sparkly trails with her Benediction [to endless whispers of "Hey man, where does that staff drop?"] - so it was time for the wench to finally get some work done, you know?).Still, our enthusiasm for Cadistra's artwork can't top her own well deserved elation over a September win in Blizzard's monthly comic contest. As part of her prize package, Kelly received three volumes of Blizzard Entertainment manga. More importantly, she'll be considered by TOKYOPOP for contributions to upcoming volumes of both Warcraft: Legends and StarCraft: Frontline -- a heady opportunity, indeed.
15 Minutes of Fame: Lights, camera, Death Grip
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.WoW players are blubbery, pasty losers gorging on Cheetos in Mom's basement? Yeah, right -- that's about as far as it gets from diminutive Canadian songbird Lights. Yet make no mistake, this 22-year-old, Juno Award-winning singer is crazy about the WoW fighter's life -- so crazy, in fact, that she has a Twinblade of the Phoenix tattooed on her arm. She's peppered her web site and blog with declarations of geekdom, interspersed with observations on the synth-rich brand of "intergalactic electropop" she's building a career on. We visited with Lights (thanks for the tip, Chris!) about her WoW-playing ways during the crazy crunch leading up to today's U.S. release of her new album, The Listening.
15 Minutes of Fame: Habbo's Sulka Haro
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.Good things seem to come in threes -- at least, they do in the case of interviews with the intriguing folks from <unassigned variable> in the UK. Recent 15 Minutes of Fame subject Alice Taylor not only provided a rousing good interview herself, but she did exactly what we ask our readers to do at the top of every column: she tipped us off to players we want to hear more about. First, she passed us along to her GM, games designer James Wallis; next, she introduced us to this week's gaming insider. If you've had the chance to read Alice's and James' profiles, you're sure to be grinning and settling into your chair right about now, in anticipation of yet another witty, savvy peek into WoW culture, gaming and geekery. You'd be right on target. Here he is, direct from Finland: Sulka Haro, the lead designer of Habbo, a popular virtual world for teens that attracts some 11 million monthly uniques.
15 Minutes of Fame: Games designer James Wallis
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.Some players bound into a 15 Minutes of Fame interview like a Death Knight capering into Hellfire Peninsula. Questions get Death Gripped, ideas pop up like an Army of the Dead ... There's no stopping the flow. Take, for example, game designer and gaming professor and guild GM James Wallis. You could read his Wikipedia entry to give you a proper idea of what he's all about – or you give in and consider his own, more exuberant version of a biographical note:"Origins Award-winning game designer. Have had a game published by MIT - that was unexpected. Have written 14 books, including two Sonic the Hedgehog novels from the early 90s that I prefer not to be reminded of. Have journalisted for everyone from the Sunday Times to Fortean Times. Launched Bizarre magazine in 1996. Back in 1986, I and some friends set the Guinness World Record for playing Advanced Dungeons & Dragons non-stop (84 hours). Currently running Spaaace, the games consultancy, and Magnum Opus Press, which publishes old-school tabletop RPGs; and lecturing in game design at the University of Westminster."
15 Minutes of Fame: Games designer James Wallis Part 2
Is there anything about WoW that as a game designer you especially admire? Mostly I'm preparing for the new semester and a new intake of students on the university course I lecture on (Computer Game Development, University of Westminster).
15 Minutes of Fame: Clint Hackleman of Myndflame machinima
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.The subject of this week's 15 Minutes of Fame has actually carved out many, many more than a mere 15 minutes on his own. Clint Hackleman is known to WoW fans as the force behind Myndflame, the team responsible for such wildly popular machinima as Illegal Danish: Super Snacks, Learn 2 Play and Epic Flight Form. So who's a Myndflame fan? Blizzard, for starters. "How can something so familiar feel so foreign?" Blizzard asks rhetorically in a news update on its main site about the Illegal Danish III Prelude. "... If you're a World of Warcraft player who feels something is missing from the StarCraft universe, the creators of the Illegal Danish series have sensed your internal disturbance, bringing you a hilariously off-kilter redux of the StarCraft II cinematic trailer, now with 100% more Gnome action. It's about time!"We thought it was about time, too, to go behind the scenes with Hackleman and get the story behind Myndflame's blazing success.
15 Minutes of Fame: Pre-Raid Trivia pumps up enthusiasm, strats
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.How do you get guild members to log in nice and early before raids, remember their consumables, build a steam head of enthusiasm and polish up their knowledge of strats and game skills? Believe it or not, it's not a struggle - it's what Relyimah of <Klatoo Verata Niktoo> on Kilrogg-US and her guildmates do for fun. If it's an hour before raid time, it's time for Pre-Raid Trivia.Most of Relyimah's trivia sessions cover the gamut of WoW knowledge, but every session is capped off by strategy questions pertinent to the encounters the raid will be tackling that evening. She calls the learning process "strat by osmosis." "All rounds are 20 questions worth one point a piece, and the five bonus-round questions are worth five points each," Relyimah explains. "I have a lot of fun writing the questions, as it makes me learn the strategy as well. I usually grab my info from WoWWiki or Tankspot.com." Winners scoop up 25 gold plus prizes such as an epic armor kit or Frostweave Bag - but the best reward, she notes, is a raid that succeeds.
15 Minutes of Fame: Pre-Raid Trivia
"I never thought of playing WoW like that!" - neither did we, until we talked with these players
15 Minutes of Fame: Alice in Warcraftland
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.Who's on your list of the proverbial 10 People to Invite to My Dream Dinner Party? Leave a spot for Alice Taylor. When it comes to gaming and geekery, there's nowhere you won't find traces of Alice and her self-mocking, good-natured humor. She's the face behind the popular social media and gaming blog Wonderland Blog. She commissions cross-platform education content for teens for Channel 4. As a gaming writer, she's been seen at BBC News, Kotaku, The Guardian and Paste. She was a semi-pro Quake player on the UK's first Quake team. She's an indie crafts maven. You may have heard of her husband, Cory Doctorow. Oh -- and of course, she's a WoW player.
15 Minutes of Fame: Members only
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.As Blizzard re-imagines old Azeroth, sweeps tired systems out the door and injects new ways for players to connect and work together, we can't imagine why anyone would not want to take advantage of what this top-notch MMO and company have to offer. There are players, however, who choose a different path. These players game on private servers, where conditions range from near-original mirrors to god-mode gameplay with super-GM abilities.We don't condone private server play, which is clearly against Blizzard's Terms of Service and EULA. Still, there are plenty of players who believe differently, and we were curious why they've chosen the private server route. We visited with a player who plays on a relatively tame private server featuring near-"normal" game play. What can he do that we can't? And what do we have that he doesn't?
15 Minutes of Fame: Fantasy author muses on WoW themes
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.The World of Warcraft is a season of life. You could approach it strictly as a video game - many do - but as soon as you push beyond the surface, you find yourself building relationships with fellow players, musing over storylines, sharing frustrations and triumphs in a way that punctuates time. It's no stretch of the imagination, then (or is it, perhaps, entirely about stretching the imagination?) to consider the impact a game such as World of Warcraft might have on the fertile mind of a fantasy writer. So when we spied comments around the internet from Catherynne M. Valente (author of Palimpsest) pointing straight toward gaming, we suspected she'd had her hand in the WoW cookie jar – and we were right. While she's not currently playing WoW (having sworn off its siren call to devote her time to writing), she responded enthusiastically to our interest, producing an interview filled with gaming, WoW, fantasy, science fiction and the timeless themes that tie these worlds together.
15 Minutes of Fame: Fantasy author muses on WoW themes, Part 2
Gamers commonly seem to be fans of roleplaying, fantasy, mythology and sci fi, and they're attracted to game worlds and genres that explore common themes and elements in these genres. WoW is am amazing postmodern patchwork of mythologies.
Looking for interview subjects at BlizzCon for 15 Minutes of Fame
The WoW.com team will be at BlizzCon in force this year. Between liveblogging the big announcements and resisting the siren call of the Diablo 3 demo stations, we want to talk to you, the loyal readers, and we don't mean just at our 3rd Annual WoW.com BlizzCon Meet Up. We are planning a special BlizzCon edition of our weekly interview series 15 Minutes of Fame and are looking for some candidates for the column. We are especially interested in interviewing those WoW players who have a unique approach to the game. Are you the oldest player in the game who doesn't play with family? Are you the youngest and shouldn't be reading this site without adult supervision? The guild leader who does things differently? The guy who plays without the UI/Keyboard/Talents, etc.? Are you famous for something in or out of Azeroth? Should we interview your entire guild at once?If you think you bring something special to how you play the game and will be at BlizzCon next week, send us an e-mail at 15minutesoffame at wow dot com explaining what makes you a candidate for this special BlizzCon Edition of 15 Minutes of Fame. We'll pick the most interesting stories and contact you to make arrangements to meet during the convention for the interview. If we get enough interesting emails, we may even pick more than one.Please send your emails by Monday, August 17th to give us time to read through them all and coordinate the interviews. Don't leave your story and contact info in the comments of this post, send them to 15minutesoffame at wow dot com."I never thought of playing WoW like that!" - neither did we, until we talked with these players. From an Oscar-winning 3-D effects director to a custom action figure artist and even a bunch of guys who get together for dinner and group raiding in person every week, catch it on 15 Minutes of Fame.
15 Minutes of Fame: A World of Warcraft love story, Part 2
From an Oscar-winning 3-D effects director to a custom action figure artist and even a bunch of guys who get together for dinner and group raiding in person every week, catch it on 15 Minutes of Fame.
15 Minutes of Fame: A World of Warcraft love story
15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.In this era of Match.com and eHarmony, it's not so unusual to have married friends who met online. Couples tie the knot with elaborate in-game weddings. The taste for WoW-themed wedding cakes grows every year. Wedding rings unite lovers in Azeroth and the world at large. So it's no surprise that 15 Minutes of Fame would eventually roll around to the story of a couple who met and fell in love inside the World of Warcraft. Meet Ghrelsognn and Aleiriella of Defiance on Farstriders-US. Ghrel and Aleir are no starry-eyed youngsters – both in their 40s, they found themselves mesmerized by love when (and where) they least expected it. Join us for the story of their walk up the levels and down the aisle, in their own words, after the break.
