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Choose my adventure with WoW.com profiles
We're all still slaving away on WoW.com, finding bugs and filing feedback. To help that process along, we're going to try a little experiment. I'm going to level a character from level 1 to level 80, and all of it will be documented on my WoW.com profile. The hook is that you guys are going to decide most aspects of this character, such as race, class, and talent spec.Such things will be determined largely via polls right here on the front page of WoW.com, where I'll be giving weekly updates on my progress along with what I've learned about the class and the world and any other observations I might have. If you want a little more detail on the process such as where I'm going, what I've done, and any other little notes I make via the Adventurer's Note feature, you can follow that on my profile. If you don't dig our profiles portion of the site, hey, no problem. You'll still get weekly updates right here on the blog until I'm level 80.There are two polls: Race and Class. I will play whichever choices are the most popular. If the chosen race can't actually be the chosen class, I'm going to go with whatever is the most popular class that I can actually play as that race. The polls are below, and there's a little more information behind the cut underneath them.Update: Polls will remain open so those who voted can still see the results, but as of May 22nd, Gnome Warlock won the polls and the adventures have begun.%Poll-30341% %Poll-30352%
WoW Moviewatch: Green Tambourine
Dude. Wait, what? I think I got a contact high from watching this trippy video. This is Green Tambourine by Demachic. It seems like we've missed covering it before now, which is a shame. As the story goes, a bored Blood Elf finds a trippy hookah hanging around, and decides to try it out. He's looking to break that boredom and day-to-day life he leads in Silvermoon.While it might be my inner hippy speaking out, I found this video absolutely gorgeous. The colors are vibrant and beautiful, and Demachic's flair for scenery sets up a great context for the music. All the characters really fit in that 60s and 70s psychadelic genre, and the whole thing just comes together wonderfully.The song was originally by the Lemon Pipers, and it actually reached #1 on the charts in 1968. Demachic's video is a great homage to the song.Thanks to Stephen for the tip!If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch
WoW Moviewatch: Pokerface
Volcano sent us this tip about Pokerface, the new video by Ayukyo. Volcano hints that Ayukyo could be one of Demachic's favorite machinimators. Whether or not that's true, I can certainly see how that might be the case. Ayukyo's style is light, friendly, and warm. While your mileage is going to vary depending on whether you like the main character Blood Elves, I certainly enjoy the sense of fun Ayukyo is putting in the video.Like I mentioned, Ayukyo describes "Pokerface" as the first video the author created using Sony Vegas. I think the animation is a little raw, but you can definitely see how Ayukyo is using the tool to expand the video over usual ingame footage. I've seen the card background in a few places, but nowhere as appropriate in this film. (It's a song about poker as an analogy, you see.) Overall, I like the video, and I'll be keeping an eye out for more by Ayukyo.If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch
WoW Moviewatch: Britney Spears - Piece of Me
If you'd told me two days ago that I'd be featuring a WoW music video based on a Britney Spears song, I'd have called you a bloody liar. But. Well. Here I am, featuring a WoW music video based on a Britney Spears song. Real life is stranger than fiction, I guess. Check out Britney Spears - Piece of Me.This video was posted anonymously on Machinima.com. I didn't really expect a lot from the video. First, it was anonymous. Usually, that means the author is expecting to get flamed and burned for their efforts, and don't want to associate his or her identity with the piece. Second, the anonymous author also said it's a first-time-out piece, and that he or she is learning the ropes. Lastly, it's a Britney Spears song. I mean, c'mon.I was pleasantly surprised. No, shocked! While I can't say that I loved the song and that it's going to change the world, the quality of the video absolutely astounded me. The Blood Elf singer is an obvious choice to represent Spears, but the screen glows, white-outs, and effects are perfectly suited to the persona. The graphics and settings are well chosen and cleverly pieced together, exactly as I'd expect a Spears video to go.So, while this might not be your schtick, exactly, you've got to applaud the incredible first effort from this Anonymous author. Well done, and here's hoping for more. My only real note to the author is that you should go ahead and reveal your identity with this -- you've got some growing skills, and should be proud of what you've done.Click here to see it yourself!If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ..EDIT: As commenter Stalwart has pointed out, this is a video first created by Demachic, and reviewed by Moo Money. Still, the video's worth another watch.
Reminder: Blood Elf vs. Draenei diorama giveaway!
Are you admiring the above awesomeness, but missed our Blood Elf Paladin vs. Draenai Shaman giveaway last week? Or perhaps just bored during today's downtime? Either way, we have a solution for you! We'll be accepting contest entries until 6PM EST today. Relieve boredom, have a chance to win a prize! (Sure, there are already nearly 2,000 entries, but you know how fickle the random number generator can be... winners will be chosen completely at random, so it's still anyone's game.) So if you want to win the above... don't comment here, but go and leave a comment on our contest post!
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Horde Rogue
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-third in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. Any class needs its role models. Rogues don't have all that many great heroes from lore, but the ones they do have stand out, especially for the prominence of women in this class. Garona Halforcen is probably the most famous of rogue protagonists, one of the main characters of the original Warcraft I storyline that launched the whole Warcraft series. She's been strangely missing ever since the end of the First War, actually, but it seems that she is finally making her comeback to the story in the World of Warcraft Comic Book. Her full story is best left for others to tell (such as the immensely talented Elizabeth Wachowski, or the mysterious collective mind known as WoWWiki), but for now, suffice it to say that she represents a lot of what makes rogues who and what they are. Here's a few reasons why: She's incredibly cool. She doesn't talk about how incredibly cool she is. She has conflicted loyalties, neither all good nor all bad. There's so much we don't know about her, and so much we want to discover. She's something of a lone wolf, extremely independent and active. Her skill with words was just as important as her skill with weapons. She has a great wealth of complicated emotions and ideas that drive her deeper into the story.
Tattooed for the Horde
I can't say that I'm the biggest fan of tattoos out there, but that is a nice tattoo -- xstitchfla's son Christopher got it on his arm just recently, and clearly he's flying the Horde flag proudly. It took about five hours to put on there, which seems like it would hurt a lot, but then again, Hordies can take it, right?Christopher is also headed off to Iraq next year, too, so we wish him the best of luck and hope that he stays safe.And while we're at it, just what is it with the Horde and WoW tattoos? Seems like every picture we see is of the Orc/Tauren/Troll/Blood Elf/Forsaken variety. Aren't there any Humans, Gnomes or Dwarves out there getting inked up?
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Priest
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the seventeenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. Priests in the World of Warcraft are a single class that incorporates a wide variety of characters. They are best known for casting spells that call forth the power of the Holy Light, but the priest using these spells in the game mechanics doesn't necessarily have much connection to the Light as such -- rather they have a connection with their own religion which grants them similar effects to those of the Light.When WoW was being developed, Blizzard realized that night elves and trolls, for instance, would not follow the Light in the same way humans and dwarves do, so they tried to represent a bit of this diversity through race-specific spells. It didn't work out, though -- some were too powerful, while others weren't worth reading about, much less putting on one's action bar. The end result was that they made some of these spells universally available to all priests, and completely removed the rest. Here the lore had to surrender to the game mechanics in order to provide the best game balance.In roleplaying, however, there is a lot of room for players of different races to behave differently, and draw their powers from totally different sources. Greater Heal, for instance, could come either from the Light or the power of Elune. A Shadowfiend could either be a spawn of the Forgotten Shadow, or a dark trollish voodoo spirit. If you are roleplaying a priest, the only thing that really matters is that your character have some sort of faith or profound belief, which could serve as the source of their divine magical power. A priest's magic revolves around his or her strong beliefs and ideas -- but what those beliefs are is entirely up to you.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Mage
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the sixteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. It's also the first installment with a title that rhymes! The Mage is the foremost master of magic in the Warcraft universe. Although all the other classes excluding the Warrior and the Rogue use magic of one sort or another with equally wonderful effects, the Mage is the class that's named after the stuff.But what is magic? What does it feel like to harness it? Does the mage have to do a strange ritual or utter incomprehensible words in an ancient language in order to cast her spells? Other fantasy settings often have one or more of these elements together, but as far as I can tell, Warcraft lacks them.Arcane magic in the World of Warcraft is an ever-present energy field surrounding the whole world. Mages access it by concentrating in the magic energy within themselves, feeling it rush through their body, and directing it as they please. Those spells that require reagents need an extra focusing item with magical properties of its own in order to bring about the desired effect, but for the most part, fireballs, frostbolts and arcane explosions can be created through the mere act of will on the part of a properly educated mind.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Warlock
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the fifteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. The Warlock is the ideological counterpart to the Paladin. Where paladins strive to wipe out evil wherever they see it, warlocks enslave those evils and use them for their own purposes. Being a warlock is all about harnessing the most wicked, corrupting, and evil forces in the universe. Why are these forces evil, you ask? Aren't magical powers neutral in themselves depending on how you use them? Isn't killing with one weapon more or less the same as killing with another? Well, if you consider that a warrior basically cuts or bashes things, and a paladin cuts or bashes and brings down the righteous energy of justice. But a warlock uses curses and spells, which, like horrifying biological weapons of modern days, destroy his enemies' minds and eat away their bodies from the inside; wreaks massive havoc with great explosions and persisting fire; and sucks the souls out of people and creatures and uses them to power even more horrifying abilities, such as summoning demonic creatures who would just as soon pluck out your eyeballs as look at you.To suffer at the hands of a warlock is significantly more excruciating than the attacks of any other class -- a slow, painful, torturous, agonizing death. If warlocks existed in modern earth, their abilities would be against all international agreements on human rights and rules of warfare; they would be squarely in the evil company of terrorism, drug-trafficking, slavery, and biological germ warfare development.And yet if your warlock works for the Alliance or the Horde, he or she claims to do all of these things all for the greater good.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Paladin
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the fourteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. You might say that paladins are the guardians at the gates of hell -- they fight evil wherever it penetrates into their world and they take the fight to the evil's source in the hope of quenching it forever. Although they focus on guarding their people from undead and demonic forces on the rise, paladins actually stand against evil everywhere, including the evil in their own hearts.Being a paladin means that you have a relationship of some sort with the Holy Light, that mysterious force of goodness and faith that flows to some degree within all living beings with positive intentions. Most paladins (and many priests) believe that when you do something that you believe to be good, the power of the Light increases in you and your connection to the rest of creation is strengthened, whereas doing something evil (such as acts of greed, despair, or vengeance) will darken the universe and weaken your connection to it. Whether this belief system is a religion or a philosophy is open to interpretation, and seems to depend in some part upon which race you are.There are three sorts of paladins in World of Warcraft, aligned with the humans, the draenei, and the blood elves. All of these share certain similarities, but each has its own differences as well.
WoW Moviewatch: Polystyrene Dream
I don't usually do a lot of WoW music videos, because I tend to be more of a story-buff. But Polystyrene Dream by Yume caught my attention. I'm not sure if it was the ethereal quality of the video, which lined up very well with "Fake Plastic Trees" by Radiohead, or maybe the hints of narrative that persisted through the piece. I could probably drive myself crazy projecting motivations on the two central characters, and trying define relationships, reasoning, and results of their actions. In summary, two blood elves repetitively walk up to an increasing variety of critters, stab them, and take their stuff. It could just be meant to be pretty, and it definitively is pretty. I don't have much to say about the audio track, since it is essentially a nice song by a widely known band. It's possible that if I knew the song or band better, I might see more relevance in the imagery. Still, if you're talking about "Fake Plastic Trees," I guess it's fair to use a pair of Blood Elves as protagonists. [Via WarcraftMovies] If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.Previously on Moviewatch ...
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a Horde Warrior
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the thirteenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself. The Warrior is not merely a well-trained fighter who loves his weapons and armor and takes great care to wield them well -- inside each one is a boiling cauldron of rage and passion. By and large, warriors feel at home on the battlefield because it is the one place where they can express themselves, where they can finally let go of all the restraint society imposes on them and unleash all their emotions. Without his raging passion, a person would be much better suited to some calmer form of work -- it is this unquenchable fire which sustains a warrior, driving him into action in the midst of mortal peril.Alliance warriors tend to focus more on training and weapon mastery, sometimes downplaying their rage so much that you hardly even see it. Some warriors like this (even in the Horde sometimes) may be so stoic that even they do not believe that they have any emotions whatsoever, although I doubt anyone who watched them fight could really agree. Something's got to make you willing to put on all that armor and risk death every day.But Horde warriors are more likely to display their rage, bloodlust, and other aggressive emotions much more freely. Of course, it's possible that a Horde warrior could have a collection of stuffed animals, write poetry, and even play hopscotch with children, but their rage lurks deep within, and the essence of their profession is to let it loose.
All the World's a Stage: So you want to be a blood elf
This installment of All the World's a Stage is the tenth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class well, without embarrassing yourself.One look at the blood elves and you might think "arrogant pop star," but their story entails much more suffering and tragedy than is at first evident. Like so many in the World of Warcraft, they have very nearly lost everything that was important to them, and more than once their entire way of life has been upset, turned around, and set in an entirely new direction. They are at once brilliant and desperate, beautiful and woefully flawed, addicted to evil magic and yet not yet beyond hope of redemption.The blood elves are the descendants of the original "Highborne" of the night elves 10,000 years before the setting of World of Warcraft, who used to follow Queen Azshara and studied the arcane magical energies flowing through the Well of Eternity. Following the "War of the Ancients," (discussed in the article on night elves), most of their peers at the time observed that arcane energies tended to attract evil demons from the darkest dimensions in the universe, and thought the world would be better off without it. The Highborne who survived that war had gotten very used to the power of arcane magic coursing through their bodies, however, and they suffered from serious magical withdrawal when those energies were no longer available to them. From their point of view, it was cowardly not to try again, to simply conceal themselves from the demons rather than to give up arcane magic entirely. Their addiction and powerlessness made them desperate enough to turn to violence, though they were no match for the new rulers of the night elf people.
Barrens Chat: Spoiled Rotten
So, this is somewhat of a spoiler strip. It is something that has been mentioned and posted in previous articles, but just in case you skipped those for obvious reasons, you probably should skip this, also.That being said, I noticed while drawing this out and looking at a screen shot of Thrall that he looks like a green, balding version of the Geico cavemen. With big teeth, of course. Maybe it's just me.I know I've started doing them on the computer entirely again, but I uh... misplaced my drawing paper. When I get paid this Friday maybe I'll go pick up more, but that's a really long drive to the nearest art store.Possible alternate text for a couple of the panels after the jump! %Gallery-22361%
Death Knights receive unique voices
The fine folk over at DeathKnight.info have posted a video of the unique Death Knight voices we've all been promised. They don't have an entirely new set of voice emotes (at least not yet), they took a slightly different route. There's actually a sound filter over the voices, making them sound echoey and spooky. The females have been described as sounding like banshees, which is pretty accurate I think. If you're not a fan of the voice effects, you're allowed to turn them off in your Sound control panel so you won't have to hear it. Other people still will, unless they do the same.I'm definitely a fan of this for most of the race/gender combos. Some of them are lackluster (in my opinion) such as the Female Dwarves. The best? Male Blood Elf by far. That laugh? Awesome. Just awesome. I'm sure we'll see a couple of tweaks to this before the end of the beta period, but they're definitely on the right track, I think.%Poll-18836%
Lady Sylvanas' model updated
In one of the more unexpected moves in World of Warcraft's upcoming expansion Wrath of the Lich King, Lady Sylvanas, leader of the Forsaken, has finally gotten a new look. Lore purists have argued about why she was modeled on the Night Elf model when Sylvanas was originally one of the High Elves. (Thus her look should have more closely resembled Blood Elves from the Burning Crusade expansion) There's now an equally loud contingent who are complaining that Sylvanas' new look is perhaps a little too... valley elf. To see things for ourselves, we jumped into the Wrath of the Lich King beta and went through the Lady's Necklace quest arc that triggers off her singing Lament of the Highborne. We were curious as to just how the new model would play out in this player favorite arc. If you've never seen the event, are curious about how it looks with the new model, or just like to listen to the song -- join us after the break for an updated look at Sylvanas' Lament!
All the World's a Stage: Sacrificing spells for the story
All the World's a Stage returns today to shine a brutal but loving eye on the intricacies of roleplay. We do this by looking at the craft of roleplay itself, and the people who love it. We might not be ready for Jerry Springer, but we're pretty sure this week's column is going to have a little debate behind it. Michael Gray fills in this week for David Bowers, and talks about letting roleplay exclude some other forms of play in the World of Warcraft.We're not a big Guild. All told, we probably have about twenty to twenty five people who come online at various times to talk, chat, and play together. We have some structure, but we're mostly a motley of friends who hang out. Our raiding effort takes place because our raid leaders woke up one day and said "By Wrath of the Lich King, we're going to be able to progress in ten man content."We're also a roleplay-ish kind of Guild. I say "ish" because we're not full immersion players. We have some light story notions. For example, I have the vague idea that our raid's main healer is the son of our raid's main tank -- that's mostly because they're the same human model, but one has light blonde hair, and the other has old, graying hair.So, when we come across folks into the roleplay and immersion a little more than we are, we're sometimes not quite sure what to make of it.
Barrens Chat: Fuzzy Wuzzy was
Welcome back for another Barrens Chat comic. I would up front like to say that I am very excited about exotic pets. So excited, I had to poke fun at fellow blogger Daniel Howell for his post last week on the topic of exotic pets. Although I think I might have been a little misleading when I first ran the idea of what I wanted to do past him.Either way, I'm still playing with a few drawing and coloring changes here and there. I didn't darken the outlines this time around, but I think it makes it a bit harder to see in places.Thank you, Daniel, for pointing me towards your banner for a reference, even if I didn't specify what it was I was referencing exactly.See you next week! %Gallery-22361% Barrens Chat is a weekly comic installment created on caffeine and pixy sticks. Although we've yet again decided to abuse Hunters in any way we can find, sometimes we go after the tankier players, too. Stop by every week to see a new comic, and hope that the sugar stash has run out by then.
Barrens Chat: Unwanted
Now, I know last week I said in a comment that I am trying something entirely new this week. However, that plan sort of backfired when I found out my scanner is no longer in the realm of the living, and those Spirit Healers apparently don't speak binary.I've Wanted to put this comic up since I saw the movie. If you have not seen it, you might not get this unless you watched the movie previews, or have someone explain it. %Gallery-22361%
