WoW Insider

Throw another nomination on the list for Wrath of the Lich King -- Blizzard's cinematic team has been nominated for an Elan award for the WotLK cinematic in the category of Best Animated Short Subject. And the nom is well deserved: while the trailer broke with the tradition of showing the various races and classes of Warcraft doing battle with each other, Blizzard's choice to instead recap the story of Arthas and the Lich King while he summoned Sindragosa worked well and looked amazing.

Unfortunately, Blizzard missed out in the actual game nominations -- for best PC game, the expansion was overshadowed by Fallout 3, Crysis Warhead, Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, and Left 4 Dead. You can argue amongst yourselves whether that's justified or not. But we're sure Blizzard is happy with the animation nomination anyway -- their competition there is Turbo Dogs, so they'll probably do fine when the awards are announced on April 25th.

[via BlizzPlanet]

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Blizzard, Contests, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements

The Harvest - Chapter 1 is the first, full-length machinima movie attempt by UltraViolet. She's the same author who created Buff My Warlock back in January, and I think you can see the growth of her skills over time. "The Harvest" is somewhere between a horror and mystery drama.

As the story goes, there's been a recent rash of deaths in Elwynn Forest. (Presumably, not Hogger's fault.) All the victims are young women, lacking any tell-tale signs of how their deaths may have occured. The story's focused on a young barmaid named Elane, whose greatest concern in life is dodging every bit of work that comes her way. Hijinks ensue, including the appearance of a mysterious figure.

The first thing I want to say about UltraViolet's work is that I'm strongly encouraged that the main character isn't a "Mary Sue." If you're not familiar with the term, a "Mary Sue" is an escapist character written by an author. The character is usually the most awesome, coolest thing ever. (This is a criticism often applied to Bella in the Twilight series.) By virtue of Elane's faults and characterization, I'm pretty sure Elane isn't serving as a prop for UltraViolet's fantasies, and that gives me a lot of hope for the continuing series.

The dialogue and action is a little awkward. The voice acting and scripting all seem in earnest, and the heart's in the right place, but there are a few too many tropes and cliches scattered through the character interaction. I chalk this up to this being UltraViolet's first piece. Her pacing, plot plan, and basic flow all seem pretty good. She just needs some more time working with her actors, and putting pen to paper, to get away from some of the easy-fallbacks for dialogue. I'm eager to see how the plot develops for Chapter 2, given the promise I see in this installment.

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ..

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Machinima, WoW Moviewatch

This is a tired old argument, but Blizzard poster Vaneras wanted to drive another nail into the coffin by stating, simply, that Blizzard has no plans of launching classic or pre-TBC realms. Aside from being a very complex endeavor that undoes a lot of class balancing over the years, the game simply isn't designed for Level 60 content anymore. Still, there are some proponents of the idea, which has even gotten some enterprising folks to set up private (and illegal) servers just for vanilla WoW.

It's a line Blizzard has drawn from way back when, yet suggestions or requests for classic realms continue to pop up on the forums. Let me tell you here and now... don't bother. Blizzard will eventually just lock your thread or delete it entirely simply because it's not in their best interests to provide such a service. First of all, so much development time has been invested in moving the game forward. Blizzard is also ramping up leveling time because they want players to focus on the endgame that they're developing right now. Besides, really, the game has never been more fun.

Filed under: Blizzard, Forums

Flamingcrow of <Kamikaze Penguins> on Uther sent in this screenshot for anyone who has ever been wait-listed for a raid. Waiting by the instance entrance, staring at a dragon's behind, earning half-DKP while they hear everyone else get the first kills and the loot and all the glory on Vent ... it's a depressing experience. But without them, who would take that DPS slot when the rogue disconnects again? Here's to you, Mr. Sitting Outside The Portal Man!

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, double-mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Filed under: Screenshots, Around Azeroth, Galleries

Hate Arenas all you want, but I love it for the fact that you will sometimes see the grandest display of skill and mastery of the game in PvP and when those moments happen... it's magic. How appropriate then, that the most magical moment in quite possibly all professional Arena Tournament history was performed by none other than a Mage. It's a phenomenal comeback tale that ranks right up there with the greatest comebacks in sports -- and not just eSports.

Team H O N was down 1-2 against SK-Gaming Asia, better known as the Council of Mages, winners of the Worldwide Invitational in Paris. Both teams from Korea sported the same RMP comps, with some spec changes in between matches to keep everyone guessing. In the fourth match, played in the Ruins of Lordaeron, SK-Gaming showed superb control despite H O N going offensive in the first few minutes... so superb, in fact, that at one point the shoutcasters were already congratulating SK-Gaming. If you've kept abreast of the tiny bits of the ESL Global Finals here at WoW Insider, you'd already know that H O N won the tournament so it should be no spoiler that they escaped from being down 1-2 to tie and eventually win it all.

That's not the magical moment, though. You have to see it for yourself. Don't worry, the video might be long (that's just the first part of the match) but the most jawdropping moment happens right before the four minute mark. The movie may well be Moviewatch material if only because it's so unbelievable you're tempted to think it's all machinima. But the coolest thing about it is that it's not, and OrangeMarmalade will be celebrated as one of the greatest PvP Mages of all time.

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Filed under: Events, PvP, Arena

A New build went up on the PTR this afternoon, and as expected, there were another handful of Death Knight adjustments. Overall, not as many of them are nerfs as you might think, and some of them seem more adjustments in philosophy rather than straight up buffs or nerfs. We also got a handful of Glyph changes and even a sneak peak at our tier bonuses. Let's look at the changes after the break, courtesy of MMO-Champion:

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Filed under: Patches, Analysis / Opinion, News items, Talents, Death Knight, Inscription

Reader Randy N. sent a link to these tile necklaces along to us, and they look awesome. They're made by a husband/wife team in New Mexico, and they're made from Scrabble tiles (the back apparently still has the letter on it) coated in a glassy glaze, with an assortment of colors and sayings. Very nice -- could be just the thing for someone who's a fan of Warcraft and handmade jewelry in your life.

They're $9.99 apiece with free shipping, which is not too bad. And if that's too much and you want to try making them yourself, they've even got a tutorial on how it's done right there on the site. We do have one issue, though -- these pretty pendants and cute crafts are fine for the ladies and all, but what about us dudes? Maybe we can get some "pwned" or "woot" cufflinks?

Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Fan art

Well, I had a long rant about the Mana Spring change and some more about the leveling process and then Blizzard chose to drop a new PTR build on us, so we'll be talking about that instead. Some of these changes are holdovers from previous PTR builds and some are totally new. We'll be covering them step by step here and discussing them all as they are the state of the art for what's coming for the class, but to avoid deluging anyone with information they'd prefer not to see yet (since it is all of course subject to change before going live) we'll do so behind the jump.

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Filed under: Shaman, Patches, Analysis / Opinion, (Shaman) Totem Talk

Wow. MMO Champion, long trusted to datamine anything that's not nailed down to the floor, brings us the complete (to date) list of Ulduar achievements added to the 3.1 PTR, and yeah. It's long. Blizzard promised us some new achievements for Ulduar, but I wasn't expecting a list THIS long. Or this hilarious.

There are the expected "kill these bosses" achievements, the inevitable "kill these bosses while doing something hard" achievements, silly achievements you'll get without trying, and more. Bear in mind that many of these numbers, and even some achievement criteria, are either incorrect or placeholders. Don't freak out.

The full list is after the jump and is, of course, quite spoiler-heavy, so stay away if you want your Ulduar experience to be as pure as driven snow.

The rest of you, though? CLICK. DO IT. COME ON.

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Filed under: News items, Wrath of the Lich King, Achievements

Remember Durante of Hydraxis, who briefly became a hero among Hunter for tanking Gruul with his pet? Well, he's at it again with Bubbles the Gorilla still at his side. This time around his stalwart monkey took on Sapphiron, deep in the bowels of Naxxramas.

In order to get the job done this time around, Durante mentions in his thread on the official forums that he had to do some pretty significant Stamina stacking, and his DPS was quite nearly nonexistant with the spec and equipment that allowed this to happen. He did just over 900 DPS over the course of the encounter. The raid didn't seem to need to stack any extra healers for this, but the five that were there had to be on top of their game. One attempt was cut short when Bubbles ate a pretty hefty crit, and pets can't be crit immune. Threat was a little dicey at first, Durante says, DPS really needed to hold back for awhile. They managed it though, and that's really all that counts.

I wouldn't say that this is a sign of Hunter pets taking over as Tanks or anything like that, but it was probably incredibly fun for Durante and his guild. I have no idea where his guild (which is recruiting Healers, apparently) sits on the meter between "Casual" and "Hardcore" but even the most hardcore guilds need to have a little fun sometimes and I think this qualifies.

Filed under: Hunter, Analysis / Opinion