Posted on July 30th, 2009 by admin
One of the mainstays at BlizzCon is the machinima contest – talented artists submit their movie ahead of the convention in hopes of winning fame and prizes. This year’s BlizzCon is no different, and we’re sure to see some great videos during the largest gathering of WoW players outside of Azeroth. Over the next few days let’s take a look back at some of the winners and runner ups of last year’s movie competition.
Continuing from yesterday’s Rumpus, today we’ll look at the winner of last year’s drama category – Divided Soul by Martin Falch. The movie definitely lives up to its title, and is a good choice from the winner in this category.
The tale is of one of friendship across the life span of two Orcs. Their tale moves from being best friends to bitter enemies. Context of love and lust, and of the role of a child’s upbringing also come into play. It’s a good and short yarn.
The animation is pretty good as well. The characters move in a fluid and lifelike fashion. There are very few jagged movements that look out of context – something that I appreciate. The voice acting done throughout the film is also pretty good.
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Posted on July 27th, 2009 by admin
It’s a thrifty list this week, but with three from NPC and a newbie to the list, you should still have a fair amount to read. Disgraph is set to start updating again, Cru is on a break, and Kuo is being delayed due to studies. Flintlocke vs. the Horde has officially ended, Shakes and Fidget was shut down awhile ago, and I’m missing my Scout Report pretty hard. Just throwing that out there.
Now that that it’s Sunday morning and you know where your comics are, carry on!
The Secret Meeting. Dark Legacy Comics.
Experience Points has posted quite a few updates on a new story arc. I recommend starting with this one, which was linked last week, and then shuffling forward on your own.
GU Comics: Call it Research.
The latest LFG is quite interesting. I don’t know if I’m more perplexed by his decision not to put on pants, or if I’m mostly nervous about his eyes in the last panel.
Coercer has pointed out a comic I haven’t listed before called Beyond the Tree. Check it out, and next week I’ll start posting from the latest rather than the first. Thanks for the tip!
NoObz: Undercover.
NPC: 5 Pounds of Turkey Livers and Bink Quits WoW? and
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Posted on July 23rd, 2009 by admin
We only just posted about the DC Unlimited Premium series 2 figures, and here comes another set that’s getting announced way earlier than it’s getting released. The series 6 set isn’t actually due out until March of next year (seriously, what’s with all of the early announce dates on these things?), but it does have some of the most-wanted lore figures in the game depicted in action figure form. Magni Bronzebeard, Sylvanas Windrunner, and goblin tinker Gibzz Sparklighter are all making appearances, as you can see over on DC’s page.
I think they look pretty darn good, though I’m still not sold on actually buying one. We’ll likely see them on the floor at BlizzCon, so if you want to get a closer look, be sure to poke around the DC booth there. And even if you’re not going, we’ll be sure to take pics for you.
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Posted on July 16th, 2009 by admin
Here’s another step in patch 3.2’s slow march forward: the background download has begun. The first 273 MB chunk of the patch file is now available in a Blizzard Background Downloader app near you. Blizzard has been using this method to pre-distribute parts of patches as they get finalized for quite some time now, to lessen the bandwidth strain on patch day.
What does this mean for the patch’s ETA? Not much, I’m afraid. All we can surmise from this is that some parts of the patch artwork are ready to go. The time between the background download becoming available and the patch going live varies widely, from less than a week to over a month. We’ll just have to wait and see.
[thanks, Steve]
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Posted on July 13th, 2009 by admin
Our economy may still be pretty much in the gutter, but one industry is still going strong. If you glanced at what site you were reading this on and guessed “online gaming,” congrats! You win a gold star. Here you go: ★.
Anyway, according to this industry report featured on GameSpot, online gaming overall (including MMOs, in turn including WoW) was up 22% year-over-year in May 2009. 87.1 million people were estimated to game online in the USA, an impressive 28% of our estimated total population.
Of course, a huge chunk of this is browser-based games (think Bejeweled or Yahoo! Games). WoW is apparently the 21st most popular “online locale,” clocking in at 2.2 million US visitors. Still, I’d say 21st isn’t bad for a game with a subscription fee; 2.2 million players at $15 a month is $33 million a month (assuming the each have exactly one account). The next-closest MMO, according to this report, is RuneScape, at 202,000 players. Really? Aren’t there other MMOs with more than that?
Anyway, online gaming, like online everything else, is on the rise. Single-player, localized games are starting to feel positively quaint, although I still
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Posted on July 10th, 2009 by admin
We’re doing the podcast at a special time this week, so if you can’t usually tune in to us on Saturdays at 3:30 Eastern, now’s your chance to catch a live show. Tonight at 6pm Eastern, we’ll be live over on the Ustream page, and our special guest will be none other than Medros, of the All Things Azeroth podcast. He’s the second in our ongoing series of guests from around the community — Michelle Madison of Warcraft Outsiders, you’ll remember, was on a few weeks ago, and we’re planning on having more podcasters and bloggers on with us in the coming weeks as well. Medros will join Lesley Smith, Turpster, and I in discussing the biggest news of the past week, including those Worgen pets you may have seen around the game, what Tom Chilton said about the future of World of Warcraft, the upcoming changes to Northrend flying. And if things work out as planned, we might even be able to get a live report straight from the PTR about how testing of the Crusaders’ Coliseum is going.
Should be a great time for sure. Tune in tonight on our Ustream page. It all starts off at Friday, Jul 10 at 6:00 AM in your time zone (GMT+8) , so you can
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Posted on July 7th, 2009 by admin
The latest installment of Walhtor of The Underbog’s “Series of Embarassingly Avoidable Deaths” is available for purchase. Entitled Drowning in Shallow Water, it features Walhtor’s bloated, humiliated corpse drifting pathetically under the waves. It joins previous offerings Fell Off Teldrassil While Auto-Running, Accidentally Right-Clicked the Horde Flight Master, and Went AFK in Contested Territory and Was Slowly Beaten to Death by a Level 15.
Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.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, gold seller ads, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in
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Posted on July 2nd, 2009 by admin
Blizzard can pull off some real surprises sometimes. This whole thing about Paid Faction Changes came totally from left field, and even though we know players have been asking for it I don’t think any of us really expected that it would happen. For the precognitive among us, did you think they’d do it this way, though? For one thing, was the demand for such a service so huge that Blizzard opted to devote precious developer time to making it happen? It’s definitely not an easy thing to pull off.
Despite Blizzard answering some concerns about the future service, there are still more questions relating to Achievements, quests, reputation, and more. What happens to faction-specific mounts? Lore nerds are boggled by the story behind a possible change — can everything really be explained by some Goblin invention? That seems like such a cop-out, doesn’t it? Wouldn’t it be better (and cooler) to implement a long and epic quest chain to change factions? Sure it would be confusing to see Orcs hoisting the Alliance banner or Humans yelling ‘For the Horde!’, but wouldn’t it be easier to implement?
Lore-wise, it makes more sense, too.
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