WoW Moviewatch: The Shadow of Dawn
by Michael Gray 
Mar 11th 2010 at 12:00PM
The video is absolutely gorgeous. While some of the footage is either a recreation or a filming of in-game events, the entirety of this piece is just amazing to watch. Varath did a great job of creating interesting, captivating scenes. The voice acting is solid. The human voice was convincing in its tenor. The narration had a fantastic pace; it was neither so slow that I lost interest, nor so quick that I couldn't keep up.
My only criticism of the piece is that the subtitles were off. It wasn't anything too horrible, but the use of language could probably have gotten a second edit. The small misses in language was a little distracting in what was otherwise such a great piece of work.
Interested in the wide world of machinima? We have new movies every weekday here on WoW Moviewatch! Have suggestions for machinima we ought to feature? Toss us an e-mail at machinima AT wow DOT com.Filed under: WoW Moviewatch
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
cendrekai Mar 11th 2010 12:14PM
I loved this. Great story and dialogue. I especially love any movie that uses the in game music. And no bloodelves! Wish it was a bit longer but I know these Rise to Power things have a 3 min time limit.
Valt Mar 11th 2010 12:33PM
Im suprised theres so few DK machinimas. Their story is quite epic yes.
The video really showed it in epic way even if it wasnt "by the lore way" regarding the story. The story was great and original atleast imo. It wasnt some generic "scourge killed us we turned to scourge and then freed *snap* like that by paladin" story. No, it had this thing called plot twist.
Very well done. Sound effects were booming maaan.
Triforceelf Mar 11th 2010 12:36PM
Not bad, story based machinma are always cool. I just wish it was a bit longer, but I understand the time constraints for the contest do limit the authors.
Khremloc Mar 11th 2010 12:37PM
I can't say much about this. It was, visually, good, however the voice acting and the whole video itself felt like the recap's that play at the start of an episode halfway through a series. I felt like I was missing something.
The story was also subpar. Fairly yawn-worthy, seeing as I usually run into characters whose backgrounds are a copy and paste of that. Your typical mary-sues, basically.
Triforceelf Mar 11th 2010 12:40PM
Considering any decently progressed raider is going to go toe to toe with the Lich King and other powerful minions of the scourge, I think all our charecters are rather "Mary Sue." Its not unreasonable for a deathknight to claim to have partaken in the reclamation of the ashbringer and have that for his reason to kill arthas.
Khremloc Mar 11th 2010 12:52PM
Exactly, we're all mary sues, and I still -hate- mary sues. However, in RP, it's common courtesy not to brag about killing Expansion Pack Bad Guy 11 and such. You might have, but if you're going to RP it then you're risking sounding like a mary sue, an all powerful, and completely uninteresting mary sue. However, you could always be original. You could make up your own stories, instead of linking achievements. If every machinima had a mary sue as the main character, I'd abandon it.
Anuillae Mar 12th 2010 8:08AM
However, this is a Machinma, not a roleplay. Not all video's portray a common person, in fact a can think of several very popular movies that featured pretty amazing heroes...
Dreyja Mar 11th 2010 8:14PM
I fear that sometimes people are hate the mary-sue phenomenon so much that they start to see them around every corner. This story is just a pretty good reflection of the vengence driven DK story-line, am I wrong?
I'm sympathetic to your point though.
Khremloc Mar 12th 2010 11:17AM
Although this isn't a roleplay, roleplaying does teach you how to create a well rounded character. When I say this character is a mary sue, I'm saying that it's rather two dimensional, clichéd, and has a giant chip on his shoulder.
And I'm not saying -all- machinima features mary sues. I'm just saying this one does, and those that don't should receive the praise that they deserve.
If this was a series, there's no doubt in my mind that this would conclude with a giant laser light show/fight, with the main character claiming his revenge and riding off into the horizon. Fine. Just make sure the character gets in line behind all the other characters after revenge.
Paul Mar 11th 2010 12:46PM
The machinimation was very good. I liked that part of it.
Not a fan of the details of the story though. Felt far too self-serving. Changing elements of an existing story in order to give it more depth is one thing, changing them so the author's protagonist is given more grandeur is another, and I'm not a fan of that. Sorry.
Try you hand to re-creating an existing story next. There's a lot of story within WoW that can only be read. Would be nice to see some machinimators work on giving those some life instead of trying to make their characters so important.
But again, the look and feel of this effort is very good.
Gnimsh Mar 11th 2010 12:54PM
The main theme was "Rise to Power", no wonder he showed his char as powerful :P
Great movie anyway, another one which will stop me from fetching the notebook prize :( But it's an awesome work of a skilled machinimator, so what else to expect? :)
Varath Mar 11th 2010 4:21PM
The protagonist of our story is not an existing WoW-character, we invented Victor for the movie. But he should represent a WoW-character you and I could play. It's quiet normal in WoW that you fight against oppenents who's power comes close to an unnatural beeing or even a god.
You even had the chance to get the Corrupted Ashbringer in-game before WotLK. So we took those facts and tried to build a story of them. The result is our movie.
I'm really really glad to see a community here that is able to discuss in decent way without insulting each other or the authors. Further it's good to see that critis (yes I like critics even oder better especially on my own movies) were made from an objective point of view.
There are many machinima pages which lack of this features/facts.
Thanks for all the comments whether they were positive or negative.
Regards
Varath
auftrag Mar 11th 2010 12:47PM
the Vid was awsome i loved watching it
the story was good too
the acting... idk if it was the script or the voice actor (im leaning more tword the actor) but what ever it was it didnt sit well with me Other then that i think its Grate work and i home they continue to make movies and get better with each one!
snowleopard233 Mar 11th 2010 12:49PM
Yo, did anyone else see that little girl get smashed by that abomination!?!?
HOLY @%^E$%&#!!!!
Thyhammerr Mar 15th 2010 1:34PM
thumbs up...
I like it better than the wotlk trailer =_='
themindofscads Mar 11th 2010 1:04PM
Holy high quality Batman.
Yes, the story is short, but the video quality is amazing. I really wish more creators would take the route of telling stories rather than dancing to pop-music.
Hopefully this is a "to be continued" storyline now that Arthas is available for the taking.
Nandini Mar 11th 2010 1:44PM
"The small misses in language was a little distracting in what was otherwise such a great piece of work."
"The small misses in language was a little distracting."
"The misses in language was distracting."
"The misses was distracting."
Tokkar Mar 11th 2010 2:32PM
So...either you're pointing out the error in grammar (the incorrect "was" instead of the correct "were"), or you're on about some small missus somewhere who was distracting. Was she was the one standing behind the abomination?
Nandini Mar 11th 2010 2:44PM
A language error in a sentence criticizing language use was too ironic to pass up.
I can confirm that the missus, while also distracting, was not actually harmed in the making of this machinima.
pablo Mar 11th 2010 1:55PM
Sry, have to say seeing little kids smashed with maces is beyond the pale for what is after all just a cartoon. Don't like that crap.