Posts with tag Featured

Sunday Morning Funnies is your weekly list of WoW-related web comics.

Each week, SMF is placing a regularly updating WoW-related web comic under a spotlight. This week's feature is Gratz:

Gratz is a humorous comic by Lackinganame (Jason Nebeker). It is a relatively new comic, and family-friendly. It's fun and a great one to check out each week if you enjoy watching an artist evolve.

It began as a few character sketches and evolved into a full story-based comic. It features five main characters: Vancore (a leader, hero), Starfire (gifted, insightful druid), Red and Green (brothers; jokers, trouble-makers), and Gorak (wise, grandfather-figure, trainer, aging leader).

Gratz Genesis was written from 2009-2011 but not published until 2012, when the artist was able to devote more time to the comic. This is also when Gratz Transition was born, which not only features the characters as older, but also an updated art style.

Gratz updates Mondays, usually with 3-4 pages (and sometimes more!).

As long-time readers may remember, sometimes on Sundays we like to run pictures from that strange, high-definition world outside Azeroth. This photograph was taken by Ginei of Desert Rats on Blackhand (US-A) and it captures her cat Zoe attempting to drown herself in a World of Warcraft beer glass. Presumably she just heard the news that Patch 5.3 will be released on Tuesday, and thus she will not be receiving any petting for the next month since her owner will be too absorbed in the game. Or maybe there's Bailey's Irish Cream in the glass. Cats go crazy for that stuff.

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Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.

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Some people are just driven by the need to make things, whether it's art, writing, or any other kind of craft. World of Warcraft certainly seems to have a wealth of crafty types, who use their skills and expertise to do everything from making shoes to sewing adorable plushies to truly amazing cosplay. But while there are plenty of crafty players, not everyone has the talent or inclination. So tell us, do you World of Warcraft craft? If so, what's your craft of choice and why?

And, for those of us with neither crafting inclination or talent, well, we can always enjoy the work of others -- or just enjoy playing the game!

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This is a shot-for-shot recreation of the opening to Thundercats. David Nguyen did an astounding job of the video. It makes me both want to play WoW and watch the cartoon. It's just awesome. But there's more.

This is the kind of machinima and community involvement you hope to see. David directly credited Fifth Element for inspiring the video. It's always incredibly astounding to see machinima creators respond to one another this way. Congratulations to both David and Fifth Element on creating a cartoon machinima legacy.

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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 email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Care and Feeding of Warriors, the column dedicated to arms, fury and protection warriors. Despite repeated blows to the head from dragons, demons, Old Gods and whatever that thing over there was, Matthew Rossi will be your host.

I find myself wondering about protection warriors as tanks. Clearly, we're neither the most nor least popular tanks, holding steady in the middle of the pack - both blood DK's and protection paladins absolutely own tank representation. Blood is at 4.2% and prot pallies at 4.1% of total class/spec representation in Throne of Thunder, with prot warriors at 2.7% and guardian druids in about the same spot as brewmaster monks, 2% for guardians and 1.8% for brewmasters.

It's fairly clear that fury warriors, despite being a relatively smaller fraction of total class representation, are by far the most popular warriors in current raiding. Protection is not only second, but a distant second, and arms (despite being a solid 3% of the total player base overall) is vanishingly under-represented in raiding. We'll worry about arms in raids later. For now let's ask why protection warriors aren't being seen in raids. It's not based on class popularity by itself - based on looking over Realmpop for a couple of hours I'd argue that warriors are holding pretty steady at about 9.6% of the total population. (It's a slight drop from the 10.14% we saw last December) World of Wargraphs puts the number at about 9.5%, so either way, there are a lot of warriors. But looking at the Wargraphs data, two things come to mind.

Submitter Taedran of Guilty as Charged on Silvermoon (US-A) recently sent me ... quite a few screenshots. As in literally several hundred. I think that's considered justification for homicide in Texas. Anyway, several of Taedran's pictures featured zoomed-out high-definition pictures of certain zones in the game. This one features the isolated (and unvisitable, except for newbie goblins) Lost Isles. It seems like a paradise. Why did we ever leave?

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Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.

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Wandering around outside of Azeroth, in the so-called real world, you'll see a lot of World of Warcraft players. Some you'll spot with class t-shirts, others drive cars with alliance or horde window stickers (or even custom license plates), some may wear WoW-themed jewelry, and some even have WoW tattoos. But not everyone feels the need to show off their WoW fandom in an obvious way -- or even at all.

So what about you, readers? Do you have a WoW-themed t-shirt collection so you always have the right shirt for the occasion? Or is there some subtler way you like to show off your WoW love?

RomireVids is hitting the street with a brand new video: Hockers. A Pawn Stars parody, this video turns Azeroth into a bizarre, huge pawn shop. It's got some shout-outs to bizarre lore moments of the past, a few slightly purple jokes, and more than a few punchlines.

This video is a huge step up for Romire. The graphics are solid for the subject matter and the voice acting is excellent. Most importantly, the script flows convincingly and sticks to a single train of thought. It's a nice video from Romire. My hat's off to you, sir!

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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 email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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The ghostly creature hovered in the air, quietly chewing on a chocolate chip cookie. Her iridescent wings flapped in slow, lazy arcs.

"And you don't know where you got her?" Lolegolas asked. "No clue at all?"

"None," Throgg confirmed. "I just opened up my pet bag and poof. There she was. She's pretty cute, though. In an adorable way, I mean."

Lolegolas nodded. "So, she's a mystery. Why is she unborn?"

"It turns out her people don't consider you really born until you kill a worthy target," Throgg said.

"That's kind of harsh," Lolegolas said. "Does she fight well?"

"Incredibly well," Throgg said. "That's why I gave her a cookie. She totally decimated my opponent a few moments ago. She likes cookies."

Item Note: The Unborn Val'kyr is shrouded in mystery; we're not quite sure where you can get it yet. While Northrend is an obvious component, the details are still vague. Stay tuned for more details!

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Phat Loot Phriday brings you the scoop on some of the most ... interesting ... loot in the World of Warcraft, often viewed through the eyes of the stalwart Throgg and indelible Lolegolas. Suggest items you think we should feature by emailing mikeg@wowinsider.com.

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Last time we talked about getting rid of funsuckers, but what about the many players who enhance our gametime? Should they be rewarded? How would you go about it?

Perhaps we could have a dropdown box where you could report a player for being extra helpful or otherwise going above and beyond to make your day better. Perhaps someone answered your question politely in tradechat. Or a player asked if you were going for the mining node you were fighting on top of rather than just ninjaing it during your battle. Or maybe someone helped you fight a battle out in the wild that got out of control with adds.

Once someone gathered enough reports of being helpful, what would the rewards be? I would think it would have to be something that doesn't affect gameplay. If it did, guilds may insist on guildies reporting each other has helpful just to skew the system in their favor. Perhaps it would just reward a series of titles. Unfortunately, guilds may still require guildies to report each other in order to get those titles just to collect.

I am dead, but I live? What sorcery is this? Submitter Aryon of AnyThingButSerious on Ghostlands (EU-A) caught Fleshcrafter Hoku literally contemplating his own mortality on the Isle of Thunder. Respawn timers take a lot of the sting out of the old "what happens to us when we die" question, don't they? Oh, when we die we come back a few minutes later, only to be killed again. It's like the dollar store form of reincarnation.

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Want to see your own screenshot here? Send it to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com. We strongly prefer full-sized pictures with no UI or names showing. Include "Azeroth" in the subject line to ensure your submission dodges email spam filters; if you'd like to be credited, also include your name, guild and realm.

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I was smirking my way past the Gordon Ramsay-esque commentary on Twitter recently (go to the tweet to view it in all its unblurred, NSFW glory) when it struck me: Blizzard has created so many incentives to play a healer. Obviously, they've worked -- but are the healers enjoying it?

As a long-time healer, I find myself broken-hearted at the idea that players are going through the motions of healing simply because for the sake of faster random queue times or to fill a hole in a roster lineup. Healing by people who aren't passionate about healing? Healing by people who aren't glued to the action? Healing by people who might be watching "other things" on another screen, or eating pizza, or, or ...? Dear readers, we're talking about saving lives here. I weep. Seriously, I weep.

Still, there seem to be quite a lot of healers going about their business in today's game. If you're a healer, do you enjoy the role? Did you choose to be a healer of your own volition, or were you influenced by queue times, role benefits, or the needs of your raid or guild? If you were nudged into healing by outside forces, has it been worth it? Are you a happy healer or a reluctant healer?

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It's a little-known secret that Batman Beyond remains one of the best Bat-reimaginations we've seen. Clinging to continuity with a tenuous but resilient grasp, Batman Beyond captures some of the best bat-themes and bat-ideas.

You can imagine my thrill when I saw Fifth Element's bat-video, Batman Beyond Twin Consorts. With the same sense of excitement and flair they bring to all their videos, the raiding team of machinima gives Terry a whole new spin.

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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 email at moviewatch@wowinsider.com.

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