Posts with tag gnomes

Here's this week's episode of the WoW Insider Show, in which we recapped patch 3.1 and all of the class goodness and new content included in there, as well as the Ulduar cinematic and that fact that Gnomes have been historically dissed by Blizzard's machinimists. We checked in on your emails as well -- we got some Rogue theorycrafting in the mix thanks to our Encrypted Text writer Chase Christian stopping by, and we checked back in with Duncor of WoW Radio for the first time in a while on both which tank is the best and whether leather-wearing casters should get cloth upgrades or not.

Was a good show -- you can give it a listen at any of the links below, or just subscribe to us in iTunes to get the show automagically every Monday. We'll be back live on the air next Saturday, and we're climbing ever closer to a few big goals: in just 14 weeks, we're set to hit our 100th show, which will definitely be a nice anniversary for us, and we're only 600 followers away from hitting our goal of over 9000 followers on our Twitter account. So join up there if you haven't yet, and I'll get the tux out to the cleaners in anticipation.

Enjoy the show this week and we'll see you next time!

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Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.

Good morning, everyone! My apologies for missing last week's Ask a Lore Nerd, I am apparently very, very bad at time management and I lost track of things while trying to finish furnishing my apartment. We're back in action this week though, so it's all good!

Before we get started, I also wanted to remind people that Tokyopop is letting us read Warcraft: Legends for free until the 17th. I know Daniel mentioned it already this morning, but seeing as this is the lore column of the day, I just wanted to mention it again. Just imagine me as the hammer trying to drive this nail into your head. You can read it for free. And now we get the show on the road!

naixdra asked...

Why do the Orcs call Draenor, Draenor? Didn't the Draenei show up out of nowhere and call it that, so why would the native Orcs adopt the name given to it by outsiders (and still refer to it after their attempted annihilation of said outsiders)?

Demachic posted Demachic: Lonely Valentine on Warcraftmovies.com yesterday. I would have loved to see it during the Love is in the Air in-game event, but hey -- I'll take what I can get. It is a short, dialogue-less story about a gnome seeking true love, and the artillery she builds to obtain that love.

I have to admit that I actually thought to myself, in actual words, "Oh my god, so cute!" This video really is cute. It captures all the bittersweet and totally-saccharin flavors of Valentine's Day. It's got a little hopefulness, a little despair to counter, and a whole lot of wistful, wishful romance. And, it's got a totally adorable gnome to drive home the cute-puppy-love angle.

The movie is created without any spoken or subtitled words. I actually really like that, since it encourages the audience to create and interpret their own story for on-screen events. It works great, and the musical selection matches the overall mood of the video. Great job, Demachic!

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

Previously on Moviewatch ..

Hey! Do you want to feel so energetic? Try Powerthirst! Energy drinks for people who need gratuitous amounts of energy!

You're gonna be uncomfortably energetic!

So the video above, by Thesoultorn, leaves a bit to be desired in the animation department, but in reality it's just a mock advertisement for a World of Warcraft in-game energy drink, Powerthirst. The video gets its jobs done quite well, because I now want to go and grab some Powerthirst.

The video reminds me of the (alcoholic) energy drinks high I had during my powerleveling trip I took when Wrath released. I made plans with The Girlfriend for some rather extended and uninterrupted playtime, and I managed to get to 80 in a few days. Of course to accompany me on my journey I had two cases of Red Bull, a one-seven-five of Grey Goose, and an ample supply of tumblers.

I want more Gnomergy!

Edit: The video is a parody of the original Powerthirst by Picnicface.

This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-fourth 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.

Many of the most famous rogues outside of the Warcraft setting have been nuanced and exciting characters. Bilbo Baggins, the Prince of Persia, and James Bond, could all be reimagined as rogues if they had existed in Azeroth instead of their own settings.

As an Alliance rogue, you have a certain amount of freedom to borrow from other settings, or from the real world, since the Alliance races tend to be more similar to heroes of other stories we've heard before. To a certain extent, Blizzard has already based its Alliance rogue guilds on stories from other settings, and left some aspects of these institutions rather vague. There is certainly enough room for roleplayers to fill in a bit of the blanks with their own creative inspiration. The only danger is that it could be easy to overdo it and descending into Mary-Sueism: one ought to feel free to reach for a bit of the flavor of James Bond, for instance, without ever believing your character is the single best secret agent Stormwind could ever have.

Calling all Gnomes... Calling all Gnomes...

Baron Soosdon, one of the best machinima creators out there, wants your Gnomes. In a post over on the EU forums he tells everyone "[I] need gnomes, gnome dying and flying into the air." The gnomes will be used for an upcoming machinima project of his.

Some of his previous work is great, and I really suggest you check it out. The Device Has Been Modified is one of my favorite pieces of machinima, and Child Escapism also ranks quite high.

If you want to get into this project you'll need to follow the instructions he outlines in his post. EU Community Team member Wryxian points out Soosdon is looking for gnomes and not crocolisks, so let's try to remember that (if there is any confusion, that is).

And in case you're worried about gnome hate, a very serious problem in Azeroth, Soosdon lets us all know that he doesn't hate Gnomes, and that the video itself won't be about killing gnomes.

Are you still there?

About half a year ago I wrote the article "Things that annoy me." However, I'm in a good mood tonight:

1. The music in Storm Peaks and Howling Fjord, particularly the choral portion of the former. Spooky and haunting and ethereally on edge, like the Mormon Tabernacle Choir had just glimpsed a large angry dinosaur through the window.

2. The leather boots available at exalted with the Argent Crusade. Yes, the stats are great, but it's how they look on Tauren that really vaults them into the realm of unbridled win. For all I know, the graphic on female Tauren is a serious bug that programmers are working frantically to correct, but I think that boots on a cow look awesome.

3. Dalaran when it's not crawling with people.

4. Which is to say never.

5. Pretty much everything that High Overlord Saurfang says, does, thinks, or writes for the entirety of the Horde's Wrath storyline.

You're going to have a little variance in your opinion of this piece, dependent on whether you like or hate gnomes and whether you like old, scored story pieces without dialogue. Plight of the Gnomes by Harmon Productions is a retelling of one of the Alliance's oldest, tragic events (in World of Warcraft). Using music and images, Plight fills us in on not only the Great Betrayal, but the entire story about how the gnomes came to take up residence in Ironforge. This is a movie about the fall of Gnomeregan.

The work was beautiful, in my opinion. The music definitely fit the piece perfectly, and the many portrait shots of key gnome personalities really helped get across the historical feel of Plight. I would have enjoyed letting the action move a little faster, but that's probably just me. I especially found the blood-spattered images of the trogg invaders to be powerful and moving. They were an effective tool for portraying the loss of the gnomish homeland.

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 ...

Welcome to Ask a Lore Nerd, where each week blogger and columnist Alex Ziebart answers your questions about the lore and history of the World of Warcraft. Ask your questions in the comments section below, and we'll try to answer it in a future edition.

Just as a warning, today's Ask a Lore Nerd has a couple of spoilers for Wrath content. At this point, I assume that light Northrend spoilers isn't going to scare people off, but I figure I should mention it anyway. It's nothing major, so you won't ruin your experience by reading it anyway. Let's dig in!

Tarean asked...

Blizzard's said that there's enough material for plenty of more expansions after Wrath of the Lich King, and there's plenty of possibilities, but what expansion should come next lore-wise?

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.

Today, Moviewatch would like to give a shout out to its old keeper Moo Money. Moo is working over at Machinima.com now, and posted up a video last week about a new contest they're running called the Christmas in Northrend.

Submit a holiday video featuring Northrend by December 20th to Machinima.com and you could be a winner! The video that Moo posted is, of course, well put together and has a simplistic version of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" playing in the background. Gnomes are represented too, so all you gnome lovers out there should be happy.

The content itself has a pretty nice grand prize: a Frostmourne Sword replica. I want one of those. And if you do too, head over to machinima.com for the full rules and enter. Good luck!

This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twelfth 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.

From the way that warriors are available to nearly every race in the game as a sort of default fighter person, you'd think that they would be the fallback choice for any number of different sort of characters you might imagine. Any sort of regular shmuck could be a warrior right? You just gotta pick up some sort of weapon and start swinging it around at an enemy, yes?

No. Even though the Warrior class is available to almost every race in the game, every race has its own tradition of what it means to be a warrior -- it's not just a farmer with a pitchfork running around and trying to kill things. Warriors go through extensive training, learn to wield a wide variety of weapons, and train themselves in staying upright and charging about even while wearing all kinds of heavy metal on their bodies.

So today we'll look into some of the ways that the races of the Alliance understand what it means to be a warrior, and see which heroes your character might look up to, as well as the archetypes these heroes represent.

The Gnomeregan Revenge: Red Alert is an original tale told in pre-Arthas Azeroth, the first of a new trilogy by filmmaker Odessa. The Gnomish race is cast in the role of Soviet revolutionaries against the Alliance. In this episode they use their technological superiority to stage a surprise attack on Ironforge. The Gnomes even speak Russian, albeit with English subtitles.

The machinima is excellent and the handheld out-of-focus shots work superbly to convey the surprise and confusion of the first wave of copter attacks. Since I don't speak French or Russian, it's difficult to tell the quality of the voice acting but the other sound effects are deftly done. (The English subtitles need some work; there are a lot of typos.) Still, I think it's possible to follow the story just from the visuals. The cliffhanger at the end prepares us for the next two episodes which promise to show us the war and its outcome. From just this first episode, it's difficult to tell if the film will have an allegoric theme with a larger message or if this was merely a creative tangent invented by the filmmaker. The follow-up episodes should come before the end of the year, so I guess we'll find out soon enough.

[Via WarcraftMovies]

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

Today's feature is a humorous tale of QQ channeled into roleplaying entitled Pepitoz: The World of Warcraft Story. Although Rurikar, the same filmmaker who brought us the hilarious Jimmy: A World of Warcraft Story, seems lately to have moved away from machinima to creating his own animated shorts, Pepitoz is a character that stands the test of time. It is a tragic love story, with a twist. Perhaps a dash of music would've added even more humor, but that's my only critique. Anyone who is wincing at possible changes to their class upcoming in Wrath, you'll be able to relate to the source of the melodrama here.

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

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Gnomes are probably the easiest race to roleplay in World of Warcraft. They have a strong (and mostly accurate) stereotype that people just get instantly, and there's a childlike "blank-slate" quality about them that means that they don't have to have complicated backstories.

In fact, you could define the gnomes as a race without a history to speak of. They are so very curious and inquisitive that they ask questions about everything, that they try to unravel any mysteries they encounter, and consider their personal life stories to be of little account. They've written tomes upon tomes on the inner workings of multi-polar data transfer relays and eletro-magnified parallel power circuits, but it never really occurred to them that they should write down the history of their species. They are a people always looking into the future, and whatever passes beyond the infinitely precious present becomes lost to them in the unseen reaches of the past -- out of sight, out of mind.

That's not to say they have no memory -- they make use of their superb memories in carefully constructing their world-renown masterpieces of technological craftsmanship! Rather, it would be better to say that their minds only serve up memories relevant to the inquiry at hand. So if the orcs paved through azeroth a while back and destroyed everything in their path, well that was bad and all but it was a long time ago and who wants to hold a grudge? If the monstrous troggs came from the bowels of the earth and destroyed their cherished technological city of Gnomeregan... well, they'd love to get it back, but it's no reason to be unkind or uncheerful!