Posts with tag heroes

It's always fun to see different interpretations and visualizations of well-known events in lore. Today's Moviewatch is the story of Sylvanas' fall, put together by Youtuber Jaley Muffinz. The story is pretty straightforward, and one that we've seen told before in a variety of different books, short stories and novels: Sylvanas Windrunner defends the forests of Quel'thelas from Arthas as long as she can, and isn't allowed the mercy of death, instead transformed into the banshee who eventually reclaimed her body and became leader of the Forsaken. Sylvanas' Legacy isn't really covering new content here, it's simply retelling one of Warcraft's classic tales.

This seems to be the first large-scale project for Jaley Muffinz, and it's a pretty ambitious hunk of history to tackle, but Jaley does a good job for a fledgling effort. The models are awkward at times, but the film does use the older models, and there's a limit to what those models are capable of doing. Jaley also rounded up a variety of voice actors for the various roles in the film, and they do a decent enough job for people that don't do this on any kind of professional level. It's a little rough around the edges, but for a first effort on something of this scale, it works well enough, and shows plenty of potential for future projects down the road. I'm hoping we'll see more of Jaley Muffinz as time goes on here -- it's going to be fun to watch those skills develop and progress.

---

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.

---

Sure, the World of Warcraft has plenty of villains, but there are plenty of heroes, too. And since without heroes, we probably wouldn't have much of an Azeroth at this point, I'm sure we're all pretty glad that Warcraft's heroic figures have stuck around. So to balance out his earlier video on villains, Doronsmovies has put together a list of the top 5 heroes in World of Warcraft.

The list itself is debatable -- we've all got our favorite heroes, and a top 5 list doesn't have room for everyone -- but it does offer a nice look at some of the heroes of Azeroth and their lore. Have favorite heroes that didn't make the cut? Let us know about them in the comments!

---

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.

---

The Heroes of the Storm team held their fifth Developer Q&A on Twitch.tv today. The developers discussed sweeping future changes coming to the game's alpha including a complete overhaul of the game's UI. Other major additions and changes include:

• New hero Murky. This week is Murky Week, so a great deal of information about him is on the horizon.
• Many heroes will be receiving a talent overhaul based on data collected on talent usage. Not only talents chosen most often across the board, but talents chosen most often in winning and losing games.
• Arthas, Illidan, and Tyrael are receiving complete redesigns and are unlikely to be the only ones. Their current iteration doesn't fit the vision of the hero and were early designs, too bland/generic to be such iconic characters. Players tend to consider these three underwhelming at best.
• Personal achievements are being added so you can better gauge your personal performance in-game. Currently, in-game achievements only display team efforts.

In addition, themed maps from all of Blizzard's IPs will be coming eventually. The current Haunted Mines is being reworked. So, too, is the Cursed Hollow, which has a tendency to snowball in favor of who gets the first round of idols.

---

We already knew Heroes of the Storm was heading to China, but now Blizzard has inked a deal to bring Heroes -- and possibly other games -- to more of Southeast Asia. Expanding on Blizzard's existing agreement with Asiasoft -- which currently distributes Diablo 3, StarCraft 2, and World of Warcraft in Thailand, Malaysia, and Singapore -- the deal now includes Heroes of the Storm and features distribution to the Philippines as well. Marketing and operation for the game in the Philippines will be handled by Asiasoft subsidiary Level Up! Inc.

No launch date has been set for Heroes of the Storm -- currently in technical alpha -- domestically or internationally, but we assume it will arrive on the traditional Blizzard schedule of "when it's ready."

---

While we're waiting for Warlords of Draenor, Heroes of the Storm is the new hotness. For a great number of you, anyway! I'm going to use today's Breakfast Topic as an opportunity to ask all of you what you want to know about Heroes. What's your level of knowledge with games of its genre? What do you know? What would you like to know?

So far, we've covered some of the basics with our Heroes of the Storm glossary and gone a little more in-depth with our series of hero guides which will be kept updated for the game's launch. We know we can do more, though. Tell us what you want. Tell us what you need. We're listening.

You World of Warcraft diehards out there, don't be afraid -- when Warlords of Draenor arrives on our doorstep, we'll be full steam ahead on that.

---

It's time for another weekend, and the news is still dry as a desert. Unfortunately, we've already made up fake news. We've made up haikus. But not all is lost: we're seeing news and experiences from Heroes of the Storm.

So while it's a tiny diversion from WoW, we asked your intrepid WoW Insider staff about their feelings on HotS at this point. It's looking pretty sexy and I can't wait to play it for reals. What about you, dear reader? Are the heroes keeping you afloat while we all wait patiently for WoD?

• It is going to be free-to-play!
• Beta is not ready yet, they're working to get it out as soon as they can. There isn't an exact date yet. Internal testing is ongoing.
• One of the biggest defining qualities for Heroes is the importance of the different maps. This is something that separates it from other MOBAs, you'll want to take different heroes and different strategies and so on. Also, there's heroes with extensive lore behind them, that's a hugely important element, and they aren't afraid to challenge any aspect of the design to make it fun.

The recently renamed Heroes of the Storm, Blizzard's upcoming MOBA title, is running into a little conflict at the EU trademark offices. Myrskyn Sankarit (English translation: Heroes of the Storm) is a pen-and-paper role-playing game for children, first published in Finland in July 2013. It was originally crowd funded on indiegogo in 2012. The game's creator, Mike Pohjola, is concerned about the two games co-existing peacefully, and even suggests that Blizzard could change the game's name once more. For those not keeping track, Blizzard's game was originally known as Blizzard DOTA, then Blizzard All-Stars, and finally Heroes of the Storm.

Blizzard originally trademarked Heroes of the Storm on September 24, 2013 in the United States and September 25, 2013 in Europe. Mike Pohjola applied for a Finnish trademark for his table-top game on October 4, 2013. This is all public knowledge available by searching the US and EU trademark databases. At the time of Pohjola's application, we didn't know what Heroes of the Storm was exactly. On the surface, Pohjola's application seems to be in response to that original leak. Myrskyn Sankarit may have existed earlier, but the name was never registered with any trademark office until after Blizzard registered their own. Any potential issues in Finland, where the game has already been published, is a question for someone who knows more about trademark law.

---

Lead Quest Designer Dave "Fargo" Kosak has just posted the latest Dev Watercooler. This time, the topic is faction balance. In the wake of BlizzCon, this perennial topic has flared up pretty brightly. While the devs did indicate they wanted to give the Alliance a bit more good stuff during some panels, some other incidents during and after BlizzCon (including the news that Theramore, one of the most iconic Alliance cities, will be razed to the ground) has left some doubtful, leading to intense debates and 100+ page forum threads on the subject.

The way Kosak explains it, the devs definitely want to make sure that there is faction pride for both sides, and, he argues, while the Alliance may be getting beat up, the Horde has taken its share of lumps too. But in the long run, heroes are not born out of easy times. The Alliance will go through tough times, but it will give heroes the opportunity to arise. The Alliance's time is coming.

One thing he did admit to is that Blizzard needs to do a better job of making sure people can interact with their heroes. He acknowledges that the Alliance may not think of Thrall as theirs or part of their story, and he promises that once Cataclysm as over, we will catch up with other characters.

Whether you agree with all of his reasonings and conclusions or not, it's a good read, and it does prove that Blizzard is hearing us and is at least planning to try to address some of the complaints of faction parity and Thrall overload. Check after the break for the complete text of Kosak's post.

It's been a long time since we've heard from Kidsake. His music video for God's Gonna Cut You Down received huge acclaim among machinima fans. The use of Johnny Cash as musical background, coupled with unique and interesting visuals, thrilled many of us.

Kidsake's back with a new video called Heroes. It's a shout-out to his friends and fellow WoW players, featuring a large series of character vignettes set to Peter Gabriel's cover of Heroes. This surprisingly moody, brooding piece actually reminds me of Kidsake's other videos. He definitely brings a thoughtful, enigmatic feel to his videos.

---

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.

---

As the Worldbreaker series comes to an end, we now turn to the aftermath of Deathwing's destructive awakening into Azeroth and the continued battle against the elements and the Twilight Hammer Cult. The newest WoW TCG expansion, Aftermath: Throne of the Tides, puts players in control of murloc, naga, and ogre heroes as exciting new additions to the WoW TCG hero lineup.

Playing as some of the more monstrous races in the World of Warcraft universe is pretty cool, with all new keywords and abilities to take advantage of during gameplay. In addition, Throne of the Tides has been built from the ground up to be a smoother draft and sealed play experience, preparing even the newest players for fun, engaging tournament play. Read on to learn about the Epic Collection and the new in-game goodies that await TCG fans.

This Breakfast Topic has been brought to you by Seed, the Aol guest writer program that brings your words to WoW.com.

World of Warcraft puts players on a relatively fixed path in terms of loyalties. Sure, there are some very deliberate exceptions to this -- notably the Aldor/Scryer rivalry of The Burning Crusade and the Oracles/Frenzyheart feud in Wrath -- but in general, wherever a conflict arises in the game, the decision as to what side you're going to take is made for you. The rogue trainer in Northshire might tease you with the idea that joining the Defias is a potential option for you, but in reality, that can never happen.

WoW is certainly not lacking for "evil" factions one could potentially sympathize with. The aforementioned Defias, whose whole issue stems basically from getting screwed over by Onyxia's meddling, stand out as one such faction. Illidan Stormrage has long sparked controversy as to whether he was really on the side of evil, although that might be a result of his almost hopelessly confused lore. I have read suggestions that Malygos has a large (if misguided) sympathetic following. And even now, I see some already looking to figure out how to take the side of Big Bad Yet to Come, Deathwing himself.

Does this bother you? Do you wish sometimes that you could break the rules and side with a faction or villain you're not supposed to? What hostile faction or enemy character, if any, would you side with, given the opportunity to do so?

Masi Oka plays the fan-favorite character Hiro on the television show Heroes, but that's not the only role he plays -- we've heard before that he's a big World of Warcraft player as well (which makes sense -- before his star turn on NBC's superhero show, he actually worked at Industrial Light and Magic developing water effects, so he's a geek at heart). And now he's using his MMO experience to create a movie: he's just signed a deal with Dreamworks to create a movie called "The Defenders," a family adventure about a group of teens playing an MMO who have to come together to have some adventures of their own. Both Oka and writer Gary Whitta are fans of WoW, so they're drawing on their experience in the game to put together the project. Oka tells the Hollywood Reporter that "the question came to me: What if you had to live up to the person you created in the virtual world?" He also cites The Goonies as an inspiration for the story, as an adventure that brings back an innocence found in those old Amblin Entertainment films.

Sounds interesting. It might be aimed a little young for the average WoW player (even The Goonies, while considered a cult classic nowadays, was really aimed at kids in the '80s), but a film that can take a good look at the comparison between our in-game selves and their real-life counterparts (and have some fun doing it) would definitely be something to see. The project's only just getting underway now, but we'll keep an eye out for it.

This conversation seems to come up whenever a new raid instance is announced, and it looks like the Sunwell will be no exception. Vulpe from Venture Co. sends a shout out to Blizzard.. for killing all of our heroes. In Burning Crusade alone, Illidan, Kael'thas, and now Zul'jin have fallen to our raids, and in the coming future, we're going to see Kil'jaeden and maybe even Arthas bite the dust. And later in the thread, Melynda comes up with an even longer list of people deep in the lore whom we've seen fit to off.

Sure, as Bornakk says, everyone who's gotten some has pretty much deserved it (and even though we don't know what's happening with Arthas yet, let's not forget that he murdered, y'know, all those people, including his father). And Blizzard has told us before that they feel that they have more than enough lore to go around-- even if they kill off the Warcraft stars, they've got other folks on deck to rise up into the storylines.

But the most interesting thing to come from this iteration is that we have to kill these people-- if we didn't, we wouldn't be the heroes of Azeroth that we're supposed to be. Back when WoW first came out, the devs told us that it would take a raid of level 80s (this was back when level 60 was the max) to take down Arthas, and guess what-- when we see Arthas in a combat situation, we will actually be level 80. We may be killing off all of the heroes of Warcraft III, but it's only to make room for the new heroes of World of Warcraft-- namely us.