Posts with tag metal

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

Here's a type of craft we haven't seen much of before: a hammered metal bowl that simply bellows "For the Horde!" Talk about taking blacksmithing to a whole new level ... We visited with Blazecheetah, the bowl's maker, to find out more about the crafting behind her creation. Her play-by-play on its creation is an intriguing peek behind the scenes, if you've never been exposed to metalcrafting before.

"The bowl is made of 16-gauge copper that was originally a flat, square sheet," she explains. "I cut a circle shape out of it, then did the ol' fashioned method of raising a bowl shape, which involves making a small indent in the center of the circle, making some guideline rings (think of a bullseye) around it; then, using a T stake and a certain type of hammer, went around the bowl hammering it in a spiral like pattern, following the guidelines. Between each round of hammering, you have to do what's called annealing, which is basically just heating up the metal with a torch until it's red hot, then dousing it in water. This keeps the metal soft and easy to work with."

This installment of All the World's a Stage is the twenty-eighth in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class (or profession!) well, without embarrassing yourself.

Mining is one of the strangest professions in the World of Warcraft. This may seem counterintuitive in the face of such odd professions as alchemy, and more particularly, engineering. But when you think of it, mining is equally strange in its own way.

Mining in the World of Earthiness is by and large a capitalist venture, where the people getting rich off of the various precious metals in the world are never ever the same people who actually go out and dig the stuff out of the ground. No, the rich people find other people do to the actual digging for them, and then compel those diggers to hand over the fruits of their hard work for a mere fraction of the work's actual value. Furthermore, precious metals here on Earth are not simply lying about at the surface for anyone with a pickaxe to come along and collect -- otherwise those metals wouldn't be precious anymore.

Mining on Azeroth is more like collecting interesting seashells than it is anything similar to what humans do on Earth. Below, we will find a few ideas about why in the world only the very greatest adventurers with the best training can go around picking up shiny ore nodes sticking up out of the ground, as well as what it might mean to your character to do so.

Gnomechewer's Trident of Naz'jan has actually been floating around for about a month, which makes it a shame we haven't picked it up before now. I'm actually very happy to see it, as I'd worried we'd lost the music video superstar to Age of Conan. This is one of my favorite pieces by him, and totally worth the watch. I'll fess up at the beginning that the music isn't entirely my style, but within the context of the movie it works wonderfully.

As the story of the video goes, those dastardly mist-men called Vrykul are (or have been) summoning That Which Devours from Below, Naz'jan. This is related to the opening Tuskarr quests in the Borean Tundra, so if you like the video, take the time to go check those out.

Overall, though, I really like that Cthulu-esque "deep one" kind of feel. The strident heavy metal captures the mood of the Vrykul (c'mon, no instance is as "metal" as Utgarde Keep). Even the opening soundtrack voiceovers give you a good sense of impending doom. The video has several shots of the viking-like Vrykul cruising around on longships, which enhances a definite sense of movement.

Here's hoping we see more from the maestro Gnomechewer soon.

[Via Machinima.com]

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

Previously on Moviewatch ..

We've talked about listening to music while playing the game before. While the "actual" game music is pretty good (I've gone back and forth between having it on and off during the time I've played, and at this point I'm in an "on" phase, so I can hear all the new Northrend music). But Lazaragh on Jubei'thos wants to know about a specific situation: what do you listen to while raiding?

Personally, while I'll often have a podcast or a movie on while playing solo or sometimes running five mans (if I'm feeling particularly awake), I tend to have to focus while raiding, so I usually turn the background noise off and listen to Vent or just the audio queues ingame. Any more than that an I get distracted. But there are all kinds of answers in the thread, from trance to pop to metal (Dragonforce FTW!), and pretty much across every genre that you can think of. What might be most interesting about all of this is that the music apparently has no effect on gameplay, though it'd be interesting to see the raiding performance of people who listen to music while playing against people who don't.

Maybe an enterprising raiding group can do an experiment and figure that out. I'd guess it's just personal taste, but it does seem to me that even if you say your attention isn't divided, the music has to be a little distraction. Maybe it's just me. What kind of music do you raid with?

I did not think anything could break me away from the Death Knight class. The minute I got my hands on the Wrath of the Lich King beta, I was going to go to the character selection screen, pick Death Knight, and never look back. Sorry Druid, Sorry Hunter. Sorry Warlock. Maybe I'll come back to you when my uber awesome Death Knight is level 80 and I have Frostmourne in my hot little hands.

Blizzard has once again raised the bar. No longer shall I be a Death Knight. Instead, I shall be a Bard. That's right, Blizzard's just announced a new Hero Class, and it's not the Archdruid that was previously rumored.

Madmarv thinks that there might be a relationship between WoW players and metal or rock music, since everyone he knows that plays the game listens to metal or rock, and lots of videos use the same. But other players quickly prove him wrong-- not everyone listens to or even likes metal or rock music. And since we've got these nifty polls, why not figure out exactly what you do all listen to?

Of course, if metal/rock doesn't win (and I suspect that it won't-- my guess is you all are a pretty eclectic crowd), then the question remains just why all that crazy rock keeps showing up in your PvP vids anyway.