Posts with tag mountain-dew

WoW Archivist explores the secrets of World of Warcraft's past. What did the game look like years ago? Who is etched into WoW's history? What secrets does the game still hold?

Nefarian swallows a truck.

Two women duke it out in a supermarket.

A trio of singers shouts, "No means no!"

Mr. T introduces a new race and Chuck Norris roundhouse-kicks a kodo.

Those responsible for advertising World of Warcraft have hit on some crazy ideas.

This week, Blizzard debuted its first TV ads for Mists of Pandaria. As I'm writing this, I've just watched them air live on Monday Night Football. That's a big-time slot for a commercial here in the States and runs a cool $325,000 per nationally televised spot. The ads feature clips from the official trailer. If only the Bengals had put up as much of a fight as that panda.

But not all of WoW's commercials through the years have been quite so ... straightforward. Let's take a look!

Today we're going to hit a bunch of quick, short questions, which means today's edition of The Queue might be a wee bit short compared to some of Allison's epics. Picture above completely unrelated to anything written below. It just looks pretty freaking sweet, doesn't it?

ikandiman asked...

"I have been trying to get the last Brewfest achievement for my Warlock, but every time I get smashed and jump off the elevator in Shattrath (with my Skyguard's Drape to slow fall) I never get the bloody Drunken Stupor achievement. Had no problem with my mage and paladin. What gives?"

The Warcraft Mountain Dew Spec Commercial was Ian Beckman's entry into the BlizzCon 2009 machinima contest. According to Ian, he'd secretly hoped that the Mountain Dew folks would see the commercial and think "Holy crap! We love this idea! Let's make it a commercial!" That didn't happen, but the video's still pretty awesome.

It's pretty short, of course, but the style and lightheartedness of the commercial won me over. Two warriors are fighting in the war-torn fields of Azeroth. When they spot a Mountain Dew through the computer screen, they immediately launch themelves into the real world to win the soda for themselves.

The Warcraft Mountain Dew Spec Commercial is a little additionally ironic in the tableau of panels offered by BlizzCon. As Alex Zierbart pointed out, it was relatively rare for any of the Blizzard presenters to actually touch the Mountain Dews hanging out on the panel tables. Still, that doesn't impact my opinion of Ian's commercial, which was overall pretty fun to watch.

---

This week's list is short but sweet. Tried and true. We're still missing Disgraph (cries) but most others are present and accounted for.

• Check out the latest from LFG.
• NoObz: Who's Up For....
• NPC: Outrage. (I miss my kitties).
  
• Teh Gladiators: Papa!
• WoW eh: The End of a Memory. Again, I love the artwork. It's always evolving. The armor looks fantastic.
• Check out the latest from Kuo, and be sure to read the description underneath the comic.
• Flintlocke vs. the Horde.
• Vincent checks out Twitter in WoW, and tests the Mountain Dew drinks. Well, at least one of them.
• Society for the Betterment of NPC Characters. Dark Legacy Comics.
• GU Comics: Wannabes.

A number of sites have done a post-mortem on the Mountain Dew WoW Game Fuel ad (featuring two ladies battling it out through their WoW characters in a live-action supermarket), and they've uncovered a really interesting fact: the ad was actually directed by Indian director Tarsem Singh, one of my favorites -- he not only did the visually stunning sci-fi/horror flick The Cell a few years ago, but more recently made The Fall, which is an very well-done kind of mirror-life fairy tale. He's directed a number of commercials before, including some for Nike and Levi's, and teamed up with a company called Zoic Studios (they've done a few other spots for video games already) for this WoW commercial.

The original CGI models for the ad did come from Blizzard (I'd guess that they're the original models from the WoW CGI trailer), though they were spruced up quite a bit by Zoic to add facial expressions and dynamic costumes and hair. They were then connected to motion captures from stunt artists (which were probably also tweaked to seem a little more than human, and then composited all together in the supermarket scene.

Very cool stuff. This isn't the first time WoW characters have been used to sell soda, but hopefully we'll see more fun sequences like this come out of the deals between Blizzard and their partners.

People have only been able to get their hands on the WoW themed Mountain Dew Game Fuel within the last couple of weeks (and is only officially supposed to be in stores today), despite the months of hype being thrown behind the product. Throwing more gasoline on the hype-fire comes the new Game Fuel commercial, which you can watch above. Watch it a few times, actually. You may need it to fully comprehend what you've just watched.

It's terrible. Nobody who actually plays WoW will find this commercial anything but corny. It's definitely not aimed at us. Or if it is, the people who made it probably... you know, shouldn't have been the ones to make it. And does it frighten anybody else that even though they used two females as the soda-swilling gamers, one of them turned into a dude? I mean, play whatever avatars you want in-game, but there's something disturbing about a pretty young lady hulking out and turning into a bulging green monstrosity. And I'm not talking She-Hulk. I'm talking a throbbing mass of masculine muscle. Augh. I'm not sure I want to let my girlfriend drink this stuff anymore.

So Mountain Dew is pushing Game Fuel, the site has been live for a couple of weeks and now Battle Bots have gone live for all you lucky people in the US who asked for one. Now I love the WoW brand as much as anyone but that doesn't mean I want to quaff strange liquids in the hope of winning prizes.

It makes me wonder, does seeing that shiny WoW logo on a bottle, a mouse mat or some other item of merchandise make you more likely to buy it? Do you think that the WoW logo brings with it some kind of quality mark that sets such an item out as being worthy of your purchase? Drop your thoughts into the comments box below.

Our podcast is back on the air again today, and it's going to be a good one: not only will Turpster and I welcome back Amanda Dean, but Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington, our newest writer here on the site, will join us to talk about his experiences blogging and playing his Hunter. And of course we'll chat about the most popular posts of the past week, including those mount and travel changes that are raising such a fuss, the Mountain Dew Battle-bots, and why an Authenticator (probably) can't steer you wrong. Plus, we'll answer your emails -- we've gotten quite a few movie posters from Turpster's suggestion last week, so stay tuned to hear about those (and you'll be able to see them here on our post next Monday).

Tune in this afternoon over on the our Ustream page at June 13, 2009 3:30 PM EDT , or you can jump after the break to see an embedded feed. It should be a good time as always, so stop by and say hi if you're around.

This was going to be a post about how EU gamers can still attain the Mountain Dew Battle-Bot pets even though the warning above says they're for US folks only, but never mind -- Blizzard's server alert says they are putting out a hotfix on the EU realms to remove any and all pets that made it through their guard. Some people could get the pets just by clicking through, and some people couldn't, but Blizzard says no -- the Mountain Dew promotion is apparently for US folks only, and anyone who has one on the EU realms won't for long. Players are understandably frustrated, though some of them are happy that if they can't have one, no one can. MVPs on the forums are saying that the pet is also available in Canada, even if the soda promotion isn't, but that may change as well.

Pretty poor show. Sure, Mountain Dew's rules say US-only, but they definitely should have realized that there were plenty of EU players who would want in on the promotion. We doubt this is over -- it would certainly be a mark on their campaign that would engender a lot of ill will, and Blizzard will likely try to find some way to get the in-game pet up and running on the EU realms.

Mountain Dew Game Fuel, WoW-themed flavors of the popular beverage in red and blue (for the Horde and Alliance, respectively), is out in the wild, and at least one of our writers is already a big fan. To show how much they love you (or rather, to try to get you to buy their soda), Mountain Dew will give you a free in-game Battle Bot pet, just for clicking a button on their web site! The button is towards the lower-right, and it'll redirect you to log in to your Battle.net account. Don't worry, it's safe - you can tell by the Battle.net URL. He's a cute little guy. You can see a few screenshots I took in the gallery below.

Apparently you get in-game fuel for your pet, again in red or blue, and when you fuel them up, they will fight opposite colors. If you give your pet blue fuel and the guy next to you gives it red, expect some robot-on-robot fighting action. I'm not sure if you have to get the appropriate fuel for your faction, since it seems you can only get one in-game item per day, and I already got my battle bot. I'll try it tomorrow and see how it goes.

Edit: It looks like we've killed the Mountain Dew website. Keep trying though, it's bound to come back up sometime...

Edit 2: The pet is mailed to all of your characters, so you don't have to decide which one gets it.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Just gonna let this one speak for itself. Oh, and if you want to know what today's obligatory Reading-The-Queue-Music is, it's of Montreal.

lgnorman420 asked...

"So I've been wondering as my guild has been running through Ulduar about the various machine names one might encounter throughout the game. Mimiron's creation, the V0-L7R-0N combat system or the XT-002 Deconstructor are two examples. Also the mechanical chicken quests back from mid-40s to 50s leveling also come to mind. Do these number/letter codes have any significance or are they just random sequences to give them a machine sounding kind of name?"

I don't think there's any naming scheme across the board for robotic things in WoW. How they got their names differs from one to the next. For example, V0-L7R-0N is just a Voltron joke. I don't think XT-002 has any significance except that maybe (maybe) the 2 signifies that he's the second creation of Mimiron that you fight in Ulduar. The second line of defense or what have you. Someone smarter than I am should figure out what XT stands for. The robochickens are named after the zone you find them in.

Blogger and WoW.com friend Pixelated Executioner has introduced a brand new blog project -- he's working with a few other folks in the community on a new blog called Nourish, dedicated to providing some fun and relatively easy WoW-related recipes for real food. It all originally started over on Twitter, where a few of them decided to come up with some WoW-themed dish names, but eventually it escalated into the idea of an actual set of recipes, with the added bonus of getting some WoW players some real homemade food to eat as well (you can only go so far on Doritos and Mountain Dew, after all).

There's only two recipes so far (both submitted by another friend of ours, Cadistra of WoW, Eh?), but that spice bread does look pretty tasty. If you're a foodie or just have been looking for a way to use something other than the microwave in your kitchen, it seems like a great place to start. And if you need more than the few they've got up so far, don't forget our old Well Fed Buff column -- it's retired now, but we've still got plenty of great WoW-related recipes to try making there as well.

Our good friends at BlizzPlanet have obtained a ticket to the happiest place on Earth (BlizzCon, of course -- right next to some dump called Disneyland), and they're giving it away over on their site. There are a few hoops to jump through, but then again, how much do you want to go to BlizzCon? They will have you hunting around their archives for a few things, running over to the Mountain Dew website to earn some points and take a screenshot, and even checking out some comic books over at DC (their contest is probably part of the official fansite program, which would explain why you'll be visiting lots of Blizzard's licensing partners).

Do all that stuff by June 9th, and be one of the lucky winners, and you'll pick yourself up one of three shiny tickets to Blizzard's big event in Anaheim. It looks like airfare and hotel might be on your own, but no worries -- you can eBay the goodie bag stuff and use that money to put yourself up in Anaheim for both nights. Everybody wins! Good luck -- if you end up being chosen as the winner, be sure to come say hi to us while you're there.