Posts with tag nef

Every week, WoW Insider brings you The Light and How to Swing It for holy, protection and retribution paladins. Every Sunday, Chase Christian invites you to discuss the finer side of the paladin class: the holy specialization. Feel free to email me with any questions you want answered, like why paladins are so awesome.

The true final boss of Cataclysm's first tier is a hotly debated topic. With three different raid instances available at launch, the end boss in each raid zone could be eligible for the top spot. While most people will agree that Al'Akir is only a secondary opponent, Nefarian and Cho'gall are both old and powerful enemies. Cho'gall has been covered in the WoW comic books with great detail, while Nefarian is so common in WoW that we've already killed him once. Sinestra could even make her claim for the throne, as she is a difficult, heroic-only boss.

In my opinion, Nefarian is the final boss of tier 11. He's Deathwing's son, which makes him public enemy #2. During the encounter, we're faced with not one but two dragons, plus all the doomfire and adds that we can handle. The Nefarian encounter is the type of fight that I would've hated before Cataclysm. Now, we have AoE abilities to handle the incredible raid damage and the mana management tools to keep ourselves from running dry.

The author says up front that he considered this movie to be an experiment. Nef vs. Rai was intended to help explore the animation possibilities in World of Warcraft. It is a very short animation example, that pretty much can be summed up as "A dragon steps foot in Darnassus, an anime hero charges his lasers, and kills the dragon." The story wasn't complex, but probably wasn't meant to be. While the opening shot of a dragon landing is created using modified WoW graphics, the rest seems to be hand drawn.

The opening credit with the animated cat-form druid (Night Elf) was pretty neat. I liked the hand-drawn overlay in Darnassus, and what it did for the environment there. I'm not sure the animation of "Rai" did much for me. Something about the way Rai's face was drawn kind of put me off, and made it very difficult for me to understand what emotion the character was experiencing. But, I guess, the anime style can be kind of like that, with a lot of it being an acquired taste.

"Nef vs. Rai" isn't the worst freshman effort we've ever seen, but any follow-up would definitely need some story embellishment.

Our new weekly feature GuildWatch is back, featuring as much guild drama, raiding, and recruiting as you'd want in a week. This week, we've put things in a new, easier to read format, and it all starts right after the jump.

And remember, GuildWatch runs on your submissions. If you want your guild listed as recruiting, downed someone awesome over the weekend, or know about some great guild drama going on, drop us an email at wowguildwatch@gmail.com.