Posts with tag recording

We ran our livestream of the Halls of Reflection on the PTR yesterday, and other than one little hitch (I figured I'd save us all the trouble of raiding the Lich King and just jump in and take him down myself, with disastrous consequences), it went pretty well. Turns out you need to run through the main quest to unlock the last two Frozen Halls instances, so we ended up doing all three: Forge of Souls and Pit of Saron on normal, and then the Halls of Reflection on both normal and Heroic. On the way, you can see all of the bosses, dropped loot, the various lore and questlines that weave throughout the new 5-man, and the final epic confrontation.

Obviously, considering this is straight video of these instances (with commentary and audio from the game), these things are full of spoilers -- if you don't want to know what happens when you enter Icecrown Citadel, steer clear. That said, the video we recorded is after the break. You don't have to watch the whole thing (in fact, at over two hours, you'd be crazy to), as I've tagged the Forge of Souls run, the Pit of Saron run, and the final heroic Halls of Reflection run on their own. Clicking those links or the markers on the video below should take you to the specific parts of the video. Enjoy.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Halls of Reflection, the 5-man in which we're going to face down Arthas (finally -- we've been waiting for this moment since the end of Warcraft III) is now live on the PTR, and the staff of WoW.com is going to head on in there to see what there is to see. And you get to watch -- we'll be streaming our run of the brand new 5-man this Friday afternoon, starting at noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern. We'll be live on our Ustream page, with full in-game video and commentary from yours truly, as five intrepid WoW.com bloggers go and see what the Wrath of the Lich King really looks like.

Of course there will be spoilers, although if you're interested in seeing what the PTR has to offer, this will be as good an opportunity as any to do it. We've embedded the Ustream feed after the break on this post, so just come back here on Friday at noon to jump in, chat with us and other viewers live, and check out the action. If you have the Ustream iPhone app installed, you should be able to see it on there as well, so if you're out and about that afternoon, you can still watch. And we'll be recording the whole thing on Ustream, so if you can't watch it live, you will be able to come back later and check it out for yourself. Should be fun -- we'll see you back here on Friday afternoon at 3pm Eastern.

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.
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[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Listen here on the page:

Our podcast is back yet again this afternoon, and it's sure to be a good one. Turpster and I will welcome our bloggers Lesley Smith and Robin Torres on to talk about the biggest news in WoW from the last week: we'll touch on the new Druid forms and what we all think of those, 3.1.3 and how it's worked out so far, players with amazing achievements in game (like the level 1-80 no deaths guy, and Ensidia's big finish), and scams you might want to look out for ingame. And if we have time, we'll talk about one of the stranger stories to come out of the WoW community lately.

The show begins over on the our Ustream page at June 6, 2009 3:30 PM EDT , or you can jump after the break to see an embedded feed. We'll also answer your email, which you can send to us at theshow@wow.com, and as usual we'll be chatting live both during and after the show. Should be a lot of fun -- we'll see you this afternoon!

Here's a few bits of WoW book news from our friend Medievaldragon over at Blizzplanet. First up, the good news: Aaron Rosenberg and Christie Golden have been nominated for a "Best Adapted" award from the International Association of Media Tie-in Writers (just proving that for everything in the world, there's an association for it) for the World of Warcraft: Beyond the Dark Portal book that they wrote together. Pretty groovy, and supposedly well-deserved -- if you ever sit down to read any of the Warcraft literature, we've heard that's a great place to start. Winners of the prizes will be announced at GenCon this year, so good luck to the writers there.

And secondly, a bummer for those who've been waiting on the audiobook versions of the Warcraft books -- Medievaldragon says that he heard from Tantor Media, the company behind the productions, that they've been postponed. He's convinced that they've only been held off temporarily, but we're not so sure -- given the current economy, Tantor may have figured it wasn't worth the licensing and the trouble. But you never know -- apparently they've all been recorded, so perhaps we'll see them at some point in the future, even if it's only in digital form. We certainly hope so.

Yes, our weekly podcast is going live again today, and it should be a great show: BRK is returning to us again (though I promise there won't be nearly as much Hunter talk in the show this week), and our own Amanda Dean will join us on the virtual airwaves. We'll be talking about Winter's Veil, how to take down Loken, good deals gone bad, Blizzard's new ads, and everything else that happened in the World of Warcraft this past week.

And as usual we'll be chatting live and answering your emails -- you can send us questions, comments, insights or insanity at theshow@wow.com, and if you send something right now you might even hear it on the show today. It all starts at 3:30pm Eastern over on our Ustream page, or I've embedded the feed right here on this post after the break. And as usual, we'll have a quick aftershow right after we turn off the recording, so if you tune in live, that's about 10% more show to listen to (and that's when we say all the fun stuff).

See you this afternoon, and hope you enjoy the show.

Patrick Beja (who was on the WoW Insider Show not too long ago) and Shawn Coons host a great occasional podcast called How I WoW, which focuses on popular folks in the WoW community (they talked to our very own Turpster a while back, and have done an episode with Felicia Day as well). And apparently they've already talked to everybody else in the WoW community, because this week they made the mistake of inviting me on the show. They actually ask more about me personally than you'd ever want to know, but there's lots of great information about WoW Insider there as well, including who's really in charge around here, what we think of you great commenters, whether or not I'm really a fanboy, and things Blizzard could do better with their game.

It's a long show (all of the How I WoW shows tend to be long, I think, and though I tried to keep it short, mine didn't end up being the exception), but if you're interested in me, the WoW Insider Show, or how we run the site in general, there should be something fun for you hear in there. Plus, you can hear me murder some French if you stick around long enough.

The episode is up right now on their site. Thanks to Patrick and Shawn for having me on there -- hopefully you'll enjoy listening to it as much as we did making it. And stay tuned -- we'll have to have both of them on the WoW Insider Show with us soon.

We still have no idea who did the voice of the Headless Horseman, but if you're playing a male Gnome Death Knight lately, we know whose voice you've been listening to: Dino Andrade, recently interviewed by Geeks of Doom, a voice actor who's probably most heard as "Pop" of the Kellogg's Rice Crispies mascots. You can hear his reels and demos on his website, and sure enough, that's our Gnome.

Andrade says the Blizzard recording was "the most secretive thing I have ever done" -- they didn't show him anything visually about what the character was or did, and apparently he wasn't even allowed to take the script out of the recording room. Andrade also says that Blizzard is keen to let voice actors do their thing -- rather than giving direction, they let the actor come up with lots of their own reads, and then chose the one they wanted to use. It's almost hard to believe that Blizzard's voice acting is so good, given how hands-off they are (you'd think they'd aim to connect it with the art or animation in some way), but Blizzard fans know how well it works -- the voice characterisation in Blizzard games has always been terrific.

Very interesting -- while Blizzard's voices are one of the things that have really made their games successful, it's strange that they've never let us into the process more. Their sites are full of concept art and model designs, but it would be cool to hear an uncut recording session or find out exactly how voice recordings are integrated with the game. Maybe we'll see more on that in the future.

The WoW Insider Show landed at its new home, our new Ustream channel, last Saturday, and things went pretty darn well. We had a nice turnout of listeners from all over, and we had Adam Holisky and Turpster on, along with our guest Patrick Beja (of Azeroth.fr, How I WoW, and all of the other podcasts and features at his site Frenchspin). We had a few contests (one of which is still ongoing for you non-live listeners, so make sure to listen for the details if you haven't heard them yet), and we took some of the new features over at Ustream for a spin, including some fun polls.

I'm told our new iTunes feed isn't quite up and running yet, but in the future you'll see an iTunes link here as well. Show notes are after the break.

[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show in iTunes.
[Ustream] Listen to the unedited recording in Ustream.
[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Or listen to Episode 60 right here:

Our weekly podcast will be going on the airwaves at 3:30pm Eastern (for about an hour and a half or so), and since we've recently uprooted to a new venue, we're trying something new today -- after the jump, we've put an embedded stream of the podcast, which you can listen to right here on WoW Insider.

If you like, you can also just go over to the Ustream page itself, and there'll you'll be able to jump into the chat room, and answer some live polls and other things during the podcast. Plus, we'll be giving away some loot codes during the show as well. Patrick Beja will be on with us to talk about his experiences at BlizzCon, and Turpster and Adam Holisky will join us as well. If you're around this afternoon (maybe playing the new patch or just reading up on our latest posts), click the link below to check it out.

Not only will WoW Insider be at BlizzCon all weekend, and not only will you get a chance to meet-and-greet with us on Thursday night at The Lost Bar, but this is the first BlizzCon in the life of our podcast, the WoW Insider Show, and the show's going on the road, too. Friday night at 8pm, we're inviting you to come see us do a live recording of the show, direct from right outside the Anaheim Convention Center. Our partners at WoW Radio will be set up in the courtyard between the Convention Center and the hotel next door, and all of us will be there, doing a live recording of the podcast for you to hear and see as we do it.

And as if that wasn't enough, we've got another surprise, too: the folks from The Guild will be right there with us. Felicia Day and her cohorts will have a panel during the day, but they're spending the evening with us, so we'll talk to them about making the series, their experience with WoW, and what they think of all the craziness that's sure to be at BlizzCon. We'll have some other guests from around the community as well: both Totalbiscuit from WoW Radio and Starman from World of Warcast will be on hand to talk shop with us. And as is usual on the WoW Insider Show, we'll talk about everything going on in World of Warcraft, our most popular posts on the site, and don't be surprised if we have some good giveaways for passers-by to win as well.

It's going to be a lot of fun, and you'll get to see us make the show right there in front of your very eyes. Friday night at 8pm, come right outside the Convention Center, and look for the WoW Radio setup, because that's where we'll be. Everybody have a safe trip out to BlizzCon, and have a great time while you're out there.

The folks at the relatively new Warcraft Outsiders podcast were kind enough to invite me on their show the other day, and I proceeded to make a mess of things -- one of the hosts got sick, I stayed long after they tried to get rid of me, and I just generally stomped all over any plans they had to do their own show. The results are now up on their page -- the good news is that John, Michelle, Kyle and I did have a lot of fun, and we got some good discussion in about the Honor non-wipe, what few addons I swear by, and what's up with Varian Wrynn's return to Azeroth (he's actually wearing Anduin Lothar's belt -- shows you how much attention I pay to the lore stuff, so pay no attention to all the mistakes I make on that part).

It was definitely a good time, and hopefully the show will be as fun to listen to as it was to record. The Outsiders will also have our good friend and colleague BRK on next week, and they do a nice job. Of course, if you only listen to one WoW podcast, you should make it the WoW Insider Show, but if you've got some extra room in your iPod, check them out (they also do a podcast on videogames in general) and see what you think.

Thanks to everybody over there for having me on, especially since, with our names, we should be swordfighting in a warehouse or something (Outsiders/Insider -- get it? I totally didn't realize until the very end).

Yeah, I can't believe it either, but as of August 8th (which was actually a few weeks ago), Guildwatch, just like some realms, has been going down every Tuesday for a year. Well, not quite every Tuesday-- most guilds took a little break from raiding when Burning Crusade dropped, and we took a little break from reporting it. Started up again in February, and have been rolling ever since then.

But I have to say, when I thought up this little slice of guild drama, downed news, and recruiting from around the realms, I had no idea anyone would share my appreciation for news like this. Big thanks to everyone who sent their tips in (to wowguildwatch@gmail.com-- and you can send tips right now for next week's column), and an even bigger thanks to everyone out there who got really angry about something happening in their guild, and decided to do something irrational about it. You're the oil that greases our wheels! Thanks!

Click the link below to see this week's GW.