Posts with tag voice-actors

I hate Sindragosa. It's not the fight -- sure, the stacks of Permeating Chill are annoying as a mutilate rogue, but you can cloak them away. The Ice Tombs are even kind of fun, especially if you can /dance with her before getting frozen -- see what kind of crazy contortionist positions you can get stuck in! The Blistering Cold isn't that hard to book it out of if you keep your camera facing whatever direction you have to run, just hold down both mouse buttons when she pulls you in and you're out like lightning.

No, it's none of the above. It's her voice. It's that awful, rasping, screeching bellow. It's the way she draws out the word 'betray' that wasn't so bad the first time I heard it but let me tell you three wipes in and I was ready to turn off the sound effects entirely. I want to kill her every week not because there is loot to be had, but so that I do not have to listen to her anymore.

On the other hand, back in the days of Blackwing Lair I begged my raid leader to let me trigger the Nefarian event, just because I really wanted to hear him talk. I forget the exact number of times we wiped on Nefarian before finally killing him for the first time, but the silky way in which he said "Let the games begin" made it a little easier to take. There are other bosses and encounter voices I love -- nobody can forget Millhouse Manastorm, he of the infamous "I'm gonna light you up, sweet cheeks!" I always loved the voice of C'thun. The first time I stepped foot into AQ40 and heard that eerie, low voice from out of nowhere, politely informing me that my friends would abandon me and that I would die, I nearly yelped aloud.

But Sindragosa. Ah, Sindragosa, you have reached a level of irritation with me that rivals even Jaina Proudmoore's incessant sobbing or Kael'thas' never ending bantering in Magister's Terrace -- which now takes longer to listen to than it takes to kill him. So how about you guys -- who's tops on the voice acting in your opinion? Who do you love to hear every time you kill them? Whose voice makes you reach for the mute button?

With so many iconic phrases, both breath taking and amusing, I'm interested to know what lines of dialogue stick with you and why. Is it the turn of phrase? The delivery? The context in which the line is spoken that adds to the drama or humor?

For me, it's all about Eadric the Pure. Pretty much every line of dialogue he gets in the Trial of the Crusader 5-man is amazing. Well acted, well scripted, with just the right balance between pomposity, noble righteousness and a sort of bemused sense of humor and enjoyment about the whole concept of the Argent Tournament. If I had to pick one line, it would be his final one: "I yield! I submit! Excellent work! May I run away now?"

Yes, you may Eadric. But please, come back again soon. You're awesome.

It is over, your search is done! Let fate choose now, the righteous one.

"Over here, you idiot!" ring a bell? We've had a bunch of readers ask us lately just who does the voice for the Headless Horseman -- corny poetry aside, players are really loving the laugh and timbre of the guy who doesn't even have a throat to speak with. The most common guess we've heard is Gerard Butler, star of 300, but that doesn't really compute, as Blizzard usually uses lesser known voice actors and even most of their sound crew and artists (Chris Metzen does quite a few voices, actually, including most of the Orcs in game).

We've got two guesses for the Headless Horseman: the first is voice actor Michael McConnohie -- he's done a few other voices for Blizzard before (including Kel'thuzad). While his voice is definitely recognizable (he sounds like the Human male to me), the other strong male voice we know has worked for Blizzard is Mark Graue, who runs a voice studio in LA, and has worked on WoW since the beginning (he did the Undead emotes). Here's Graue's demos -- he sounded to me like the Horseman for sure when I first listened, but a few times in, I'm not so sure any more.

You can listen to the voice demos for both those guys and judge for yourself. Again, those are just guesses, based on who's worked with Blizzard in the past -- we don't really know for sure who it is. But we do have a query in to Blizzard on just whose manical laugh that is you hear when you throw a Jack-o-Lantern on your friend's head, so if they get back to us with a name, we'll post it here.