Posts with tag youtube

YouTube user and Minecraft enthusiast Haasth22 has replicated some of the human starting experience in popular indie title Minecraft, complete with blockified tier 2 Judgement armor and quest NPCs. Sure, it's heavily edited, but who doesn't love seeing Azeroth all blocky with that recognizable Minecraft charm? Whatever you do, don't watch the movie while playing WoW, because you will alt-tab into game to see if you got a message or a whisper (like I'm doing right now) while listening to the sounds of the video.

If you've got other cool recreations of WoW in Minecraft, we'd love to see it. You can always use our tip line to send us videos, questions, and suggestions. Heck, you could even shoot us a compliment. We love compliments.

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Last week in The Daily Quest, you may have seen a YouTube video of a recreation of Darnassus in Minecraft. If you thought that was cool, there's more where that came from. In addition to Darnassus, YouTuber kattooMC and his servermates resresres1 and nessy27 have also created a scale model of Deathwing (which has made the rounds once before) and, much more recently, Molten Core's version of Ragnaros.

These Minecraft builds do use game mods or third-party tools, and there are blocks incorporated into the designs that cannot be placed by players (such as the blocks of Coal in Deathwing) -- but cool is cool, regardless of how something is made. Many viewers of the Ragnaros video have commented that he looks a bit ... green. However, kattooMC assured everyone it was just a result of video encoding. As a Minecraft player myself, I'll back him up on that. I know what yellow wool blocks look like when I see 'em.

According to kattoo via Twitter, Stormwind is next on their Warcraft to-do list. I, for one, can't wait to see it.

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Pop law abounds in The Lawbringer, your weekly dose of WoW, the law, video games and the MMO genre. Mathew McCurley takes you through the world running parallel to the games we love and enjoy, full of rules, regulations, pitfalls and traps. How about you hang out with us as we discuss some of the more esoteric aspects of the games we love to play?

The machinima and streaming communities built around World of Warcraft are filled with some of the most talented and creative people in gaming, from awesome musicians to dedicated streamcasters. The first time I ever got to experience the WoW beta back in 2004, I was watching someone stream footage of their human warlock messing up mobs in (if I remember correctly) Westfall. Streaming is beneficial to gaming, MMOs, and e-sports because of video games' competitive nature and spectator-oriented design.

You've probably heard of Senate bill S.978 already, most likely from many video game blogs and news outlets or YouTube campaigns fighting against the passage of this bill. Bill S.978 aims to institute a "10 strikes" policy, making the unauthorized streaming of content a felony, resulting in potential jail time. The main purpose of the bill is to strengthen the law and punishments available to organizations such as the MPAA and other content conglomerates to stop illegal streaming of millions upon millions of dollars in stolen entertainment. As is the way of things, gamers might be caught in the crossfire.

Some of you fine readers sent me a few messages on Twitter asking me to weigh in on the 10 strikes streaming bill and maybe give a basic analysis of the thing, so I shall oblige. Lawbringer this week is all about the odd future of bill S. 978 and what it could mean for MMOs and WoW.

The WoW.com crew has been hard at work on full walkthroughs of the worgen and goblin starting experiences in the Cataclysm beta, and in the process we've built up a few videos that we simply don't want to sit on any longer. You'll see these videos in our guides as planned, so consider this a sneak preview. Obviously almost every single one of these videos is heavy with Cataclysm spoilers. Don't want to be spoiled? Don't watch.

Embedded above is the quest The Great Bank Heist. You can head over to our YouTube channel (or click the links below) to see:

Worgen Starting Zone

• Meet Lord Darius Crowley
• Sacrifices
• Fun With Placeholders
• You Can't Take 'Em Alone
• Tunnel Rats
• Transformation Animation

Goblin Starting Zone

• Hot Roddin'
• The Great Bank Heist (embedded above)
• Monkey Business
• And more to come!

We've already said it a few times since the beta started, but we do strongly recommend subscribing to our YouTube channel. While most of the videos that are uploaded there will find their way here eventually, subscribing is a good way to get a sneak peek at upcoming features ... and catch the few videos that don't make it to our front page.

The video embedded above, WoW.com's Lich King Tutorial, marks the arrival of Jerome Phillips (also known as Vodka's Kinaesthesia) to our team. He has a lot of talent and a lot of ideas, so we're happy to have him. You've probably seen some of his work before, most notably his trailer for Patch 3.3's Frozen Halls. This Lich King tutorial is just the first of many projects we'll be doing together, so we hope you enjoy it and find it useful. Due to the length of the encounter (and thus the tutorial), it has been split into two parts. The first part is above, and the second part is behind the cut below. As is true with all things in life, these videos are best when viewed in HD.

This video is just the beginning of a larger project here at WoW.com. We're working to bring more video content to the site in all areas, raids and otherwise. We have big plans for Cataclysm in particular. With this in mind, we've made it a point to make our video content easier to find and navigate. Any videos made by the WoW.com staff will be posted to our new YouTube channel rather than scattered across the staff's personal channels willy-nilly as they have been in the past. Check it out, and if you're feeling especially kind, go ahead and subscribe, too.

At the end of the summer last year I had this crazy idea: to make a TV show about a raiding guild. I was inspired by the relationships and interactions in my current guild and how much they impacted me personally -- both good and bad. I fleshed out the idea over beers (many beers) with some friends. We talked about logistics, equipment, participation, but most importantly, the goal. I wanted the show to be about the people, to be about the interaction between the raiders. And I don't mean ninja-looting drama-mama QQing. I wanted to explore the things that go on in a group of people trying to work together online to accomplish something great. There's more to raiding than drama. Things like, as I'm fond of saying, "the soul crushing 1% wipes and the absolute exhilaration of taking down a new boss for the first time."

I worked on a pitch and reached out to friends & family in "the biz" but I spent most of my time trying to explain concepts such as a "raid" or a "boss" or that when I said "guild" I meant a group of MMO gamers and not an actor's or writer's union -- which made for some very confusing conversations at first. Frustrated, I wasn't sure I'd ever convince anyone this was an idea worth doing. But I knew it was.

Because those guys at Blizzard have a wonderful sense of humor as well as an unerring knack of dangling the right carrots in front of players' proverbial horses, they've come up with the most adorable little pet to entice everyone to try out the new dungeon system to be implemented in patch 3.3. Called the Perky Pug, this elusive and adorable little fellow is rewarded to players who group with other random players using the new dungeon system. According to the patch notes, "the more random players with whom one groups, the faster the pet can be obtained."

That means the process can actually be pretty painful. It's kind of like playing Russian Roulette, except that instead of one bullet, you can possibly have four. And instead of bullets you have inept, or badly geared, or socially abrasive (or combinations of all three) players. And instead of your head, it's your... well, okay, it's still your head that can get pretty messed up.

Sound files in Patch 3.3 uncovered over at MMO Champion have got players all abuzz. In particular, lore-nerds who have listened to the sound files and put them together in the most reasonably coherent fashion are going nuts over the possibilities and implications. Tissue-sniffling, underpants-changing nuts. The kind of nuts that happen in Twilight Zone episodes. So understand that clicking on any of the links below are on a Need to Know basis. That means it's full of spoilers.

No, seriously. It has so many spoilers that unsuspecting players can explode just by clicking on the Read More link below. It's that dangerous. The sound files are so revealing, so incriminating, that every agent sent by SI:7 to safeguard them has been removed from active duty and sent to the loony bin. They're so volatile that even Ragnaros got burned when he read the rest of this post. So juicy that it cost Lady Vashj an arm and a leg -- or six arms and a tail -- just to listen to them.

The sound files in question are mined from the goings-on in Icecrown, which may (or may not) reveal the ultimate fate of the Lich King. It also includes previously unrevealed first names of only sons, emotional moments from hot mages, uncharacteristic coolness from leaders heretofore labeled as hate-mongering and racist, and unexpected appearances by heroes long dead (but not forgotten). Click on the link for madness-inducing spoilers. Otherwise that lady by your side will whisper something in your ear and you'll go crazy, anyway. Might as well have WoW.com do it for you.

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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 the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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To go along with their recently created Twitter accounts, Blizzard has now started up an official YouTube channel as well. Right now, the channel just contains animations and cinematics that we've mostly seen before (not that we mind watching that Burning Crusade cinematic for the umpteenth time), but we presume that in the future, we might see newly released videos, including possibly interviews with Blizzard staff, and maybe even some (gasp!) gameplay videos as well.

Whoever's in charge of social media over at Blizzard has really been working it lately -- we can't wait to see their Last.fm account (Most Played: the artists formerly known as Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain) or their OkCupid account (Adam Holisky & Alex Ziebart would be at least 87% friends with Ghostcrawler, no question). Definitely fun to see Blizzard, historically a very closed-door company, opening up a little bit to the various outlets where they can correspond with fans.

Sure, the Cataclysm trailer was cool and all, but did it seem like it was missing a little something? That little something may have been the Wowcrendor touch. Fortunately, Wowcrendor has remade the trailer in his own unique style (he says on the YouTube page that it's an early cut Blizzard eventually scrapped for obvious reasons), and you can watch the result above.

As with Wowcredor's other videos, the satire is piled on in heaps, from MS Paint-ed lava to a nice dig at rated battlegrounds, and a nice little coda about Barrens chat (given, that's a pretty big comedy target to hit, but Wowcrendor hits it anyway). Funny video, and proof that no matter how awesome Cataclysm sounds, odds are that we'll still be playing the same game with the same people.

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Here's a great way to start off the weekend for sure. lockexenocide on WoW LJ points out this remix of Thorim's "In the mountains" speech, and I like it a lot. It's part of a speech Thorim gives when you first pull him, thrown in with some phat beats and cuts. Unfortunately, LJ doesn't know who put it together, but even stranger, a search reveals a another Thorim remix in the Youtube video above.

I'm surprised there aren't more remixes of Blizzard's music and/or audio -- these sound really good, and it'd be fun to hear someone like The Maiden of Virtue ("Cast out your corrupt thoughts!") or Noth ("Rise, my soldiers! Rise and fight once more!") get this treatment. There's probably a whole bunch of cool ways aspiring DJs could cut up and remix some of Blizzard's audio.

Update: Here's a cool Yogg Saron mix from Thebum in our comments.

I was never one for these tabletop strategy games or D&D but thanks to WoW I have become quite a tactician. Tactics are so integrated in the game that they come into play figuring out how to down Hogger without aggroing too many of his numerous minions, to sneaking through hostile territory and avoiding NPCs who want to kill you all the way to confronting KT in Naxx or Ignis in Ulduar. The latter is especially true, Ignis is a nightmare where a knowledge of tactics is life or death. When your raid leader asks if everyone knows the tactics and you all nod heads and mutter yes, it's not actually courtesy, he or she is trying to figure out how many people will survive long enough to down the giant er ... giant.

Once upon a time all you had to do to learn the tactics was play. Wiping on bosses and the depression of death, failure and repair bills can be a great motivator. At the same time, there are few unique boss fights in WoW. They all follow some kind of pattern and sometimes phases are even borrowed from other mobs. Others, such as Shade of Aran's Flame Wreath go down in lore and legend, even getting their own ever-so-catchy (nay beautiful) theme tune. I challenge anyone to move after having heard that (I even have that in iTunes and would play it just in case my raid forgot. No one ever did.).

So I wonder, constant readers, how do you learn tactics? I can read WoWwiki, for example, until I'm blue in the face but because of the weird way my brain is wired (don't ask), the only was I can truly learn tactics is in the fight itself. Yes, there's YouTube, there's the pre-boss-fight sit down where the raid leader does a run though the fight because no one bothered to take ten minutes to do some reading up. What methods do you use?

The Guild (which, as we were told by Michele Boyd last week, just started putting together their third season last weekend) is having a video contest, with a little twist. They want you to make a one minute video of a potential guildie for The Guild that would obviously get rejected -- in other words, a worst guild candidate ever video contest. So maybe you could clearly be a loot hog, or not know anything about your character (but claim to know everything). Or whatever else you come up with -- it sounds like they want the entries to be as embarrassingly bad as possible. To enter, you'll just have to create a video, upload it to a sharing site like YouTube or Vimeo (make sure you save a high-quality original of it just in case), and then drop them an email with a link to the video.

Sounds like fun. If you win, you'll get featured on their website, and/or have a chance to get your video on their season 3 DVD release. They've also got legal rules over on their site (unfortunately, it's US-only, like so many other contests on the Internet), and have discussions about the contest going on their forums as well. Good luck to all who enter -- we can't wait to see the results!