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"Ah, there you are. Caught me in the midst of an epic tome, I must say. Please, do have a seat by the fire, and welcome... to Blade Masterpiece Theater. Zug zug, good chap."
This week's dose of silly is a nice one panel sight gag that can be considered anything but high brow humor. I am fairly happy with how the shading came out on this one - once again I seem to be in good graces with the patron saint of Corel Painter, and I hope that particular buff doesn't fade any time soon. As always, I am constantly experimenting with the process I use to create these comics. In this particular instance, I left the sketch mostly intact, skipped the inking phase and went straight to coloring. The final results are less "clean" but more pleasing to the eye, I think. More experiments to follow in the coming weeks, I assure you.
This week's delayed example of "the silly" features a small PvP skirmish, cut decidedly short in a way that would be technically impossible due to a minor thing called global cool downs, but suspending that tiny fact for a moment allows this minuscule joke to flow a little bit better.
I would like to keep an open line of communication between you and I, my blog reading friends, and so I will be completely honest when I say that I'm not at all happy with how this one came out. There *was* supposed to be shading, but it was so botched that I felt it was better to strip the comic back to it's base flat colors in order to get the comic up and mark this one down as a loss. It's a shame, too, as I think the joke itself has a lot of merit if I could only get the art to communicate it a little better. Let's see if I can hit that goal for next week.
Sorry to start your Tuesday morning with such horrid, gut wrenchingly bad news, guys and gals. This week's /silly comic is a longer work of sequential art then the ones I've posted previously, and its taking a bit more time to complete then I intended. So I'm going to have to take the next few nights to finish the comic up and have something for your optical enjoyment by Thursday. In the mean time, I offer up the above page out of my sketchbook to tide you over, a concept I had dreamed up for Gnomish racial armor. I figured that each piece of the set would have its own on click ability, something odd and most likely electricity based with a chance of completely backfiring upon yourself and/or your entire party. Fun times to be had by all!
It appears that it is time for me to branch out from my usual silly antics here on WoW Insider, and take a moment to flex my writing skills instead of my artistic ones. Today I would like to speak to you about some of the long history of WoW, but not in the "Know Your Lore" sense of history. WoW Insider reader Tim wrote in to request some information on the evolution of World of Warcraft, from its infancy in beta to launch and beyond and I, having been here through the majority of it, decided that I should put pen to paper (fingers to keyboard?) and share what I know and what I have witnessed along the way.
Are you aware (and I'm sure some of you are) that at one point in World of Warcraft, there was an experience penalty suffered when you were slain? Indeed, even though the lack of experience loss is one of the things that sets current WoW apart from other MMOs, back in its infancy the death penalty was practically the same as what you would find in EverQuest or Final Fantasy XI, though without the de-leveling found in the latter.
Let us take a moment to sit down, pull up a cup of your favorite socially acceptable beverage, and go over a handful of the many changes that WoW has gone through since Blizzard introduced it to a select number of beta testers back in 2004.
You know, this strip is called /silly, and it's the one dedicated place here on WoW Insider where you don't have to worry about the weight of the world (of Warcraft), but I dont think this guy pictured above is enjoying himself in the slightest. If looks could kill, poor Mr. Tauren would probably cause a very slow and painful death to anyone who met his gaze, like being run over by a steamroller or being nibbled to death by ravenous toothless kittens. I can't really blame him for being miserable, though. The WoW Dev Team in the fictional alternate dimension he is stuck in seem to have it out for his entire race. Click the image above to find out what I'm talking about. For those who weren't around during the original Beta, here is a little bit more info about what you missed. Don't worry, we wont hold it against you. (Slacker :P)
Sometimes we, as players, do some incredibly silly things. Even after, say, 45-50 levels of dealing with the character, learning the tricks of the trade and the ways of your class, we can still make mistakes which may or may not lead to our certain doom. In the case of our poor Tauren friend in this week's comic, that certain doom is very, very certain and all together rather doomish. Clicking on the big florescent green "Click Here" symbol will reveal this doomed fate to you, but don't say I didn't warn you: There will be doom involved.
Speaking of doomed fate, somewhere just beyond this sentence there is likely a link that says (more...) and clicking on it will more then likely provide you this elusive "more" they keep promising all over the Internet. Go ahead, click it. You will see.
Greetings all! Welcome once again to another /silly, my weekly attempt to bring a little spark of humor into your topsy-turvy lives. Today I would like to introduce you to the lovely lady pictured above. But not until after "the jump", as the cool kids are calling it nowadays. No, really, they do call it that. You just can't make something like that up.
Welcome to the first official WoW Insider web comic, from here on titled /silly! I would be your host, artist, and creative mind behind these little forays into the realm of visual expression, Arthur E. "Arturis" Orneck. Each week, I plan to bring a new slice of /silly pie to share with all of you WoW Insider readers, so BYO Sense of Humor and we will see where things go with this!
As a disclaimer for the future, please keep in mind that a sense of humor is a subjective thing - Some of these comics will tickle your bone de funny, and some will not. If I happen to post something the doesn't exactly strike your fancy, please hang in there and hopefully next week's submission will hit the spot.
Another thing to keep in mind as we go through this, my art style is is subject to change from comic to comic (or even panel to panel) and layout isn't set in stone either, so some comics may have a ton of panels while others can be a single frame experience. I'm learning this as I go, and hopefully we all will enjoy the ride.
With that said, click the above teaser panel for the full comic, and let me know what you think in the comments! Time to charge in to this thing headfirst in official WoW fashion:
"Let's do this. Leeeeerroooooooooooooooooyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy..."
