Starting in 1996, Alexa Internet has been donating their crawl data to the Internet Archive. Flowing in every day, these data are added to the Wayback Machine after an embargo period.
Do you love creating machinima but lack the motivation to publish your own films? You're in luck. Warcraftmovies.com has just announced the opening of The Fabled Few contest. With $2000.00 in cash and prizes to be won, there is plenty of incentive to get your movies made.
The contest submissions begin today and go through November 12th, so if you haven't gotten your magnum opus finished you still have a bit of time. There are three categories you can compete in: Drama, Comedy, and Music. The first prize is $1000 in cash. That's a lot of tacos, my friend. Should you win the grand prize your film will also be featured for an entire weekend on WarcraftMovies.com. Most importantly, make sure you send us info on your submission here at WoW Insider so we can Moviewatch that triumph I'm sure your work will be.
We'vecoveredinterviewsbefore, and there was even an interview with a Death Knight recently on the World of Warcraft website. But I haven't in recent memory been able to recall an interview with a Tauren, especially not one who is also a movie star.So when I saw that Oxhorn, actor, producer, composer and all around swell cow was interviewed by the Alliance Herald, I admit more than the usual excitement.Maybe I'm more of a fan than I let on.
We learned through the Alliance Herald's questions that Oxhorn is both an only child and an orphan. Apparently there seems to be some hints that the elves had something to do with his current familial situation, but no real details were given.Oxhorn spends his days in Kalimdor, mostly roaming Mulgore and Orgrimmar, and has yet to set foot in Outland.
I think the title of "Godfather of Machinima" might already be claimed (by either Tristan Pope or Paul Marino, depending on who you ask), but when the history books are all written on the art of making films with 3D engines, I'll be darned if the folks at Strange Company don't at least get listed as uncles and aunts. They've been making films from games since before it was cool to do so, and both Hugh Hancock, Strange Company's founder, and Johnnie Ingram, have been tireless advocates of the form.
WoW Insider got an exclusive chance to speak with these two Uncles of Machinima before their big premiere this coming weekend about how to make machinima (for dummies, of course), machinima's main "competition," how tough it is to make a living doing what Strange Company does, and what's next for the makers of BloodSpell. Read on for the complete interview. Thanks to Hugh Hancock and Johnnie Ingram for speaking with us, and we with them the best of luck at the festival this weekend!
I have to admit, when I saw this particular video come up on the WoW LJ community, I couldn't believe my eyes. But sure enough, it appears that Toyota has figured out that World of Warcraft is a good way to attract the attention of tons of folks. Anyone who has ever seen the original Leeroy Jenkins video knows what they're trying to draw a correlation to. I'd also be willing to bet whoever designed this plays WoW themselves.
In any case, I would bet that it won't be long before we hear "Four wheels of FURY!" and "I am the LAWGIVER!" all over the place.
In the newest video from Nyhm, creator of Can't PuG KZ and Death Knight Spree, we're treated to his newest spin on things going on in WoW. This time around Nyhm actually decided to jump from his beloved Warlock and give us the skinny from another caster class -- the Mage! This one features a parody of a 50 cent song and some pretty witty observations about Mage group utility and abilities. We all know Mages are the best snack machines in game, but you have to admit that Nyhm's served this tasty Mage treat up with style.
In order "to nurture the advancement and growth" of the Machinima community, Blizzard has launched a Machinima information page.
Currently they have a selection of movies to view, but the really interesting thing, to me at least, is the Guide for Fair Use video creation or the Letter to Machinimators of the world. This document describes the main rules for making WoW movies and not getting into trouble. Here are some highlights:
Your movie has to be non-commercial - so no selling it or charging fees to view it.
It has to have a T (Teen) rating, just like the game.
If you want to enter a non-Blizzard contest, festival or get your movie shown on TV, you have to get a Content Use License from Blizzard first.
You can have sponsors, but sponsor related content must be limited to 10 seconds and be clearly labeled.
They encourage the use of WoW movies for educational use.
Future additions to this page will include a forum specifically for WoW moviemakers where staff members will answer questions for movie noobs as well as established veterans. There will also be a FAQ, artist Q&A and more contests. Though they don't wish to compete with sites like YouTube, they will also be doing some hosting of videos eventually.
Blizzard has always been supportive to the Machinima community with their contests and displaying the winners to a large audience at BlizzCon. Obviously, they see the benefits of further encouraging the spreading of the Warcraft word via visual media.
Do you moviemakers out there consider this a step forward or an attempt to gain more control?
Last week, Blizzard released a new machinima movie called Lament of the Highbourne, featuring Sylvana's performance of the old Quel'dorei song and a retelling of what went down between her and Arthas Menethil, now known as the Lich King. WoW Insider, being the extreme lore geeks that we are, has put together a video analysis of the movie that Blizzard released, featuring an almost frame-by-frame commentary about Sylvanas' story. You can see the finished product above-- prepare to be lore-geeked out.
Two things that didn't make it into the commentary above in time: reader Lift sent us a bit of insight about Arthas riding an Undead mount-- does that mean, he asks, that Death Knights will get their own Warlock/Paladin-esque mount? And one more thing we noticed-- the spectre behind Arthas as he resurrects Sylvanas may well be the Lich King himself. By all means: discuss.
Redshift: Interlude is a prequel to the Redshift movie we posted for you a few days ago. Even though it has one character in common with the earlier story, the high elf Aislynn, it's really a story all its own. This Redshift series is shaping up to be about the ways in which predictions of the future influence the actual progression of events. At the end of this movie, there's even a hint of a future Redshift episode about a night elf, which looks interesting.
The maker of this movie, Sedrin, also did the astounding music video "Frame of Mind." He has an uncanny talent for making serious machinima credible and believable.
For those who are interested, "redshift" is also a scientific term that denotes the way in which stars traveling away from the observer are seen to be a bit redder than they actually are, because as they move away, the wavelength of the light they emit increases. This is just like the Doppler Effect, in which a car moving away from you has a deeper sound than a car moving towards you. In this story, though, it may be that "redshift" just refers to the way visions of the future seem to have this red tint over them -- yet on the other hand, perhaps there's something symbolic there too, that no matter how you look into the future, it will always be beyond your grasp.
Lots of good news recently on the WoW Machinima front -- both for fans and artists. First, we had Blizzard's recent "open letter" to the machinimators of Warcraft letting them know just what they can and can't get away with. In that, they also offered a contact to the artists on how to get more information if the letter wasn't good enough to codify things. Follow that with some fabulous new machinima out recently from Oxhorn, Baron Soosdon, and many others.
And then we see on the Machinima for Dummies blog, and in a great tip mail from Hugh, that Machinima Europe has announced their nominees for this year. Among the many entries from all across the world are a few solid entries from WoW! In the "Best Commercial/Game" category, we have 4 commercials for MtvU by Oxhorn. Later down the page we see that Oxhorn has received another nomination for yet another machinima -- Hark! Hear the Wails in the "Best Sound" category. Further down we see the third and final WoW nomination into this years' Machinima Europe awards, Azerothian Super Villains (Episode 3) by Ian Beckman. Hopefully they both will come away with awards and even more recognition for their fabulous creativity.
Best of luck to all of the nominees this year, but especially to our WoW machinimators -- without whom, WoW Moviewatch (and many lunch-hour viewings) wouldn't be possible.
We have discussed ways in which World of Warcraft is not only full of audio-visual art, but presents in itself a gaming experience that can reward players the same way that art forms like music or film can. For some, however, WoW is not only a game, but a stage. For them, the gaming element may sometimes fade into the background, when it becomes only a means to an end; they use WoW as a combination of acting and creative writing, telling stories and making performances all their own. They call it roleplaying.
One kind of roleplaying that is getting a great deal of new attention these days is "machinima." For those who don't know, machinima is basically a kind of film in which people use the game's existing 3D models and environments to make their own movies, and then share these movies with everyone on the internet (or very rarely on TV). As we have seen here at WoW Insider and elsewhere, these movies are especially powerful as comedies and music videos, especially for viewers who are already familiar with the game that they're made with.
But for most people who roleplay, it is not a scripted performance, but an improvised one; it is not carefully lip-synced, edited recorded and for all to see, but imagined, written out, and remembered only among those who played the parts. Someone not familiar with roleplaying might wonder why people bother with it.
The original video this is paying homage to is a machinima by Dopefish. Baron Soosdon has taken that original exploration concept in hand and with Snoman's updated model-work, provides us with an interesting machinima full of beautiful music and lovely dark imagery. While I've no idea if it was intended, the imagery makes me think of the upcoming Wrath of the Lich King expansion. (I hope it looks half that cool!)
In any case, hats off to Baron Soosdon, Snoman, and Dopefish for their combined ideas that give us this lovely Sunday Break to enjoy!
Yesterday we saw the story of Arthas as he rose (or sank, some would say), from the holy paladin prince of Lordaeron to the most powerful evil person in Azeroth, lord of vast armies of mindless undead -- all recorded from the original Warcraft 3 cut-scenes.
Today we bring you an similar piece that Sylvictus put together for The Burning Crusade, about Illidan's journey from down-in-the-dumps reject brother to the most powerful evil person in Outland, lord of mish-mashed groups of villians and misfits who really aren't as loyal to him as they seem. It doesn't actually begin from the real beginning of Illidan story -- you'll have to go to the Warcraft prequel novels to get that, but as far as the official in-game lore is concerned, this is real deal. Also keep in mind that the end isn't really the end for Illidan here. Illidan, too, is capable of doing a corpse run, and has acquired plenty of prime real estate in Outland to come home to. For those who are interested, the trailer for Blizzard's "Black Temple" patch also touched on Illidan's story, this time from the draenei Akama's point of view. It doesn't include Illidan's conflict with Arthas, but it sets the stage for the progression of the story within WoW.
So if you've been playing The Burning Crusade all this time and wondering what the deal was with the big blind guy with horns and wings, here's the story of Illidan Stormrage straight from Warcraft 3.
One of the things that I learned last weekend at Dragon*Con was a great deal more about machinima than I'd ever really known before. Sure, I've got FRAPS, and I've tried to make cool music videos too. Then I realized that I'd need something more interesting than my Tauren Druid running around to my favorite Rush song. So my dreams of making machinima went by the wayside, best left to the machinimators with that little thing called "talent."
One of the things that I always wondered about was just precisely what you could and couldn't get away with in regards to making films using World of Warcraft. After all, the characters on my account are Blizzard's IP. I could argue about not being paid for it, but I've always been curious about the larger legal issues involved.
Blizzard has finally put out what they consider to be their acceptable use policies in regards to machinima created using Blizzard's IP. After listening to the talk that Matt Kelland and Clint Hackleman gave during the Machinima 101 panel at Dragon*Con, I'm pretty happy to see that Blizzard has taken such a step to reach out to the community. This open letter lets artists know they have the potential ability to get licenses to show their work, and just how much commercial "sponsorship" is acceptable. It also defines where many of the boundaries are (for example their edict that movie/video content remain consistent with World of Warcraft's "T" rating) that I feel will hopefully help to clear some things up on where the artists stand in all of this legally.
For those of you who are budding machinimators, check out Blizzard's open letter. It's fairly straightforward reading, and they've gone so far as to put a contact email address in for specific concerns not outlined in their letter. With these guidelines in hand, hopefully artists will feel free to go in even more creative directions in the future.
That's the World of Warcraft that You Play. Guards. The University of Stormwind. Azerothian Supervillians. Some of the best and most popular WoW machinima has come from the mind of one man: Ian Beckman. I met Ian at the WoW Insider meetup during BlizzCon last month, and just recently, we got together to do an interview about how he makes his movies, whether machinima has made the mainstream or not, and what's next, both for Azerothian Supervillians (Episode 4 coming soon), and a "crazy project" that he says will "blow everyone's pants off."
The interview starts right after the jump. Thanks very much to Ian for sitting down with us.
You've seen a crazy good PvP video that shows a top ranked player's latest moves or maybe a short clip of the latest epic mount and now you want to make a Warcraft film of your own. With two simple programs you can make a video in an hour or less. It's not going to be an epic story of love and war across the ages, but it can be anything in game you want to show your friends, guildmates or the world whether it's a guild event, a boss fight or an Arena battle.
In this article, I'm going to cover the very basics of Machinima (making movies using game footage.) By the end of this feature, you'll be able to record, edit and post a short video of your exploits in Azeroth. You can see a demonstration of how to make a Warcraft film by clicking on the short video tutorial above. Otherwise, read on for step-by-step instructions complete with screenshots and recommendations for advanced techniques.
I think the title of "Godfather of Machinima" might already be claimed (by either Tristan Pope or Paul Marino, depending on who you ask), but when the history books are all written on the art of making films with 3D engines, I'll be darned if the folks at 
