The dialogue and action is a little awkward. The voice acting and scripting all seem in earnest, and the heart’s in the right place, but there are a few too many tropes and cliches scattered through the character interaction. I chalk this up to this being UltraViolet’s first piece. Her pacing, plot plan, and basic flow all seem pretty good. She just needs some more time working with her actors, and putting pen to paper, to get away from some of the easy-fallbacks for dialogue. I’m eager to see how the plot develops for Chapter 2, given the promise I see in this installment.

As the story goes, there’s been a recent rash of deaths in Elwynn Forest. (Presumably, not Hogger’s fault.) All the victims are young women, lacking any tell-tale signs of how their deaths may have occured. The story’s focused on a young barmaid named Elane, whose greatest concern in life is dodging every bit of work that comes her way. Hijinks ensue, including the appearance of a mysterious figure.

The first thing I want to say about UltraViolet’s work is that I’m strongly encouraged that the main character isn’t a “Mary Sue.” If you’re not familiar with the term, a “Mary Sue” is an escapist character written by an author. The character is usually the most awesome, coolest thing ever. (This is a criticism often applied to Bella in the Twilight series.) By virtue of Elane’s faults and characterization, I’m pretty sure Elane isn’t serving as a prop for UltraViolet’s fantasies, and that gives me a lot of hope for the continuing series.

Blizzard missed out in the actual game nominations — for best PC game, the expansion was overshadowed by Fallout 3, Crysis Warhead, Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria, and Left 4 Dead. You can argue amongst yourselves whether that’s justified or not. But we’re sure Blizzard is happy with the animation nomination anyway — their competition there is Turbo Dogs, so they’ll probably do fine when the awards are announced on April 25th.

Throw another nomination on the list for Wrath of the Lich King — Blizzard’s cinematic team has been nominated for an Elan award for the WotLK cinematic in the category of Best Animated Short Subject. And the nom is well deserved: while the trailer broke with the tradition of showing the various races and classes of Warcraft doing battle with each other, Blizzard’s choice to instead recap the story of Arthas and the Lich King while he summoned Sindragosa worked well and looked amazing.

• Mania went exploring in Silvermoon on the PTR to find the new low level Tenacity pets that young Blood Elf Hunters will be able to tame in Patch 3.1.


• TankingTips has their 7th Podcast up covering Dual Specs, true Main Tanks and when to step down as MT.


• Bloodarrow has created a video explaing his Survival Hunter UI (embedded above). The list of AddOns he used in the video are listed in the sidebar of his site.


• One Rogue’s Journey has also created a video, this one to show how the ClassTimer AddOn works in his new Friday Morning Mod series.


• Lorecrafted.com gathers what we know about Ulduar lore and speculates what is going on with Northrend’s major players.

When I watched the trailer, however, I was pleasantly proven wrong. It’s very short, so don’t go looking for Shakespearean epic here. The trailer opens with shots of Northrend, with ponderous, thoughtful music haunting in the background. An orc climbs an ice slope, looking over the scenery. A voiceover regrets sins made in the past, and then closes with hope that this new place could be different from what’s come before.

This is going to be a PvP video? Okay, I’m sold — I can’t wait to see it. If this trailer is indicative of what the full video will be like, I think Gazzamah could really do something special in terms of that limited genre. Actual story in my PvP? I’m all for it!Machinima based on PvP can be tricky. It’s very easy to fall into the trap of just stringing together huge crit numbers, ultimate pwnage, and a Linkin Park soundtrack. So, when I first read the summary text for Gazzamah’s Crestfallen III trailer, I wasn’t expecting much. It’s a teaser for an upcoming PvP video. “What’s this going to be?” I thought. “Only one or two big crit numbers?” And it’s a trailer, after all. Too often, trailers promise a beautiful movie that will ultimately never get made.

Take a watch through the video when you have a moment today. And don’t forget to check out the previews of the Tier 8 gear MMO-Champion is offering.Our intrepid YouTube adventurer Dan O’Halloran found this video posted back on the 5th of January this year detailing the Ulduar raid zone thus far. It was made using private server technology, and contains heavy spoilers. You’ve been warned.

However there are areas which are vibrant and high quality. Parts of the place resemble (as expected) the ancient gods look to it. The place could (and will) be sitting right next to the Halls of Lightning.When you watch the video you’ll notice that much of it is incomplete. Large areas are nothing more than gray swaths with no content in them. This is intentional and normal – the areas just are not developed yet.

First, the entire movie is basically framed as if it were a comic book. I like when PvP movie-makers take a little extra time to try and present the action in a new and interesting way. Insane Gouge Crits did something similar a few weeks ago, and I’m definitely interested to see where this trend will go. Dialogue in speech bubbles, framed shots, and even the opening magazine cover reinforce the 4-color world of Fleks.

Second, Flekz puts effort into being playful with the movie. Odd cuts and angles frame scenes in a jaunty kind of way. (Do I lose points for using the word ‘jaunty’?) It refers to Flekz as ‘our hero,’ reminiscent of other web-slinging comic books that play with 4th wall awareness. PvP movies aren’t the normal trade of WoW Moviewatch, but we do occasionally see PvP movies that we want to mention. It’s good to be aware of the variety out there, and maybe each genre can learn a little something from one another. Flekz from Eredar (EU) created Fleks Fire PvP 5 as a movie mostly about, you got it, his fire mage doing stuff in PvP. But there’ are a few things in this that I want to point out as being special and interesting.

You are invited to download the full-sized version (82MB) of this movie here.As always, a great big Thank You to the WoW Insider editors for allowing us to publish this movie both here and on our little blog at the same time!

The Oracles have some nice stuff for hunters, the least of which is a pretty trinket, the Oracle Talisman of Ablution. But there’s more to the Oralces than loot and a cool hipster named Lafoo. (Don’t mention Moodle to us; he’s a cad and very ungentlemanly.)

Irdeen relates on Myndflame that this was his first effort at creating music, so the results are even that more impressive. Also, the pet skunk seems to be showing up a lot this year, which is interesting from a meta-analysis standpoint. Kind of makes me wonder what next years machinima star is going to be — so far, it’s the skunk this year.You may remember when Irdeen was first reported on WoW Moviewatch about five months ago, featured with his opening machinima The Little Gnome. As feel good and uplifting as that piece was, Irdeen’s back for this holiday season with Go Turbo Go. I think it is just as endearing as the first.

The story is about the same main character from “The Little Gnome.” Notably, Irdeen created the soundtrack, in its entirety, for this piece. That’s a pretty nice factiod, since I found the audio to be appropriate and satisfying.

Percula does say that he’s thankful for both the positive feedback and constructive criticism he’s seen since the release of BLIND. Although, as you might expect, he’s having trouble keeping up with sheer volume of emails.It’s heartening to see a newcomer to the machinima scene make such a big breakthrough.If you didn’t catch the Craft of War: BLIND when we featured it on Friday, now’s a good time to check it out above. the real news is that Percula, the creator and animator of the movie, has issued a little more information about who he is, and where he comes from.

According to Percula, the future of BLIND is somewhat uncertain. This is because he did work for a game studio, but was laid off a few months ago. The high praise he’s received makes it more likely that he’s going to do a sequel, probably called something along the lines of Execute or Counterspell.

There’s no dialogue, but BLIND didn’t need it. You can imagine a storyline, filling in the holes from the tropes and memes as you watch an expert assassin working her way through Stormwind. This is some of the best action footage I’ve seen from WoW graphics. The movements are believable and complex, the fights are well paced. Percula says if the response is postiive enough, he’ll follow-up with more. I can’t imagine anything but postive response to this movie. Even the soundtrack was spot-on, expertly pacing the aerobatics and ninja skills.

Percula posted The Craft of War: BLIND on Vimeo, claiming that it’s only the second creative work he’s ever publically shared. I can’t imagine what reams of work he must have privately, because I found this movie to be incredibly astounding.