Despite producing what many feel are music videos with no substance, Baron Soosdon has inspired many machinimators in the WoW community. One such player, Eagleshadow, decided to create a machinima, Lost in Dreams, after seeing the Unlimited Escapism series. Armed with only Sony Vegas 8 and Fraps, he did a great job for this being his first video! While not recommended on Warcraftmovies yet, we have a feeling that we'll be seeing much more from him in the future.

[Thanks, Baron Soosdon!]

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ...

If you missed the WoW PvP action at the Worldwide Invitational, now's your chance to catch up. Selections from the 3v3 Arena Tournament action in Paris, including the final match between Council of Mages and Improved Clicks, are now available for download at the WWI tournament page.

If you're interested in improving your PvP game, it's amazing how much watching videos of good players in action can help. You learn a lot about how to use your class, and how other classes operate when you look at them from a 3rd person point of view and watch for patterns.

Of course, if you need a bit more help getting a handle on the action, you can also check our coverage of the tournament, as well as Amanda Dean's wrap-up thoughts.

Do you have any unusual World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. We prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. And corpse graffiti of "lolblizzsux" is never funny.

The holiday weekend is over, and the time is night for you to vote for the winners of this week's Caption This contest. Sorry for the one-day delay -- the comments weren't showing up on some computers, including my home comp. As compensation, I upped the number of finalists from ten to an even dozen -- more chances to win! And now you get to decide who goes home with a 60-day game card, a choice of one of seven World of Warcraft action figures as detailed in the original post, or nothing but wistful memories. Just pick the best caption for the above picture. Voting closes tomorrow, Thursday, July 10, at 11:59 PM EST, and winners will be informed shortly afterward by e-mail.

Remember, entrants must be U.S. or non-Quebec Canadians at least 13 years old. If you'd like to peruse the contest's official rules, they can be found here. Thanks for voting!

NOTE: Holyground and Nectarofgods had great entries that unfortunately did not fit into the poll. So I'm putting them here instead, and you can vote for them below:

Holyground:

Six little maids from school are we,
Pert as a school-girl well can be,
Filled to the brim with girlish glee,
Six little maids from school!

Six little maids who, all unwary,
Come from a ladies' seminary,
Freed from its genius tutelary -
Six little maids from school!

Nectarofgods:

Warlock: You know, I really thought those mages up in fancy Stormwind Keep would have the Burning Legion under control by now...

Priest: Yeah, King Llane must be pretty busy to let so many through the gates. Maybe we should warn someone?

Warlock: What are they gonna do...bite our ankles and cast spells at our knees?!?!

Priest: Right. I'll throw a piece of cheese and a cheap engineering pattern on the ground to distract them for now while you Seed of Corruption.

Calling the World of Warcraft an international phenomena is probably not too much of an understatement. It's showing up in pop culture more and more, and its active subscriptions blow away the competition. Of course, there's always people who insist that the WoW craze will pass, that there's a WoW killer game just around the corner, and all that.

While this may happen some day, it doesn't look like that day is going to be coming any time soon. For example, the latest numbers on PC Game sales in the UK show World of Warcraft: Battle Chest reaching the top of the sales heap for the week, jumping up from the fourth position last week ahead of titles like Mass Effect and Age of Conan.

The surge in popularity might be attributable in part to the Worldwide Invitational. The hype was pretty hot and heavy both here and around the web, and I'm sure more than a few people might have hopped off the fence and decided to see what the fuss was about. Regardless, it's certainly good to see that WoW is not giving up its crown any time soon.

The Falcon controller just looks silly, doesn't it? Everything we've heard about it so far says it's pretty underwhelming -- the feedback doesn't work quite right, the controls seem a little less intuitive than a keyboard and mouse, and in general, it just looks strange. Fortunately, I'll be able to know for myself next week -- I've already got an appointment to check out the controller (and how it plays WoW) at E3 next week.

But in the meantime, until I can get my firsthand impressions of the Falcon up here, what are some other strange controllers that actually do work with WoW? We've heard a lot about the Zboard, which seems like a pretty good combination of a keyboard and a custom controller for Blizzard's MMO -- anyone used it? A lot of people have posted before that they use the Logitech G15, and that's really just a keyboard, except for the extra display and macros. I've used Switchblade to play with an Xbox 360 controller (and found it not nearly as easy as playing with a mouse and keyboard). And I know some players, multiboxers usually, will even use foot pedals to supplement keyboard and certain macros.

Ever played WoW with a weird controller? Is there something out there that you swear by that's not the standard mouse and keyboard? Me, I'm perfectly happy with an Apple Keyboard and my Logitech gaming mouse -- at least until I try the Falcon next week. You never know, maybe I'll fall in love with it and decide that $190 (!) is worth it.

Update: I couldn't remember the name of this one, but a lot of people in the comments (and a lot of folks before this post) have mentioned the n52 Speedpad as a good controller option.

The Ruin Battlegroup of the European servers will be getting a new English language PvE server named Blade's Edge, Thundgot has announced.

It will be a completely new realm, which means no transfers allowed for the first few months. In addition, the Ahn'Qiraj gates will be closed -- which means this is your chance to get a group over there and start powerleveling toward the Qiraji battle tank and the Scarab Lord title. Apparently, some people have been complaining about queue times in the Ruin battlegroup for some time, so hopefully this should ease those problems once people get on and start leveling.

The server will open today at 17:00 Paris time. Good luck to everyone who decides to reroll there!

Update: Strike that, it looks like they decided to let the it go live right after maintenance. Thanks for the heads up, Roelof.

In my humble opinion the refreshment table is pretty neat idea. A Mage spend two Arcane Powders and starts casting the ritual, then two others join in. Viola! A buffet of yummy, health-and-mana-regenerating, Manna Biscuit goodness appears before your raid. The table sticks around for five minutes or however long it takes to deplete its fifty stacks of food. This is probably one of Blizzard's best additions.

In it's own way, the Ritual of Refreshment is also kind of a curse for Mages. True- the reagents cost a total seventeen silver at the vendor, that's not hard to swallow. Keylogger of Stormscale is annoyed by requests for tables. She pointed out that anyone with a friendly level of reputation with the Shattered Sun Offensive can purchase Naaru Rations, no badgering required. Other posters agreed that it's not the process of casting that's at issue, but the sense of entitlement from other folks about a table.

A little while back, we checked out a Facebook app to show your WoW characters in your profiles, and just this week, reader Orangelick asked for an update to the other app we linked to, called I Play WoW. Previously, I couldn't get it working, but I gave it another try, and as you can see above, it works just fine. In fact, it's pretty customizable, even moreso than what I implemented above -- you can upload a picture for your character, and even give status and description updates for every character on the roster.

If you're looking for some WoW representation on Facebook, it'll do you right. The only real complaint I have is that it doesn't by default show off any armor or stats that you have (the other app, WoW Armory, does, and here's another app that's even flashier if you want to go that way), but then again, how many of your Facebook friends really want to follow your characters that closely? And there's a quick link to the Armory page for those who do. All in all, nice app, and the perfect way to show a little WoW pride on Facebook.

Keyboards, mice, and hand-controllers are so 2007. Get with the modern times, willya? Today we discovered that a 3D touch interface is on the horizon for WoW gamers. Using this weird robot-type gizmo, you'll be able to actually feel everything your character does in the game: casting spells, reeling from enemy attacks, feeling objects, bumping into things, and whacking ogres on the head! (I seriously want to bonk some ogres on the head with this thing. I expect it will feel somewhat hollow, like smacking a pumpkin.)

The gizmo is called a Falcon game controller and it aims to replace your mouse or joystick. The Falcon is already usable with some other games, but Novint Technologies is now creating WoW drivers for the device using the LUA scripting system. You can map up to 36 actions to it for which the controller will provide feedback that you can feel in your hand and arm. You can watch a demo on the company's website, or a more hands-on demo in the video below. When the drivers are released, you can download them at Novint's website. We'll keep you up to date so you'll know when you can grab them. The Falcon controller sells for $189.99 on Novint's website. No word on what the drivers will cost, if anything.

At the Worldwide Invitational, MTV interviewed two Blizzard executives: Paul Sams, Chief Operating Officer, and Frank Pearce, Executive Vice President of Product Development. It's an interesting read -- if not the best interview I've ever read -- which includes more info on Diablo 3, mobile apps, and thoughts about MMOs in general. The duo leaves the door open for Blizzard to create an MMO that might "cannibalize" the WoW player base, although for some reason they are not convinced that Diablo 3 will impact that base. (I, for one, disagree. The huge response we got to the Diablo news on WoW Insider tells us that there is a huge amount of crossover between the franchises.) They also don't believe that there's much overlap between Starcraft and WoW. Frank stressed that, regardless of what the marketing research might say, "those aren't necessarily the data points that we use for decision-making when it comes to the games that we want to make."

Read on to see what Blizzard says about time between game releases and new MMOs.

Okay, so we've been waiting for this moment for a few months. The waiting probably hasn't involved breathless anticipation or anything, but there's definitely been waiting. It's now official, and there's very little to go wrong -- Vivendi is merging with Activision, destroying the Vivendi Games name in favor of the new entity: Activision-Blizzard.

Activision shareholders (and a little regulation-fu) were the only hold ups to the process. Today, Activision shareholders voted 92% in favor of merging with Vivendi. Which means that 8% voted against the deal -- I have to wonder what they were thinking. The old Vivendi folks have a 52% control of the new company (called Activision-Blizzard), which is projected to clock over $3.8 billion dollars annually.

The close date is tomorrow -- it's still technically possible that an enormous asteroid may fall from the heavens, plunging the entirety of the Earth into a post-nuclear wasteland. Or, zombies could attack. Maybe Zombie Murlocs, with their own MySpace accounts. But short of a Murloc invasion (I, for one, welcome our new Mrlglglglge overlords), there's nothing left for the merger but for the fat lady to sing.

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is now Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus. This week, unforeseen and uncontrollable forces have delayed the column by a week and a few days. For the next few weeks, I'll be taking a look into the depths of Black Temple from a Priestly perspective starting with Naj'entus, Supremus, and Shade of Akama.

Black Temple used to be the most challenging raid instance in the game. Now that honour belongs to the Sunwell. This week, I will help guide you through the trials and tribulations enroute to Illidan. I wanted to write this column for a while but I did not feel it was appropriate since I had no Illidan kill under the belt. We killed him last week and I want to share what I've learned to Priests that are fighting and progressing their way through this milestone instance. I'm only going to list stuff that's relevant for Priests to know about.