So, with Children's Week upon us, the lore buff in me was wondering something: What's going to happen with Salandria?
If you had a high level character Horde last year and did the Shattrath Orphan's Week quest, you know what I'm talking about. Salandria, your Blood ElfOrphan, is a somewhat snooty and stuck up girl who loves to stick her nose where it might not be safe (such as the fire elemental up at the Throne of Elements), but she seems mostly like a normal, if slightly precocious girl.
The machinima community will eat this one right up. What do you need to do? Create a music video for L70ETC's new song, which can be downloaded right on the contest page. The video can be no larger than 50 MB and must be recorded in .WMV, .MOV, or .AVI formats. The rewards are pretty swanky, too. Three Grand Prize winners will receive an 8GB iPod Touch, and the five First Place winners will get a G15 Logitech keyboard and a signed copy of the World of Warcraft Battlechest.
Personally, I'm wondering how long they've been sitting on this song. It's a fun song, don't get me wrong, but it's a little outdated. Perdition's Blade? Really? I suppose Netherblade came with The Burning Crusade, but the rest is pretty old school!
Acerba of Cenarion Circle started a pretty fun discussion the other day on her server boards: What type of music would typify various races and cultures of Azeroth? Sure, we all have our soundtracks for when we get tired of the in-game music, and the in-game music itself often has various themes that show again and again music to represent various concepts, but thinking about what music your character would listen to or what sounds you might here around a bonfire at Razor Hill (Well, besides L70ETC) or in a fine mansion in Silvermoon City is a really fun exercise. I'm one who often creates soundtracks for my PnP and MMORPG characters alike in order to understand this, so I find it a useful exercise for us roleplayers, as well.
Glenn Rane is the other artist sitting next to Samwise (who you may also recognize as the frontman for L70ETC), and also in attendance were Tom Bava, Randy Gallegos, Terese Nielsen and Justin Sweet, along with Ben Thompson, who we're told was a big part of putting the book together. I suppose it's too much to ask for Blizzard to leave sunny Southern California sometime to do these signings and meet some of us who aren't lucky enough to live there? It is? Oh well -- at least it keeps them close to their real work.
Did you know that the Tauren Chieftains (formerly Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain) hang out on a balcony in Silvermoon City inbetween gigs? Well, some of you do, but as usual, I'm late to the party.
If you are the L70ETC fangirl (or boy) that I am, head on over to the Walk of Elders in Silvermoon. You'll see their manager chatting with some groupies. Then just look up to the terrace above to see our favorite in-game band. Each of the Chieftains will /dance with you, /wave at you, /rude at you and if you /kiss at one, he will flex for you.
If you're not a fellow Hordie, you can make a Blood Elf noob and just run over to Silvermoon City. It's a safe run and should be easy to find. The band is just inside the entrance and to the right.
I spent quite a long time trying out emotes on the band and giggling happily. But I'm a dork. Insert fangirl noise here.
Were you able to find another emote they respond to? Isn't Samuro dreamy?
Blizzard's Mike Morhaime is headed for the Hall of Fame-- the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences Hall of Fame, that is. The AIAS is going to honor him for contributing to "a significant advancement within the industry, while demonstrating proven success and leadership," and he's certainly done that, presiding not only over this, the most popular MMO of all time, but over years of amazing Blizzard success.
Morhaime will get the award as part of the D.I.C.E. Summit in February, and he'll join such videogame luminaries as Peter Molyneux (of Populous and Fable fame), Quake's John Carmack, and Shigeru Miyamoto, an old graphic designer that made some game about a plumber.
Congrats to Morhaime on the award-- definitely well-deserved. Now all we need to do is petition the Grammys for his contributions to the musical world.
Just a quick question this morning, from Indigo on Livejournal: if you compared the way you look in real life to a WoW race, what would you be? Indigo would be a Female Dwarf, and I'm sure lots of people would be human. Who would be a Tauren? Actually, now that I think about it, Samwise Didier, lead singer of Blizzard's L70ETC, would be a pretty good Tauren. But only because Pandaren aren't in the game yet.
No doubts here-- I'd be an Ogre. Just the one head, but considering my height and size, you can call me High King Mike. I can definitely break out the dance, though, at a moment's notice.
Oh sure. Blizzard may have announced Wrath of the Lich King, showed off demos of StarCraft II, and given us loads of exclusive time with the developers at BlizzCon... but all of that pales in comparison to the real reason we all had to attend BlizzCon: to see the Blizzard-band Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain perform! And for those of you who didn't make it out to California for BlizzCon this year, I offer this video as some small recompense. Enjoy!
Perhaps because of the upcoming VGL concert at Blizzcon, Erin over on WoW LJ asks about who wrote the WoW soundtrack and what else they've done. If you've got questions, we've got answers.
Most of WoW's original soundtrack was written by Jason Hayes, who's worked with Blizzard since Starcraft. His most famous piece for Blizzard is probably "A Call to Arms," which probably still gets your heart pumping. He also wrote a lot of the original game's ambient music, including the Ironforge theme that we hear all... the... time. Here's a nice Q&A with Hayes, and while Hayes now works with other videogame companies (including NCSoft), he's also working on his own album, called Mosaic.
But of course he's not the only composer working for Blizzard. Glen Stafford (director of the Audio Department) and Tracy Bush also have written a lot of the music for WoW, as have Russel Brower, Derek Duke, and Matt Uelmen (the last three composers put together music for the Burning Crusade expansion, and Uelmen has won awards for his work on Diablo and Diablo II). Here's an interview with just Uelmen, and here's an interview with Stafford, Uelmen, and Hayes all together.
Unfortunately, I couldn't see that anyone but Hayes is working on other projects, unless L70ETC gets picked up by a record label-- while the members of that band are shrouded in mystery (besides lead singer Samwise Didier and Blizz Prez Mike Morhaime), I'd be very surprised if the Blizzard music team didn't have a representative on there.
The BlizzCon news is coming out in tiny, bite-sized pieces. This afternoon, we've learned that the Level 70 Elite Tauren Chieftain (last BlizzCon, they were calling themselves Level 60 Elite Tauren Chieftain -- but they've had plenty of time since then) will be playing at BlizzCon on Saturday night. And as a little preview of the upcoming concert, Blizzard has posted a music video of L70ETC playing their latest hit, I Am Murloc, complete with specially modeled in-game rock stars.
Acerba of Cenarion Circle
Blizzard's Mike Morhaime is 
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