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Accept this fact: to be good at playing WoW, you need to learn to use your keyboard at least some of the time. You don't have to bail on your mouse, but it's very helpful to learn some of the very basic keyboard shortcuts that will make your life in the game that much easier. (Easy is good, right?)
Using the game interface There are hotkeys for almost everything you do in-game. You can find most of them by just hovering your mouse over the icons that you click -- as no doubt you may have already noticed. Let's start with the button bar that you use to bring up your Quest Log, Spellbook and other things. You'll see that when I hover my mouse over the gold cup icon, a tooltip pops up. The L in parentheses after "Quest Log" means you can just press your L key to bring up the log instead of clicking the icon. (Don't worry that it's a capital L, just press lower-case L. When a keyboard command is capitalized, it's written as "Shift-L".) After the break, you'll see a list of keyboard shortcuts for the game interface.
Last week we told you about the new loot Upper Deck was launching a new expansion to WoW TCG. We even showed you pictures of what the cool new stuff will like for Patch 2.4.3. Well, now you can see these juicy tidbits in action with our movie of them.
You'll see us testing The Path of Illidan, trailing green felfire from our footsteps while running, jumping and even dancing. We've also got video of a few cross-faction D.I.S.C.O. parties gettin' down and funky, with the music and sparkly lights. It was dance fever!
Then it was time to try out the Ethereal Soul-trader. He announces himself as if your life is finally complete and follows you around very dutifully. Enjoy the movie - Adam, Zach, and I sure enjoyed making it for you!
Edit: There's some question about the original Onyxia Druid soloing - it wasn't Serennia the character, but Serennia the player (who is the Warrior of the same name). According to several commenters, it was Serennia playing on a druid's account. Also, the original Warcraft movie blurb is signed by Serennia of VANQUISH.
As promised, SK Gaming have just released their video of their world-first kill of Kil'jaeden. They call this fight "all about absolute perfection in terms of execution," and "definitely the hardest boss ever made and an impressive final boss." Of course, this video contains full spoilers for the KJ fight. I'm just going to assume SK's site will go down, so I'm embedding it from Filefront above, and linking to WarcraftMovies if you want to download it. It's shot from five points of view, though SK promises that it is not "messy" -- hemo rogue, resto shaman, enhancement shaman, and two different destro warlocks.
And since people are always curious, the music used in the video is, according to SK:
Airbase - Ocean Realm
Alex M.O.R.P.H. - Walk the Edge (B2B Woody Van Eyden Mix)
To download in glorious 1680x1050 WMV, head on over to WarcraftMovies (edit: apparently a WCM premium account is required to download the full-res version). An H.264 version is due in a few days.
You all remember Onyxia. She was basically the Magtheridon of original WoW, a 40-man single-boss raid positioned in difficulty between the entry-level raid (Molten Core) and the next one after that (Blackwing Lair). Well, now a druid has managed to solo her. You can see a video of the fight above, or at WarcraftMovies.com. This astounding feat was performed by Serennia of VANQUISH (Cho'gall US), who recently gave us a nice preview of the Kil'jaeden fight. The druid had a 35/0/26 spec. The previous record was two-man (paladin and warlock) in BC, or three-man pre-BC. Serennia was also a part of that pre-BC record. Congratulations -- I love it when players push the envelope just to see what's possible.
With the gates having opened yesterday or today, depending on which side of the Atlantic you're on, guild are starting to test their might against Kil'jaeden. In this video VANQUISH, of Cho'gall (US), shows an early attempt at KJ. They deliberately showed us a try where they didn't know much, to avoid giving spoilers; nonetheless, of course, if you don't want to know anything about the fight, this is not the video for you.
Although it's pretty hard to tell what's going on, it certainly looks epic. Reminds me a bit of Ragnaros, actually. And it seemed to be going pretty well for Vanquish, at least until a small dragon showed up and everybody wiped -- except for one craft rogue player of some sort. Jeez. Good luck to all guilds trying to down him!
As the first guild to have killed M'uru, SK-Gaming has now released their video of the fight. You can see it above (if it's working; there seem to be some server issues on their end), or go to their site to download it in full-res glory. There are two different points of view: a BM hunter, and an enhancement shaman. I haven't been able to watch it yet because it's been down, but I'm sure it's an exciting fight.
The SK guild leaders also gave an interview a couple of days ago on their site. Here are some things they said that I find interesting:
SK is very impressed with the tuning on the fight, and think Kil'jaeden, the next fight, "might turn out to be the best encounter ever made."
Everyone gets to take an active role in the fight; for instance, there are adds that can only be killed by an offensive dispell, and melee gets to use stuns, mages get to polymorph, etc.
The viability of feral druids has been increased; they think Resto shaman is the "strongest overall class."
Most of the loot is pretty good, although they would have preferred a token system.
And of course they're looking forward to Kil'jaeden; who wouldn't be in that situation?
While randomly browsing my realm forums last night I came across a guild that (surprise!) was looking for more members. I'm not really looking for a new guild (happy with the ones I'm in now), so I looked into this just to see what other guilds on the server were up to. They've started with 25 man content, have cleared Karazhan, and have done some of Zul'Aman. What caught my eye however was the guild recruitment video they had.
This got me thinking. Do other guilds have recruitment videos? I've heard of plenty of guilds putting together videos of each other running around and having a good time or downing a raid boss. I've been in a few of those myself. But an above average recruitment video? That I don't know.
The guild that started this thought process was Epic, on the realm Eldre'Thalas. I've done a pug or two with a few of their members before, and they're nice folks (although they don't know who I am, I'm sure). The video is very professionally done, has a noticeable 'plot' to it, and is of high quality. Props to Phytrion, a member of their guild, who put it together for them. One thing that I find is a little funny is that the character in the end has a complete Tier 4 protection Warrior armor set and is carrying the Bulwark of Azzinoth that drops off of Illidan. It's a cool shield, so I know why they used it, but the combination is a funny choice.
Do you have a guild recruitment video? Post a comment with a link and show off your stuff!
Many raiders and machinima fans will be disappointed to learn that Stage6, one of the best purveyors of high quality DivX videos, will be shutting down. Moo announced yesterday in her hisWoW Moviewatch the shut down will take place this Thursday. This is a big blow to not only the WoW community due to all the superb WoW videos hosted there, but also to the larger DivX community.
If you're like me, you probably have half a dozen boss videos that you either need to watch, or do watch after wipes to learn from them. Stage6 has an option to save these videos to your hard disk, and it looks like after this Thursday, that will be the only way to enjoy them.
In light of the closure of Stage6, what video sites will you use to get high quality boss and strategy videos from?
Edit: A sincere apology to Moo for my gender mistake. Having not met any of my fellow bloggers in real life yet, I mistakenly assumed Moo was a masculine identity. /red-in-the-face. /apologize.
One might have thought that BlizzCon was long over, but there's an excellent cache of videos available on YouTube which brings the experience to life again for me. A number of our WoW Insider bloggers were there at BlizzCon, of course, and they did an excellent job covering it -- I felt as though I got everything I needed by reading them. But now looking at the videos, I see how neat it must have been to be sitting there watching it for real. You can definitely get a feeling of how the developers think when it comes to designing our favorite game.
The links to the youtube videos are just beyond the jump, copied directly from the compilation forum post by Monsoon (who deserves a lot of thanks for sharing them with us!). Take a peek for an even deeper appreciation for the game and for what went on at BlizzCon.
Fresh from Blizzard today, here's the trailer for Wrath of the Lich King. My first impressions? It looks surprisingly similar to old-world Azeroth -- which shouldn't be surprising, I guess, because it is in the same world, after all. "So come then, you heroes" is the new "You are not prepared." I can't wait to make a Death Knight.
Terra Nova has a good piece up asking a question I've been thinking about ever since I saw video of the WoW arena fights at WSVG: even if Blizzard (or anyone else) sets up the technology for us to watch professional arena fights live, are they really going to be "must see PvP"?
Joshua from TN says yes-- he says he enjoys watching for tips, including how the players move, what targets they take, what strategies they employ, and so on. Personally, I have to disagree. I enjoy playing arena or fighting in the battlegrounds as much as the next guy, but when it comes to watching just the ingame fight, I just can't get into it. Part of it really is the presentation; WSVG could do a much better job explaining what's happening, just by showing the teams' makeup and their separate goals before they mix it up, and also by getting a new announcer ("It seems" like he repeats himself, and "that's going to be the case"). They do pull it off once-- in the China team vs. the Pandemic match (which I can't direct link to for some reason-- WSVG should fix that, too), the fight comes down to a mage vs. a warrior, and that fight is simple and easy enough to understand that the tension actually builds to an amazing victory. With the rest of the matches, though, things are too crazy and chaotic for anyone but a really knowledgeable viewer to keep it interesting.
So even if the presentation was broadcast quality, I would think that the only people interested in watching these videos were the top arena players themselves. No one else would have the knowledge they need to catch every spell interrupt and every strategy choice. And the natural appeals of other sports, I think-- the glory of a football player making the play for his team-- don't apply here unless you show the actual people behind the keyboards, or at least show what that big Tauren warrior is doing when he goes for the priest instead of the mage. Will arena PvP ever be a really good spectator sport?
As we all know, the Burning Crusade cinematic does not contain any gnomes. One brave machinimist has now corrected this outrage, bringing us this cinematic intro to World of Warcraft: The Gnomish Crusade. One question, though -- at a few points in that vid, it really looked like one of the gnomes was a priest. She seemed to resurrect and cast Holy Nova. What's up with that?
The internet may not be a series of tubes, but I know at least one site that is. Yes, YouTube, in conjunction with Intel, is running a WoW video contest called "Azeroth Exposed:"
YouTube and Intel are looking for your funniest World of Warcraft® moments. Show us your biggest debacle. A PUG gone wrong. An amazing prank. And be entered for a chance to win an unbelievable gaming rig powered by the new Intel® Core™2 Extreme quad-core processor. It's time for you to expose the funny side of Azeroth.
Oh, that's what they meant by "exposed?" Excuse me, I have to go put my character's clothes back on...Anyway, according to the contest page, submissions are open from March 1 through March 21, after which stage the videos will be voted on, with results announced April 26.
There are hotkeys for almost everything you do in-game. You can find most of them by just hovering your mouse over the icons that you click -- as no doubt you may have already noticed. Let's start with the button bar that you use to bring up your Quest Log, Spellbook and other things. You'll see that when I hover my mouse over the gold cup icon, a tooltip pops up. The L in parentheses after "Quest Log" means you can just press your L key to bring up the log instead of clicking the icon. (Don't worry that it's a capital L, just press lower-case L. When a keyboard command is capitalized, it's written as "Shift-L".) After the break, you'll see a list of keyboard shortcuts for the game interface.
Terra Nova
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