15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.
When I received a news tip from from Rainnajax of US Uldaman-H about being an "older female gamer," I admit that I rolled my eyes. Please, not another one who thinks having two X chromosomes makes her the most special snowflake ... Not another one who thinks being over 30 years old qualifies her as one of the Ancients ... When I read her entire email, though, I realized Rainnajax's experience was actually intriguing – but not for the reasons she thought.
While Rainnajax may perceive herself as something still a little unusual among WoW players, I see her as the type of player who's becoming the new norm. She's less remarkable for being female or "older" – or even for belonging to a well known gay and bi-friendly guild -- than she is for being among the new wave of players who'd never imagined themselves playing a video game ... until they tried WoW. MMORPGs are no longer the province of a single type of player anymore. Rainnajax is here as an example of today's new-to-gaming, non-gender- or age-specific player.
We've heard before about lots of trouble with WoW players in the UK experiencing lags, disconnects, and high latency (though the problem seems to be all over lately), and reader Hugh sent us this possible reason: Virgin Media, which is a large internet service provider in the UK, has had their CEO spouting off about net neutrality lately, calling it a "load of bollocks," and claiming that if content providers (like Blizzard) don't pay up, he'll be happy to stick them in the "bus lane."
Not quite cool. The latest tactic of ISPs everywhere to make more money is to charge not customers, but content providers for their traffic -- i.e. if YouTube wants their site to work fast on your ISP, they need to pay the ISP a certain amount, and then everyone on that network will experience the site quickly. So in this case, Virgin would be asking Blizzard, responsible for all the World of Warcraft traffic, to pay a premium price for customers to receive it quickly. And anyone who knows Blizzard knows they probably aren't too excited about paying such a price -- they'd likely call Virgin Media out for slowing the connection down before paying protection money for their data.
At any rate, it seems like there's a battle coming, and your character's information may be caught in the middle of it. As always, you've got to fight with your wallet -- if Virgin or any other ISP threatens to hold data hostage like this, it's time to find a different ISP to pay your money to every month.
Let the lore geeks at WoW Insider help you out a bit. We've put together a scene by scene analysis of the lore behind the Fury of the Sunwell trailer, and we're presenting it to you here. Hopefully, it sheds some more light on this whole "Did Kael'thas go crazy or didn't he, and what is up with Kil'jaedan anyway?" thing.
Sunday Morning Funnies has quite the line-up this week, with even more on the horizon for next week. As always, don't forget to leave a tip about a WoW-themed comic you know!
A new WoW-themed comic from Action Trip. I would explain but I think I'll just let you click through and see for yourselves.
Episode 8 of The Guild is up for your viewing pleasure, and the whole cast rebounds in the aftermath of Zaboo's rash action last time around. And tragedy strikes when a familiar face returns. In fact, it's a familiar "toolface." Funny.
And in other Guild news, you can probably chalk us up as hitmakers now -- they won that series YouTube award they were up for, and in fact picked up another award as well over at Yahoo! Video. And Felicia Day, writer and star of the series (whom we interviewed back in the beginning), is picking up some buzz as well -- she's not only shown up in that Cheetos commercial you've seen like 500 times now, but she's going to be starring in a (trust me, if you haven't heard this yet, your mind is about to be blown) a musical web series called "Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog," which also stars Nathon Fillion and Neil Patrick Harris, and written and directed by none other than Joss Whedon. No, I am not kidding -- it's a fanstravaganza.
So exciting times for The Guild. Hopefully they can figure out what to do about the "toolface," and hopefully Felicia won't get too famous to remember her little web series about World of Warcraft. Save Zaboo!
Our favorite little web video series, The Guild, has been nominated for a 2007 YouTube award in the series category, and voting is going on right now over on YouTube's awards page. There are a lot of different categories to choose from, but if you click on "Series," you can see all the nominated web series, and The Guild is in the list down at the bottom. This isn't the first award they've been up for, but on the blog they claim it's one of the biggest.
In the interests of fairness, we should remind you that you should vote for the series you like best -- Collegehumor's "Street Fighter: The Later Years" series is a funny bit of video, especially if you're a fan of the old fighting game. But we here at WoW Insider have a soft spot for The Guild, not only because it captures so perfect (and so weirdly) what it's like to have friends you've only known through Azeroth, but because, you know, they're WoW players, too.
This video contains audio commentary, turn your sound up!
With the upcoming 3v3 PvP tournament, Blizzard has rolled out a new feature on the Tournament Test Realm server: NPC collision detection. This will mean that it is now not possible for players to walk through some NPCs. Players will no longer be able to crowd, or block, the NPCs. This virtually guarantees that players will always be able to access the NPCs.
Having been a full-time machinimator in Second Life for about 1.5 years now, I can definitely appreciate the plight of the WoW machinimator. They produce work that is easily 10 times the quality of what comes out of SL, yet have a hard time making any money off of it. However, it looks like Oxhorn has found a way.
Oxhorn has landed a gig with WeGame, a video sharing site with a twist. WeGame not only allows you to upload your machinima, it also provides you with a free desktop client for filming. If you can't afford to pay for Fraps or any of the other options, WeGame is your best bet.
Read on for more about Oxhorn's new job and WeGame ...
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.
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.
I'm sure you've read before about watching out for all sorts of scams -- after all, your World of Warcraft account information is valuable stuff, and plenty of thieves out there would be happy to get their hands on it. The latest technique of account theft that I've noticed is all over YouTube, in many videos offering to teach you how to hack World of Warcraft accounts for fun and profit. All of these videos suggest that Blizzard has some sort of account retrieval service that can be accessed by e-mailing a random address (often at Gmail or Hotmail) with your account name and password as well as the name of the account you wish to access. Then, the videos claim, all you have to do is wait for Blizzard to mail you the password of the target account!
Of course, the entire thing is a scam. The people posting these videos just want to take your password and run. So be warned, everyone -- don't fall pray to greed, and don't give your password out to anyone, regardless of what they might promise you in return.
Here's another in a long line of videos made by Spiffworld using the music of Jonathan Coulton. This one deals with a day in the future when we might have a "buff" (pill) for everything, and whether or not that might be a good thing...
Also, be sure to keep an eye out for a special appearance by a previous video character who is once again up to no good.
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.
15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.
We've heard before about lots of trouble with WoW players in the UK experiencing lags, disconnects, and high latency (though the problem 
Subscribe
