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For a project I'm working on, I need to show an illustrator who does not play MMOs (though he's a very dedicated PC gamer) what happens during a raid and / or PVP. I was never a big raider myself, but I remember seeing some very impressive videos of boss kills. I tried typing C'thun or Gruul on Youtube, but infortunately I was treated with badly shot footage, accompanied by shitty music. Is there, per chance, a site that archives the best videos ?

Or do you remember great videos ? I'm looking for large scale battles, gigantic bosses, even some silly wipes... I don't really care about the game or the setting, I'm just looking to find some material that could help the poor illustrator figuring how things happen.

I hope this topic is in the right place !  :grin:

Just have him make a nondiscript blob of colors, and tons and tons of particle effects.  :grin:

Try Warcraftmovies.com (http://www.warcraftmovies.com/). They also have WAR and AoC movies (via the navigation buttons on the top right).

Tankspot.com has the best wow raid movies out there and also offers all of them in HD on Youtube.  Look under "Project Marmot" on the right side of their front page.

Other games and old EQ raids I think you're going to be stuck searching youtube.

Thanks a lot, very helpful links ! :heart:

I'll second Warcraftmovies.com , pretty sure they'll have an epic cinematic video for every raid boss since the game was released and any kind of pvp video you'd want to see as well.  Plus using the ratings there should help you weed out all the junk.

If you want a short high quality cinematic youtube vid for all of the WoTLK bosses prior to Ulduar: This is your answer. (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P28NYtMNals&feature=channel_page)

If it is important for the person you're showing to know what and why things are happening, then tankspot is definitely the place to go.

You could also search for the tutorial video of Kael´thas on warcraftmovies.com.
A detailed tut on how to do this boss with all his 72673 phases of annoyance.

yeah, if you are looking for some good boss fights, a couple to reccomend, due to their complexity or interesting mechanics are:

The Twin Emperors (AQ 40)

Kael'thas (tempest keep)

Illidari Council (Black Temple)

Heigan The Unclean, 4 horsemen (naxx)

Malygos (Eye of Eternity)

if you want a REALLY neat fight, with a load of cool mechanics / different phazes, see if you can find a good video of Mimiron in Ulduar.

Ok I didn't want to go into details because it's just a project we're looking into, and we're just beginners, so it might go nowhere, but what we're trying to do is a comic about a girl who happens to be a hardcore raider. The focus would be on her real life, which would be sort of mirrored in the MMO. Well she's got a kinda shitty life with a boring job, so at night she poopsocks. Which is stupid, but really, in her case it's just a symptom.

I'm supposed to be the writer, and we're trying to invent a fake MMO for her to play. It's still very early, so we're trying to define how to represent that "virtual world". I guess we'll take some liberties with how a MMO truly plays to make things easier, but I'd like my partner to understand how a real raid encounter plays, in order for us to find a way to stylize it without falling in easy caricature. So I guess raid videos are a good way to show him one thing or two : the interface, the sense of scale, the whole choreography... I mostly need a fight against a big Colossus, which is going to be the cockblock the heroin's guild are going to stumble into.

Anyway the illustrator is going to draw things his way, he just needs some reference.

Why don't you just scream "50 DKP MINUS PENALTY! HIT THE WHELPS! WHELPS WHELPS!" in his face for an hour. He'll get the message eventually.

YOU DIED BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T KNOW WHAT THE FUCK TO DO!

I guess I could show him THAT video. Then, maybe he wouldn't want to work on this story, and I'd have to find another one.  :ye_gods:

I'm trying to give the guild a more "professional" feel, so the leader has to be cynical, I don't want to go the easy way and paint him as a clown. A guy that could very well be her real life boss, not an asperger kid. 

Yeah, I could ask him to lurk EJ for a few months.  :oh_i_see:

(Ok, I lolled).

Most raid videos only make sense to people who play the game. Players forget that non-players don't see the elements they see.

Eve is the prime example - lack of movement, distant flashing dots and strange terminology do not convey epic battles to non-players. Diku raid videos are graphically better, but generally there's lots of standing round, a confusing rush, then repetitive actions over and over, numbers over people's heads, until eventually it stops. It's not exciting if you don't know the abilities of the target relative to the players.

Promo trailers maybe do it better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBSMtcZuGIg

Actual raid gameplay looks terrible and communicates almost nothing.  Some gameplay trailers are indeed quite good.  I'd look at NCSoft's trailers, particularly the Lineage II stuff.  They put together some of the best gameplay videos I've ever seen, and all done in-game.  These movies are kind of "idealized" versions of what actually goes on, made to give the visual impression to people.

http://www.lineage2.com/pds/movies_c1.html

The one listed as Chronicle 1 - Gameplay Movie presents a bit of a fight against the L2 dragon.

The Chronicle 3 gameplay movie may be better, it seems to portray a sort of raid against Lilith and Anakim.

World of Roguecraft 1 (http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=26540)
World of Roguecraft 2 (http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=7940)
World of Roguecraft 3 (http://warcraftmovies.com/movieview.php?id=6140)

Absolutely ancient, but the first two are pretty much the golden standard for pvp videos.  And it's cool because it follows a little narrative.

I'll second Sheepherder on the World of Roguecraft videos, with a small caveat. Sheep has them listed out of order. WoR 3 came out first, followed by 2, then 1.

Here's my favorite WoW video. It's a cinematic rendition, not just a recording of the fight. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=avhZ90kuZAw

Am I the only one freaked out by the fact so many of you have watched WoW raid videos? Or any raid videos? I now know how to respond to someone when they ask "What's more boring than raiding?" And that's "Watching people raid."  :ye_gods:

It's the most efficient way to see C'thun down.

Another vote for the Tankspot guys and their videos.

I know of at least one large raiding guild leader who is the X.O. on a nuclear missile submarine.  He switches off with someone else when he goes out on sea duty.

Life usually is stranger than fiction.

edit:  Also, the best way to show a 'raid' is to just show the backs of a bunch of characters, not moving, with an unreadable jumble of names over their heads.  In the last panel show them all dead in a pile on the floor.

Pretty true, but I guess we're going to romance things a bit.

Nice anecdote by the way, which indeed would seem fake in a fiction.

If it's a female she should be the guild leader.

That was really good.

The video YouTube automatically associated with it should be companion viewing :) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1xfjPrD-1g

And make irrational raiding decisions based on her friends or the guy she's fucking/husband.

I'd like to point out that guys do the exact same shit in raiding guilds based on the girl they want to fuck/wife. Just saying. Raiding guild leaders are usually idiots.