f13.net

This wasn't the leaked one that was floating around a while back, this is the official one from their website.

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/downloads/movies.html

There's a streaming flash version, and a DivX-encoded hi-res direct download (not torrent!) version.

It looks quite good, and has murlocs.

That die in a car fire. There's never enough burning murlocks to suit my fancy. What's with the blatant ripoff of Shinidamachū from Inuyasha? Can Blizzard come up their own fucking ideas for once?

Half the game is an in-joke from other sources.  Nintendo Crater for instance?

I rememeber a thread on the general forums half a year ago or more, where people were listing their favourite cameo references in WoW. I think it broke at 100+ pages very quickly due to the sheer number of cameo / reference bits in the game.

The best was the way they cherry-picked large amounts of Warhammer (or, if you like, second-hand references to Moorcock, Tolkien and Monty Python) and got away with it. I look forward to the ironic IP lawsuits that Blizzard slap on Mythic when WAR gets launched.

I'm probably just way out of touch, but what is "Shinidamachū from Inuyasha"?

Overall the movie was great. I felt it lacked the extreme holy-crap polish of the original one, but that could just be because they did this one in two years while they had five to do that one (plus this was a lot longer). I particularly loved the sheep, blast wave and arc explosion (I assume). Mage powa!

A bit of Google-fu reveals this:
(http://www.inuyasha.at/Opt.%20Bilder/Shinidamachu.jpg)

It has worse pacing than the first cinematic, which I rewatched for giggles. The long closeup on the dwarf at the beginning of the first is a worthwhile display of quality CG. Everything moves... trees, snow, footprints. The dranaei and bloodelf solos feel dead in comparison... a paladin puts on a seal, a little ghost dragon dies. The backgrounds are static and not particularly evocative. The short vignettes afterwards do their jobs more admirably, but they don't follow the same sort of vague storylines that the ones in the first cinematic did... and the Iilidan reveal isn't as hard and ending as being hit in the face by a Tauren with a LOG. They could have come up with something better than repeating "You are no prepared."

Meh.

At least there's a troll in this one for a few seconds, but still no gnomes. I also appreciate that the spells being cast are identifiable. I'm assuming that the bloodelf is a priestess, as she seems to be resurrecting that poor orc... the spell at the end, then, is probably holy nova not arcane explosion.

I'm still not resubscribing.

Yes that cinematic pales in comparison to the original WoW one but that's not surprising given that all the key Blizzard cinematics people (director, technical lead, main concept artist) wandered over to Red 5 a while ago. The music's also not as good -- I still listen to "Seasons of War" on a regular basis.

Every time I watch the first one, the only thing I can think of is "lol, Mage tossing fireballs at infernal.  Noob."

LOL @ someone getting sheeped & murlocs getting owned

YOU ARE NOT PREPARED.........


...for a month of server crashing and rolling re-starts.

It's actually a 'mana worm.'  I only know this because there's lots of them floating around the BE starting area, and there's a quest for you to use your racial to suck the life from them.   ( A very nice addition to both races, starting quests that use your racial ability.)

Not only is the cinematic off in pacing and 'storytelling,' but I didn't feel the models were as quality as previous Blizzard cinematics.  I've only watched it once or twice, and  haven't compared it to previous cinematics, though.  It was just an overall 'feeling' that I came away with.



Heh.  The truth hurts.

I was actually impressed they could pull this level off in the time they had. I'm not sure for how long they've worked on it. But considering they only announced Draenei six or so months ago, and gave no real impression they even knew what that race could be a year ago, they did quite a lot of CG work in maybe a year's time frame, on and off.

Meanwhile, I have no idea for how long they worked on the prior one, but it felt like a lot longer.

They could also have sub-contracted it out to the folks that did the EQ2 trailer (http://www.blur.com/indexl.html), though I generally find their stuff a bit stiff.

It looks nice, but it just doesn't suck me in like most Blizzard trailers do.  I think because it's all about the one bad guy and he really doesn't look or sound very cool at all.  Diablo could crush that guy without breaking a sweat.  I like the original WoW trailer because it is about the characters, not Rend Blackhand or Onyxia.

I remember WCIII.  The guy was totally overpowered.

 :wink: