Machinima

I suspect anyone who has gone to youtube knows what machinima is but in case you haven't it's basically when someone creates 3-D computer animate shorts by rendering images off video games: think Robot Chicken with computer animation using video game characters.

Initially I thought this was stupid and for the most part a waste of time, for the people making the vidoes and the people watching them. However, after my daughter forced me to watch a bizzilion different videos I've changed my mind. I think machinima is a legitimate creative medium that is frankly in the golden age as anyone with a computer, time, and vision can do it. Meaning it's free of corporate bullshit and done by people who just want to create something. Does that mean it's all good? Well no because really the bulk of it is frankly, just stupid, but then again most movies coming out of Hollywood are stupid and watching machinima is free unlike going to the theater. I've seen nothing that's blown me away but I think in the right hands someone could.

Anyway there are a lot of possibilities with this medium but I think comedy spoofs work the best and the following are a few of the machinima creations that made me giggle. I do apologize for them all using warcraft models but I tend to focus WoW machinima being I'm Blizzard's bitch.

Stacey's Mom Video Spoof

Thrall's Crib

Rogues Do It from Behind Video

If you know of any awesome examples of machinima feel free to comment.

"Muscle March" or "Man, The Japanese Just Keep Getting More and More Weird"

That's right, just what everyone needed, another reason to scratch their heads and say "Wow, how did these people get so messed up?". Words cannot begin to describe this, it must simply be watched:

Of course on the other hand, it's entirely possible that I just don't spend enough time playing games that feature God masturbating!

Left 4 Dead Naked Zoey Mod

OK, so I'll be the first to admit that taking up WoW has had an impact on my life, less sleep, less time with family, not reading anything anymore, and, perhaps most egregious of all, no other games being played. =But hold on, there's good news, I think I found the answer to that little problem right here.

That's right boys, Zoey will now run through the game, as well as your mind, cleansing the earth one bullet at a time, naked.

I've been thinking about playing some left 4 dead again, seems like this is as good a reason as any, and better than most, to start!

Top 100 Villians

I recently ran across this and thought I'd share it. It's actually a surprisingly long read and quite interesting. There was a few I didn't know, and even better, some I did know about but always wondered about.

For what it's worth, my opinion on the best villain? Herr Starr from Preacher. It was something else to watch Ennis increasingly drop that evil bastard further and further into a pit of despair and insanity, one piece at a time. Literally, one piece at a time.

I won't waste anymore of your time though, I'd suggest saving it for the list.

Robs Rant on Reading

Everyone always talks about "The Classics" and how everyone has to read certain books in their lifetime, such as Moby Dick, The Great Gatsby, War and Peace, so on and so forth.... Last year I even saw a list of the 100 greatest books, and it begs the question, why does great == boring? On that list I had read maybe 20 of the books, but for every one that I finished there were two others that I had started and couldn't force myself to finish. And, of the ones I actually read, only about a half of them were worth the time spent. I'll admit to reading them, but I'll sure tell you which ones weren't worth it.

Don't get me wrong, some of this stuff is good, I liked Moby Dick for instance, Mark Twain and Jules Verne made for good childhood reading, and sometimes a sweeping story is a good read just for the complexity of the characters, but unless you're one of the pretentious overblown pricks who sips Starbucks coffee and bitches about the state of modern agriculture simply because everyone else drinks Starbucks and you don't even know the difference between a herbicide and pesticide, let alone why ranchers need to use antibiotics on their herds, then there really isn't much enjoyment in these literary masterpieces. I mean, there isn't any enjoyment regardless of how pretentious you are, but with pretension comes the prerequisite of not being able to think for yourself and just do what every other pretentious prick does (I was going to say "think" again instead of "does", but that would have been silly).

Now, why the big rant you ask? Well, sometimes it just feels good to bitch, but I'd also like to point out that there are options to crap like The Great Gatsby (as God as my witness I don't know how I made it through that book, I'm rich and have lots of parties because I have unrequited love, wah, wah, wah!), the least of which being video game books.

A few years back I read a four book series based on the original DOOM games and they were good. If you played and enjoyed the games then these books are right up you're alley, it's like you're back in the game, except this time you have motivation to kill beyond the possession of a rocket launcher and plasma gun. I recently started reading the books based on the Warcraft games and you know what? They're good stories. OK, they don't have the high brow themes of The Lord of the Rings, but they do have interesting characters doing things that I'm interested in. As a matter of fact I'll probably read the Diablo and Starcraft books when I'm done this too. Sidenote: This technically regarded as blasphemy in the geek/nerd world, but the Lord of the Rings books could have seriously benefited from a good editor. The fact that I still considered these books good is a testament to how amazing the stories actually are, I mean seriously, how much do I need to know about the hair on a Hobbits foot? However, it's impossible to not respect how such a grand sweeping saga can be based on the simple theme of time, no start, no finish, just a continuation with events occurring throughout, none of which can compete with the passage of time.

My point here is that reading is good and it should be a good thing to do. School seems to be a dichotomy of ideas, I grew up with teachers saying "Reading is good!" but then giving me the most horrible crap to read. I don't care what anyone says, Shakespeare doesn't make for good reading, it's a lot of work for little gain. True, most, if not all, of our modern plots and stories are heavily influenced by his writing, but that just means you can get this stuff without the anachronistic language and behavior. If you want to read this, great, go ahead, but damnit, do it because you enjoy it. If i hadn't had a strong ingrained love of reading, and 2 hours on a school bus with nothing else to do, school would have crushed the reading bug in me.

I for one am going to stop hiding my love of entertaining books, if it's a good story that makes me feel like I've actually used a few hours of my life and not wasted time laboring, that's good enough for me. I'd suggest everyone try the same thing and read something entertaining, you never quite know what you'll learn.

Watch for a list of Robs Best Books, coming to a blog near you! Same BatBlog, Same BatBlogger!

A Newcomers Perspective on WoW

I figure by this stage anyone who is interested in WoW will have given it a shot, but I'm also assuming there are at least a few people out there like me, or at least vaguely similar. I have thought about giving it a shot over the years but never really did anything about it until a couple weeks ago.

Now the question is why didn't I try? Not because I have a dislike for Warcraft. I was seriously addicted to all things Warcraft through the late 90's; I would even say this addiction was at least partially responsible for the end of my first marriage, but I'm better off without that anyway. It's not because I don't want to spend hours in front of my computer, I mean I'm not even going to pretend that's a possibility. And, it's not because I have an aversion to role playing, I've even spent time playing old school paper and dice RPG's and enjoyed the experience. I would have to say that it's because it was such a big phenomena that I figured it was all hype, marketing, and shallow people doing what everyone else was doing that I wasn't going to waste my time and money on it. I am nothing if not fiercely individualistic!

Well the day came that my buddy Darcy got involved. Did I say involved? I meant addicted. Did I say addicted? I meant to say morbidly infatuated on what I can only assume is a chemically imbalanced level. I'm serious, I got a little concerned that he was going to start asking me to drink Kool-Aid in the name of WoW. But, when he wanted me to give it a try so we could take advantage of the triple xp recruit a friend initiative I figured, I'd give it a try. I mean, hey, I like Kool-Aid.

Well a couple weeks later I have to say that I'm thoroughly addicted to good old World of Warcrack. I spend all my waking moments, and a lot that should be spent sleeping, looking for people with exclamation marks floating over their heads, and finding out how many Wombats I need to kill to get to the next level. It's hard to say why the game is so addictive, but it is. It's very compelling, drawing you back in for the next quest, level, or encounter.

I think for me it appeals to my goal oriented hyper focusing personality. No matter what you do there's another goal, bigger Wombats, more Wombats, or uglier Wombats to kill. I need the next level of armor, I need the bigger axe or hammer, and I need the next level of XP. Why? So that I can go out and find bigger Wombats to kill so I can get an even bigger hammer, or heavier armor. That's all there is to it, a need to keep playing, it's like an Ethernet delivered heroin addiction.

I guess the moral of the story is that sometimes group mania is OK. I still refuse to get involved in most crap that sweep the world. As god as my witness I will never Twitter and I barely pay attention to Facebook for those very reasons. But I guess when something is good it's just plain good, and WoW is good.

As long as you like killing never ending swarms of Wombats with a hammer.

WoW: The Test of Righteousness Quest

Last night I finished off this quest with my good buddy Rob and noticed that it's not entirely clear what you need to do and where you need to go: you can figure it out by piecing together forum posts and carefully reading the quest instructions. However, the reality is that you want to fast track your way through this baby and get your Paladin hands on Verigan's Fist to smash some NPC and PvP skulls. Which means you will probably skim the instructions and cause yourself some grief by having to add to the already surmountable travel time surrounding this quest. Therefore, I'm going to provide you .. yes you with some to the point instructions and advice.

When to Start:
I suspect you could solo all of this with the exception of the Deadmines peice as a level 25ish Paladin. However, Rob and I teamed up for this run and we both were level 27-28 Paladins making the quest time consuming but pretty much a cake walk: with the exception of "someone" using Turn Evil in Shadowfang Keep causing a female ghost to run everywhere and inform every elite npc we were there and that they should come and stomp on us. Other than that one painful death the only issue we encountered was adding travel time by not realizing certain side quests need to be picked up and turned in to accomplish our end goals.

The Quest Objectives:
Alright this is a gathering quest at the end of chain that starts when you click on the blue "?" over Duthorian Rall's head at the Cathedral in Stormwind. This becomes available at level 20. After following the quest chain you will eventually talk to Jordan Stilwell just outside the Iron Forge gates who will promise to make you Verigan's Fist if you gather all the stuff he needs to build it:

1) Purified Core Gem: found at Blackfathom Deeps in Ashenvale
2) White Stone Oak: found at Deadmines in Westfall
3) Jordan's Refined Ore Shipment: found at Mo'Grosh Stronghold in Loch Modan
4) Jordan's Smithing Hammer: found at Shadowfang Keep in Silverpine Forest

You pretty much have to go to every area accessible to level 20-30s in the game and I feel for you if you don't have the flight paths. I suspect that anyone playing alliance is looking at the long run to Shadowfang Keep as it's in Horde leveling territory. To get to there I would start at Wetlands run north and enter Arathi Highlands via the Don Modr path, run west across the Arathi and enter Hillsbrad Foothills, run west right across Hillsbrad and finally get to Silverpine Forest where you will find the Shadowfang Keep instance. I highly recommend taking the short detours to the Refuge Pointe in Arathi and South Shore in Hillsbrad to pick up the flight paths. Anyway, I'm going to suggest the order listed just because that might have made sense for us if we had followed it: sadly we never. I'm also suggesting you make Iron Forge your home till your done this quest.

Step 1: Get the Purified Core Gem
- First step you have to go to Auberdine in Darkshore and get a Corrupt Core Gem quest from Thundris Windweaver. If you forget this you can kill Nagas all day and not get a drop.
- We then flew to Astranaar and ran to Blackfathom Deeps on the north west coast, Zoram Strand. In retro spec it probably would have been just as fast to run from Auberdine along the coast.
- You don't need to enter the instance to get the drop. In fact we both got the corrupt core gem pretty quick walking in the tunnels and wiping out evil on our way to the instance.
- Go back to Auberdine and turn in the quest you picked up from Thundris (wish my mom had named me that) who will then purify the core gem for you. We forgot to do this and had to make the long haul all the way back just to get the gem purified.
- Grab a boat to Stormwind and make your way to Westfall for the next step.

Step 2: Pilfer the White Stone Oak lumber
- This is the one step that I know I couldn't solo as a mid 20 level toon primarily thanks to: Rhahk'Zor and his stupid archer friends. Anyway I assume you can make it to Deadmines allright on your own but just too note the entrance is in one of the buildings found at Moonbrook in Westfalls.
- Make your way to the instance, none of the npcs should prove much of challenge in 2 or 4 groups just don't get cocky and agro an entire room. Enough 17 level npcs will take down a mid 20 level Paladin. Same follows when you enter the instance but you should find it doable until you meet Rhahk'Zore. Two can take him down pretty fast so kill him and you make your way through one more section of the instance opening the 2nd door. You should see a bunch of elite woodworking Goblins one of these will drop the White Stone Lumber but I would suggest trying to only pull 1 or 2 at a time.
- Once you got the lumber you can try and finish the instance or simply hearth yourself to Iron Forge

Step 3: Find Jordan's Refined Ore Shipment
- Assuming you hearthed to Iron Forge make your way to Thelsamar in Loch Modan and pick up Bailor Stonehand's quest that sends you to Mo'Grosh Stronghold to get the ore shipment. I can vouch for the fact that if you don't get this quest you can not pick up the shipment at Mo'Grosh and we had to run there twice because we didn't realize we had to pick up a sub-quest in Thelsamar.
- Make your way to Mo'Grosh Stronghold and you'll find the shipment behind a tree at co-ordinates 72,22. Grab them and make your way back to Bailor to turn in his quest and get credit for the Ore Shipment.
- Make your way to Shadowfang Keep using the instructions I detailed above.

Step 4: Retrieve Jordan's Smithing Hammer
- Enter Shadowfang Keep and take a right into the room close to the entrance working your way to the jail cells slowly pulling and killing the elite npcs. I soloed this with the Blood Elf Paladin so know it's possible as long as you take your time. I would suggest you kill everything in the opening stage of the instance.
- Once you get to the jail cells open the one with the human mage and ask him to open the door to the next stage of the instance.
- When you enter this stage of the instance Jordan's Hammer is in the stables down the stairs and straight ahead. Hug the wall and try to proactively pull the npc's that you think you can't get by without agroing. We died here mainly due to the liberal use of the Turn Evil spell but if you take your time and carefully pull npcs on the say you can make it.
-Enter the stables and note, DO NOT USE THE CONCENTRATION SPELL IN THE STABLES. The stables are full of elite fel-horses who will leave you alone as long as you leave them alone. Apparently and area damage spell isn't leaving them alone and they will attack you and probably kill you.
- You should see the wow twinkle locating the hammer grab it and hearth your way to Iron Forge (providing and hour as passed since the last hearth).

Enjoy your smoking blue hammer. I'm personally looking forward to trying it out in the Arathi Battle grounds tonight.