Before reading on, I highly suggest watching the video.

During the Blizzcon 2010 livestream, this video really caught my eye. It grabbed second place in the machinima contest. It’s the work of several contributors, with an original soundtrack, voice acting, and brilliant editing. The machinima itself was created and edited by Gary “Redeye” Lobine, the same editor behind other popular machinima, such as “Honor Killz“.

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Hybrid American-German food FTW.

Hello Lore Hounds, I am happy to report that I am alive and well in Germany. Last we met, I was nearing my departure and preparing to embark upon an adventure abroad. Now, I’ve been here a little more than two weeks and am settling in nicely… for the most part.

I’ll summarize for you.

The first couple of days here consisted of getting keys to the new apartment, securing new iPhones complete with contracts to use them without the ridiculous international fees we would have incurred on our old phones, eating lots of interesting foods, getting over jet lag, exploring the city, and finally coming to the realization that this is really happening. There was no time to spare, and especially no time for boredom. That was the weekend of Oct. 7.

That first week also was lovely. More food, more exploration, a little bit of getting to know the apartment, our doggies arrived (the Lore Hounds you hear in the beginning of my FTH videos — RUFF! Ruff-Ruff. Rfff), a trip to the local Ikea to pick up a few things, lots of bier and schnapps.

By this time, we were ready to be back online and catch up on the Intertubez stuffz we had been missing. But the Telekom Internet service (known as T-Mobile in the states) that was supposed to be ready for us before we moved in already had been delayed to Oct. 19.

Finally, the day before our new installation date, our air shipment arrived. While not nearly as large as the sea shipment that is still 2 to 3 weeks away from us now, it contained a lot of electronics, including our desktop computers that, thankfully, arrived without any damage. Great timing, I thought – we’d get the computers up and running in time for me to help out with BlizzCon coverage, and maybe even get in my WoW fix and keep trying for Loremaster. But that was not in the cards.

Oct. 19 — a Tuesday — came, and late that afternoon we got a call saying our service was getting delayed. We would hear back soon. The next day, we got another call. No new news — we would hopefully have service by the end of the week. The next day, it was an e-mail. Our service was now delayed until Oct. 29. Continue Reading

Next on the list, Wowsaurus: For when you just can't think up a creative enough slur to use against the Alliance.

Time to change your bookmarks, people. Wowpedia may not be the first database of WarCraft lore out there, but in due time, it might be the only one worth visiting. Wikia Gaming, longtime host of WoWWiki, finally forced the hand of several administrators and thousands of contributors with their dominant policies — specifically in the form of a new site skin that essentially broke many of the site’s features including layouts and those ubiquitous tooltips.

On IRC we’ve been bouncing around the idea (for awhile) of leaving Wikia, checking out options, etc… Wikia plans to move us to a new skin in October (phasing out the old Monaco skin) and has already enacted rules limiting customization. Sadly, this leaves little control in the hands of WoWWiki users and admins to make the wiki look like WoWWiki always has and to maintain it in a way that reflect’s WoWWiki’s own interests. WoWWiki (and myself personally) have nothing against progress or change, but sadly the “new” look is not conducive to the wiki experience (you can see examples if you would like on other Wikia wikis) – the focus is on getting traffic to other Wikia wikis.

Multiply those basic problems by some 87,000+ pages and you’ve got a right catastrophe on your hands! The decision to abandon Wikia was debated for several weeks, ultimately resulting in a partnership with Curse Gaming and a necessary name change since the WoWWiki moniker still belongs to the old boss. To date, Wowpedia more or less mirrors the entire library of content from the previous site, but is likely to be the better-maintained of the two since the bulk of the muscle has transferred over in the process.

Some unknown number of contributors have presumably remained at WoWWiki and I seriously doubt Wikia is simply going to rest on the laurels and let the site die a slow and agonizing death. World of Warcraft is too big a game, and WoWWiki, at least in name at this point, is one of the most-recognized sources of information for it — in terms of both lore and game strategy. But with few, if any administrators left, the quality of future content is understandably in question (which means that it’s time to go make up some facts when the hall monitors aren’t looking!). Continue Reading

As we grab our goodies and head for the exit here in Anaheim, California, we look back on the past two days with much excitement. Many interesting things are coming, most of all Deathwing with the Cataclysmic tantrum he’s about to throw. I apologize for the lighting in most of them, as it wasn’t very good in the auditorium.

As a special treat, for those who didn’t see it already: here is the log in screen for Cataclysm. It’s exactly the same as we posted before, just a different angle. This is the “official” final version. The other is just a better lighted one.

Click through to see the full gallery. Continue Reading