Normally Aeda uses a nice Dragonhawk to fly around with, but apparently her chocobo (I mean, uh, Hawkstrider) decided to get in on the action.
I mean, whatever works, right?
Category Archives: movies
My Five Favorite WoW Movies
In the two and a half years that I’ve been playing WoW, I’ve seen a lot of movies about it on YouTube. In fact, I’m willing to bet that I’ve seen most of them. As such, cutting it down to my five favorites was tough. Really tough. So tough that I found myself wanting to change this to “Ten Favorite WoW Movies”, but I didn’t want to crit everyone with YouTube movies. Really though, cutting out some of the stuff by Nyhm and MrVoletron hurt my soul, so… maybe I’ll just make a part two later.
Regardless, after much debate and consideration… here are my five favorites:
5.) Forever A Nub Ft Wick and PoshJark
One of the most recent WoW movies I’ve seen, it jumped immediately to “one of my faves” status, which is bragable*. The great thing about it is that I think it’s sort of supposed to be funny, but it just ends up being really touching and super, super nostalgic. Somehow manages to perfectly capture the journey from level 1 to 80 while also throwing in equal parts RP, raiding, and Warcrafty puns (“Darkmoon Card, and I’m destined for greatness!”). Definitely wins Pike’s approval.
4.) How To Play a Mage
I’M CONJURING MANA STRUDEL! AAARRRRRRGHHHH
3.) Hootie the Strigid Screecher
I first saw this movie back when I was level 50ish and it was Tux the Strigid Hunter and I versus the world. By the end, I was teary-eyed, and ya know what? I’m not afraid to admit it. The whole thing just rang true to my huntery heart on so many levels. That Christmas I got some WoW trading cards; one of them was Hootie the Strigid Screecher. Flavor Text: “He doesn’t mean it when he blocks your view.”
He can also apparently be seen in Dalaran sometimes now, too, though I’ve yet to find him myself. A true classic.
2.) The Craft of War: BLIND
I remember everybody being madly obsessed with this when it came out about a year ago, and when I finally got around to watching it a month or so after the hype had calmed down, I realized why. Watching movies for free is one of the top reasons to buy an IPTV subscription. Not like your typical machinima, this is actual original animation using the game models. Combine that with a catchy song and some absolutely delightful cinematography (Lady Prestor letting out her inner Onyxia and then gently holding up a finger to her mouth in a “shhh, just our little secret” pose… just so freaking brilliant) and this is a no-brainer for the list.
Possibly my favorite part, though, is that the guy who made it says “Earlier this year I got pretty bored and decided to do something creative in my spare time. ” Ladies and gentlemen, this is what happens when amazing people get bored. They should get bored more often.
Aaaaand…
…
1.) Jimmy: The World of Warcraft Story
It might sound silly, but this little movie probably defines my first year of World of Warcraft for me. When I first saw it, the boy and I were still leveling (us being Burning Crusade babies), and although we had no concept yet of Aldors vs. Scryers, we both immediately latched onto this movie as the ultimate source of personal little WoW injokes and random funny lines to toss at each other. We still quote it. “Screw the blue staff Jimmy, we’re going for the epics. EPIIIIICS.”
I still can’t watch it without cracking up. I don’t think Rurikar plays WoW anymore, but man. The guy is endlessly witty, and the movie is chock-full of little hidden jokes as well, so it holds up to repeated viewings more than… just about any WoW movie, ever. Good game, Rurikar. Good game.
“BY THE LIGHT OF ELUUUUUUUUUNE! *poof*”
—
* Cookie for the first person to get the (possibly obscure) reference…
OldSchool Pike: The Jumpshot Movie
I made this movie waaaay back at level 70, but I just watched it and it still appears to be relevant to us today. So after cleaning up the comment section a bit (the things that pop up on YouTube movies in a year and a half /sigh), I thought I’d share it (again) to those of you who perhaps haven’t seen it. The Jump Shot is a situational hunter move that helps us to kite things or during PvP, and is also a really fun trick to impress people with when you’re on a low-level, pre-pet hunter. It’s always a handy thing to know, I think ^_^
I still sound like a giant dork, but maybe someone will find it helpful nonetheless! =D
Our Raid: Kills Bugs Dead
…bad joke is bad? Sorry >.>
I’m Pike: I keyboard-turn, I click (unless I am healing), and I get about 3fps max on 25mans. Didn’t stop this from being awesome, after a good few weeks of attempts:
(the music is all MegaMan 2 remixes. Whaaat?)
I was Beast Mastery in this fight. Since our ret paladin had to leave, Wash’s Ferocious Inspiration contributed 3% bonus damage to all DPS in the raid ^_^
Pikestaff Productions Presents: JOUST! The Motion Picture Event
…not that Joust. It was a really good game though. I miss my Commodore 64.
Nah, I went ahead and made a how-to movie about jousting since a lot of commenters seem to have questions on it or problems with it!
Now I have to admit, I’ve had the idea to make a movie cooking in my brain for a little while now, but I’ve seen at least three or four other “How to Joust” posts complete with movies floating around the WoWosphere already, so I figured I didn’t want to overload it. But then I thought… what the heck. So here you go. Jousting, Pike-style, complete with commentary! (Turn YouTube annotations on if you can’t see them.)
By the way, the song is amazing.
As always, lemme know if you have questions/comments/issues/etc., and click on through to YouTube if you want to watch the High Quality version~ (it’s in WoWoscope Widescreen!)
Pike's Top Ten WoW Moments
I recently wrote up a post over at my LiveJournal where I listed and posted movies of the top ten video game moments that gave me goosebumps. Anyways, I had a lot of fun writing that post, and I figured I’d go ahead and make a similar post, except focusing on World of Warcraft, which would let me get away with posting it here! I also figured I’d make it more of a “Top Ten WoW Memories” post to broaden the criteria a bit… oh, and add commentary in lieu of having a video for everything.
And so, I present Pike’s Personal Top Ten WoW Moments…
10. The Gnome Rogue: You can read the full story here if you haven’t already; this is one of my favorite memories of PvP, period. To this day, I swear to you that you could see the shock on the poor guy’s face.
9. Ice Barbed Spear: For days I lived in Alterac Valley. For days we lost. For days I would push back dinner if it looked like we were in a winning game, which always turned out to be false, of course. And, then, one day… we won. I went from completely Neutral with Stormpike to halfway through Friendly by the time it happened. But we won. I have never seen a battleground chat so filled with shock and cheers. And I, at long last, had My Shiny.
8. The Safety Dance: Most of you who have been reading my blog in its WotLK incarnation for a while know about how Heigan was my Ultimate Nemesis for weeks. Every time I would go doggedly into Heigan, and every time, I would die on pretty much the first glimpse of green fire. Dead. Kaput. Tawyn Flatbread. It got worse as before long, most people I knew were talking about how easy it was. Not for me. And to add insult to injury, “The Safety Dance” is seriously one of my favorite songs of all time. How embarrassing.
Then, one day, in there with a PuG, a friend of mine gave me some brief last minute advice before I headed in. “Just keep moving.” Five minutes later…
The achievement. And the first time I survived. At the same time. I was on a high for days.
Since then I’ve only died on that fight if the disease on me isn’t cleansed fast enough. My druid even got the achievement on her first sojourn into Naxx. What was once my Fail Fight has become my speciality. Miracles can happen.
7. “We’re Going For the Epics. Epiiiiiiics!”: The boy and I were level 40ish, questing in Hinterlands, when my comrade-in-arms let out a gasp. I asked him what had happened, and he said, “I just got my first purple drop… and… I think… I am going to give it to you.”
It was called Bow of Searing Arrows, and it was my very first purple. I used it with pride for a very long time.
6. Home Sweet Home: I know I’ve written before about the feeling of flying into Elwynn and immediately feeling that very cozy “home” feeling so I’ll keep it brief; suffice to say it was one of the major motivators behind upgrading my Trial Account to a full-blown paid account. Because no video game had ever made me feel like that before.
5. My Kingdom for a Horse: The other big motivator behind upgrading my Trial Account was access to a mount. I decided early on that I wanted a horse rather than the typical Night Elf Cat, largely because of Tawyn’s RP backstory but also partially because I just really dislike the look of the cat mount. And so I began my long climb up the mountain that is Stormwind rep. Fortunately for me, Stormwind is arguably the easiest faction OF ALL TIME to gain rep for, so I was exalted at level 37– this was back when mounts were at 40, remember.
The boy and I were smack in the middle of Stranglethorn Vale quests when the big 4-0 happened for both of us; he got his special fiery warlock mount and I got my Chestnut Mare, which I promptly “named” Buckles. Then, the two of us rode up and down the entire southern half of Eastern Kingdoms together, simply out of the sheer joy of being able to do so.
4. Healing Naxx: This PuG Naxx10 was basically the culmination of a project involving my only non-hunter character to ever get anywhere near endgame– the final exam, so to speak, of my decision to doggedly level a druid as 100%-pure-Resto. I’d never healed a raid before (that wasn’t “Kara with 80s”, anyway) so I was ridiculously nervous, and then I found out that this group wanted to do it with only two healers: a trade of faster boss kills at the cost of less room for healer error, which absolutely terrified me.
And yet, one by one, all the bosses that I was afraid of as a healer… Patchwerk, Razuvious, Loatheb… went down to the healy might of a scrub tree druid in blues and the nice holy paladin who coached her and whispered her tips. At the climax of it all was a Kel’Thuzad kill during which, after a few false starts, not a single person died to one of my worst fears: Ice Blocks.
Most of the memories in this post are of my hunter(s), and naturally and understandably so, however, my healing alter-ego is very proud of what thus far is probably her finest hour.
3. “ENTELECHY GLORIAM!”: I have no doubt my fellow Silver Handers will recognize the guild that is involved in this story: a Paladins-only super-hardcore RP guild that focuses on, well– zealous paladins. They’re pretty well-known on our server, and as frequently happens with really well-known RP guilds, everybody starts tying in their RP with them. Our guild was really no different at the time; although we made a pretty conscious effort to have “our own RP” it was hard to not have tie-ins with the biggest RP guild on the server.
So it was that we held our weekly in-character guild meeting on the steps of the Stormwind Cathedral, against the in-character wishes of the Paladin guild. It wasn’t long before several members of said guild showed up and demanded that our little group of ragamuffins left; we countered that the Cathedral was for everybody. Now our guild meeting had had a rather impressive turnout that day, and it wasn’t long before, a good fifteen- or twenty- strong, we all marched right into that Cathedral. Paladins were yelling at us left and right to get out, and we were /yelling “ENTELECHY GLORIAM” which was actually sort of a spoof of the paladins themselves (hey, you can have some fun when you RP!) and we had a little gnome making “Myek!” noises and Trade Chat was hating on us and it was all around one of the greatest things of all time.
ENTELECHY GLORIAM, NEVER FORGET.
2. The Gift: This one was the mastermind of one of my bestest-WoW-friends. He had a level 80 hunter long before I did, and I idolized him for it, but he eventually perma-switched mains to Tanky Warrior and that’s how we all leveled up together. Anyways, one day, when I was level 65 or so, he asked me to meet him out in Blasted Lands. Mystified, I did, and when I got there, he traded me a present, all wrapped up. I opened it and inside was The Gunblade— it would be Tawyn’s very first gun.
He proceeded to show me how to level up my gun skill (from zero) on those mobs that never die, and as I did this, he performed a little mini-ceremony that was half-RP and half-not, about how he was proud to present to me the same ranged weapon he’d used to get his hunter to 70 (and how he liked to pretend it was the same gun), and how I was the best hunter he’d ever played with.
That gun is in my bank, and it is never going anywhere. <3 1. Karazhan: I’m sure you all saw this coming. The raid that is all at once the mystical awesome-land that I only heard about in hushed whispers on Trade Chat as a nubling, and the setting for my favorite Warcraft novel of all time, and the weekly watering hole and training grounds of a bunch of friends who were having the time of their lives in Ventrilo.
Not long after that guild gave up the ghost, I pulled together a montage of the things we did in there together and made a eulogy video of sorts, one I can’t watch without my eyes getting misty…
And that, well, sums that up better than any words I say ever could.
Well, that and the Outtakes, of course…
Phew! That was a tough list to write. Seriously, I had so many things I wanted to put on this list, and trimming down to what would make the final ten was tough. And ya know what, that’s really the point. I dare you all to think about your top ten best memories in game– write ’em down if that’s your thing, or just think about them otherwise. I sorta hate to be the stereotypical “count your blessings” guy, but really, I think you’ll find that there’s more of those memories than you thought there were. Don’t forget that…
In Loving Memory
Today is Patch Day, and I’m actually quite excited. Normal flying mounts at 100% speed instead of 60% (Lunapike rejoices), druid form updates, experience in battlegrounds, and a whole host of other things I am excited about. Gotta admit though, the lack of mention of either Wild Hunt or Animal Handler– both of which were supposed to receive nice buffs– in the official patch notes is making me nervous.
Really, the only thing I can think of about this patch that I’m not looking forward to is the change to traps that is going to make chain trapping much more difficult. Some people have said, “It doesn’t matter, hunters don’t trap anymore anyway,” and in a way, this is true, but in another way, it saddens me a little to say farewell to something so fun. And so, have the classic “Pike is Bored” movie I made long, long ago, in memorandum:
Gosh it’s weird to watch me in be in Viper the whole time. Remember that? o.O
This Is What I'm Doing With My Film Degree
Before you ask…
– The song is called “Bucket!” and I wrote it. A 100%-Pike creation I made in 2003 when screwing around with a program that was then called FruityLoops. The original movie of this that I made used the songs “I’ve Been Everywhere” by Johnny Cash and “I’m Gonna Be (500 Miles)” by The Proclaimers but YouTube threw copyright notices in my face and disabled the music, so in protest I am using an original song that I’ve been sitting on for years, waiting for a good time to use it. I think it works well.
– Yes I know there’s easier methods to get this achievement. Not nearly so fun though!
– See the big shadows on the ground starting at 3:38? There are supposed to be buildings there. And people wonder why I eat flame walls… *mutters*
Heigan Dancing Lessons For Your Pet (Movie Included)
Couple things before I post the movie on this:
1.) Beast Masters have it easier. Improved Mend Pet for the win.
2.) I make no apologies for my cluttered UI…
3.) …or the super campy music. =D
This is my first try ever using the YouTube annotation feature so let me know if you have any problems with it. And now our feature presentation:
I would like to extend a special thanks to < Song of Chu > for letting me raid with them this week, and FRAPS a Heigan run with them (and extra credit for trying so hard to get me to defect from my guild and join theirs… ;P)
So You Want to Play a Hunter? Part 7
Intro to Freezing Trap
Greetings, young level 20 hunter! You’ve just got Freezing Trap which is going to make your life easier!
You may have heard of a mythical thing we like to call “Chain-trapping”, i.e., chaining your traps together such that you can keep a mob trapped indefinitely. Now, that is indeed what you are aiming for eventually, but keep in mind that it’s not exactly something you’ll be doing very much before you get Freezing Trap Rank 3 at level 60. Your traps simply will not last as long. At this point, if somebody asks you to chain-trap in Deadmines or WC, there is no shame in telling them that it’s not a good idea.
So what are you going to be using lowbie traps for, then? When solo’ing and leveling, it’s very handy for keeping extra mobs out of your hair.
An example situation would go something like this:
You see two mobs standing next to each other. You send your pet in on one. They both aggro on your pet. Now the problem is, that if you just continue this scenario as is (you and your pet both attacking one target), it’s very possible that the second guy will pick up on your Mend Pet threat and come running for you.
So what do you do in advance of this situation? You lay a Freezing Trap down at your feet right about the time you send your pet in. If Second Guy comes running for you, he will run into your trap. Usually you can keep him trapped long enough to finish up your first guy.
If your pet is taking a lot of damage you can also purposefully pull one guy into your trap by way of Multi-Shot: that will alert Second Guy to your presence and get him to come running into your trap, so he is off of your pet.
A trap can also be quite handy to give your or your pet some recovery time before you finish up the fight. If you are already both quite wounded after a large pull and you have one guy left, you can trap that guy, pop up a Mend Pet and throw a bandage on yourself, and then finish up the guy in your trap.
Overall, Freezing Traps are one of the most useful tools you have at your disposal as a hunter. Always keep them in mind. They are your main form of crowd control and as you level and get better ranks of Freezing Trap and practice with them… you will learn that a hunter who knows how to trap is a hunter that everybody loves.
Things to Keep in Mind:
-Your trap needs two seconds of “arming time”, that is, if you lay down your trap right as a guy is on top of you, you will have to take a hit or two for a couple seconds.
-Once you lay down a trap, it will be active for one minute (before it disappears).
-Damage done to the trapped target will break the trap. That includes DoTs such as Serpent Sting. If you suspect you may possibly be trapping, it is a good idea not to use Serpent Sting. You can, however, use things like Distracting Shot because it doesn’t cause damage and will not break your trap.
-Traps have a chance to break early. It’s not your fault when that happens, it’s just something that you will have to deal with sometimes. Traps can also be resisted entirely, and there are some mobs that are immune to traps.
-Remember to put some space between the trap and you, or the mob will still hit you before getting frozen. Not a big deal when out in the open field, but rather more important in a raid or heroic.
-It is very possible to accidentally break your own trap via Auto Shot. If you have this problem a lot, you may want to look into a Pull Shot macro.
Freezing Traps can be improved (along with all other traps) via Survival talents, which will make chain-trapping easier, but you certainly do not need those talents to be a successful trapper. All it takes a little practice and a little timing. Eventually, as you gain higher ranks of your Freezing Trap, you will be able to start practicing your chain-trapping; but until then, just get a feel for when and how to use your trap.
In closing, I leave you with “Tawyn’s Trapathon”, a movie I made several months ago (and which you may have already seen, but hey!):
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Awj26eYxN5o&hl=en&fs=1]
Yes, it has its nub moments, but I wasn’t going for anything particularly fancy at the time, I was just FRAPSing one of my routine farming sessions. =P
And I will see you on our next installment of SYWtPaH, when we get to level 30!