Visions of Warcraft

I used to play the first Warcraft game back in 1997. Back then, the world of Warcraft was fairly, based on the same platform as many other popular games in the mid to late 90s such as Command & Conquer. The player built forts and bases, spawned soldiers, waged mini-battles from an all-seeing perspective. World of Warcraft completely changed that basic gaming structure to something far more dynamic.

Engineers at Blizzard really did create a world and though I have not played the "new" incarnation of Warcraft, being the geek that I am, I would say I am fairly well entrenched in the kind of social circles where players of the game are common. I even had the game installed on my computer for a good period of time when my roommate and our mutual friend would have WOWnights that involved them playing in my roommate's room and mine respectively, yelling across the apartment as they sought after powerful artifacts, completed missions and walked around the digital world created for them in the Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game.

Naturally, there has been talk of making a cinematic adaptation of the game for some time. In 2006 Legendary Pictures-Batman Begins, 300 and Superman Returns-announced that they would bring World of Warcraft to the screen in 2009. With 2009 just around the corner, it doesn't look like that will happen at this point. the A trailer for the newest World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, however, does give us a taste for what a live action World of Warcraft movie would be like.



If an eventual WOW movie does look like this, I will definitely be there. What I love about this kind of storytelling is that it is rooted in pure fantasy. Even the environments are lavish, outlandish. Colors are richer, magic is a given. Other fantasy films have come close but are still for the most part, highly mainstream features and rarely have as bold of styling I think true fantasy media necessitates.

In other online-role-playing-game news, I just discovered the web series, The Guild, which explores the clash of the online and real life with always comedic results. The series is penned by Felicia Day, newly in the spotlight after her role as Penny in Dr. Horrible's Sing-A-Long Blog. In fact, some of the humor in The Guild is reminiscent of that on Dr. Horrible. Felicia Day also runs a blog on her own site.

I give you the first episode of The Guild:



I watched all ten episodes of the first season of The Guild-which is available on DVD-with a friend of mine who is going to start to play World of Warcraft. I suppose that in making him watch the show I was poking a little fun at him for playing but I feel that I can do so only because I have plenty of geeky obsessions of my own (see: model lightsaber above my television).

He's going to be a Paladin.

A Gnome Paladin.

Keep an eye out.