MMOvie

I really wish that they had spent more time on the script. Maybe I'm too old, maybe this is a particular flavor of internet humor that I don't quite get. But I don't think so, I like internet humor. I like inscrutable internet humor. But the movie seems to be nothing but a pastiche of pop culture references from twenty years ago mixed in with some kind of plot that is a take off from .Hack//Sign.

This is a shame because the production values on this machinima are top rate. The "acting" is well done, the direction is good, and the effects and cinematography are all top rate. Basically everything about the piece is about as professional as you can get, held back by the script. But again, maybe it's just me.

The really interesting thing is how World of Warcraft is replacing Tolkien as the dominant fantasy paradigm. This movie is a great example of how the various tropes that are found within WoW are becoming more and more relevant to the lives of internet denizens than other forms of fantasy fiction.

I've noticed that most machinima that is done in Warcraft has very little to do with the story of Warcraft, but then again there is even a disclaimer on their story page that Blizzard has essentially given up on having a coherent story. So if the writers behind it aren't going to bother to stay consistent with the lore, why should the fans?

And while I want Warcraft to take themselves a little more seriously, it's hard to argue with success. In fact I think that it points to how the audience pays attention to story in an MMO, they don't see that we would traditionally think as story. To the average player the characters are the archetypes that other players fall into, rather than those that a writer would pen. The insane female avatar that is constantly flirting, the guy that makes constant movie references over ventrilo, and you, the only sane person in the lot. Wait I just described the characters from that machinima didn't I?

This is where the divide that separates game and film comes into play again, only this time in reverse. I'll bet that the characters in the story are based around characters that have been played on some kind of role play server in Warcraft. And in that context the characters probably worked out great, or at least great for the local audiences. But doubt that it will have much resonance outside of the community of Warcraft players. Good thing for them that said community is ten million strong.

The same cannot be said of Bloodspell, which was done in the Neverwinter Nights engine. Now I dearly love that game, but I'll be the first to admit that the graphic engine is a bit dated. Heck it was a little dated when it shipped. So Bloodspell doesn't have the advantage of Warcraft's advanced animation (notice I didn't say graphics) so it feels a lot stiffer, and they had to do a lot more work to get things like facial animation, lips flapping etc... But more damaging to their film, is the fact that the various tropes that exist in Neverwinter are less well known than those that are used in Warcraft, the audience for Neverwinter was much smaller. Less people know what spellcasting means. Probably less people know what mindflayers represent when compared to the amount that know murlocs represted annoyed humor.

As we move forward creating more and more interactive fantasy, I think that people will find that they remember actions and relationships more than they remember plot. We'll remember the drama of the main tank who left the guild two days after getting Thunderfury, or the horror of the unending spread of demonic witchcraft when Warlocks became overpowered, or the tragedy of the noble warrior's abandonment to the Death Knight as the needed melee class (presumed as of this writing). These are the new dramas, the new epics. The plot of the world and the actions that go into it are really just environment, setting details to backdrop the actions of the players.