🎥 Warcraft Movies and Machinima vs the "Content" of Today

WoW Classic WoW Classic General Discussion
1

Long ago, in a time before youtube was popular and everyone still had Myspace pages, we had Warcraft Movies and later on Machinima, and that is were we uploaded our 30 second fraps clips with minimal editing in an attempt to show off to the community or share information that was vastly unknown to the player base at the time. Here stars like Unbreakable, Grim, Swifty, and many others made their way to the hall of fame in WoW’s history. Some even made careers off the game because of it, and even the most brainless forms of editing today were seen as groundbreaking and outstanding to watch at the time, bringing in countless new players and inspiring thousands to make their own content and/or get to their level of skill. These videos may not seem like much today but back in the early 2000’s it was the talk of the entire game for a very long time, and laid the foundation to cement the game’s undying fanbase for many years to come.

Today however the crops we sew back in early 2004-2006 are slowly dying in retail, quality content is just covered by random weeds like Method getting world first (again) or Azmagold complaining about xyz as he threatens to quit the game that’s making him rich on twitch. Now I’m not saying our content community is all bad, there are plenty of exceptions out there today who still carry the torch that we started back in 2004 and I am quite proud to watch and give my support to their under 200k subscriber channels, but to see people who actually put passion into their work and don’t do what they do in the hopes of making money get out-shadowed by these big name fortnite level streamers who give nothing to the community besides their complaints and minimal effort is sickening. This is not the tight nitch community it was in 2004, this is just another old field of weeds.

The current state of the game is highly to blame for this, but if I were to list every reason why retail turns people into mindless labels that nobody cares about then this post would be three times as long. Also, this is the “Classic Discussion” so I would like to leave my retail complaints at the door. My point is Classic™ is a whole new field for us to seed, and could very well be the starting point of a fresh and living community. Sure it’s the same crop we’ve had and had fractions of via private servers for the past 14+ years, but its a new field none the less giving great opportunities to anyone with a creative mind. Warcraft Movies and Machinima may be dead but I hope that their ideas give plenty of the new content creators inspiration to make videos that aren’t some fortnite streamer level redux and help our community thrive as it once did.

To sum up this post just remember; it wasn’t Blizzard that made WoW great, it was its thriving community and we have many old school content creators to thank for that. So if you want classic to be great, be sure to support the new creators out there who will make it great (or even become one yourself) and let the weeds of retail die with retail.

Classic™ alone will not save WoW’s community, but in the words of Illadin, “Only we can save ourselves”; so let’s take this opportunity to make WoW great again.

7 Likes
2

machinima dead af

3

All i remember is the pvp montages…

CRRAWLLING IN MYYY SKIIIINNN!!!

5 Likes
4

Im not saying to go that far when it comes to making content but I would love to see little nods to the old creators with songs like this every so often. :joy:

5

Do people make machinima’s anymore? I remember survior of Stranglethorn and Chronicles of the annoying quest where pretty good for the first 20 eps. ( I don’t think they started in Vanilla though.) There are a few more i’m missing, like all of Illegal danish etc.

1 Like
6

Agreed 100%. Classic also lacks the overarching storylines that “encourage” people to play a certain way (i.e. raiding) and has less of an amusement park feel (yeah the roller coaster was exciting and scary, but those tracks never change) and more of a sandbox feel to it.

Want to RP? That’s a guild thing, a friends thing, a community thing. No amount of game mechanics or transmog wardrobes can fix someone who breaks the 4th wall and doesn’t know how to RP, or who willingly intrudes and just breaks the immersion for everyone. Successful RP doesn’t come from the game, it comes from creative folks who do that sort of thing.

There is still a lot of good online content, but I think you’re right in that since retail has taken on such a heavy-handed, force-fed approach to lore (cinematics, as cool as they are, are like watching the movie instead of reading the book if that makes sense) that there is less room for the creative types to flourish there than in what Classic could become if those people show up.

Good post. I’m looking forward to Classic to see what people come up with there. I’ve been avoiding the temptation (so far successfully) to try out the private servers, and since I’m a Wrath baby with not a lot of pre-Cata-Azeroth time under my belt, I’ve forgotten most of what I experienced there and didn’t experience a whole lot before the Sundering changed things so dramatically – especially with the linear/scripted/pull-you-by-your-nose questing they have now.

I hadn’t really thought about third-party content creators, and now I’m stoked to see what that might become.

1 Like
7

I don’t think they do any more because all the creativity has been sucked out of the modern game.

It’s plausible to assume it will return because Classic is community driven instead of achievement driven.

1 Like
8

This is the first time I have ever heard of a “machinma” and I have no idea who those “stars” are that you mentioned. I doubt even a small percentage know what you are talking about and you vastly overestimate their "contribution. " :slight_smile:

9

The only guild that is worthy of remembering is Goon Squad.

10

O_O I want to say you’ve missed out. I know people who never played WOW, but know “The Internet is for P__n” or ROFLMAO. It was also a big era for music video creation by fans, often using clips from anime.

9 Likes
11

I have no doubt that I missed out. I think the majority of the world misses out. The internet is far greater than the sum of its parts.

12

Because compared to making a news video or a guide they take far too much effort.
Basically I can only think of 3 current machinama people off the top of my head and 2 of them colab together a heap.

1 Like
13

hehe
2 Likes
14

Sorry I haven’t been replying to the forums in the past day, I have been busy dealing with being right click reported for this thread and it had me squelched for a day. Apparently, some people don’t like me or something… But I’ll try my best not to break the rules I didn’t break and hope the people who did it don’t do it again.

 https://imgur.com/jyEMt47

As for this thread I will now reply to my comments accordingly if that’s alright with whoever has it out for me…

No.

Machinima ended this year officially and all content was supposedly sent back to their uploaders.

Thank you, and thanks for all the pins and links you gave me in your own posts. I really am glad to see others understand the importance of community and communication in regards to the game and I hope more people read both our threads and find some inspiration to make the most out of classic.

You did and so did the world, but we aint talking about the entire world, we are talking about vanilla world of warcraft, and the majority of people who actually played at the time could all tell you stories of these videos and the first time they went to machinima or warcraft movies.

As for the rest;

:wink::ok_hand:

1 Like
15

I like nixxiom and madseasonshow. I sure do miss oxhorn though.

1 Like
16

I find machinima to be really weird to watch

17

Check that out.

3 Likes
18

My current favorites are the Classic Winds guy, Frostadamus, and Madseason. I do hope they read this since I see them on the classic forums a lot <3.

1 Like
19

This was a sad day indeed, I didn’t know about the event or I would have joined but this was a great tribute to exploration filmed the day prior to patch 1.9 when wall walking was “fixed”.

edit: this was uploaded to WCM April 19th 2006

1 Like
20

“Nogg-aholic - You can cut our wings but we’ll always remember what it was like to fly…”