Nyhm originally released Nerf You in December 2009. This video is a proud continuation of his work through the years. However, I feel like Nyhm's really nailed down a particular dynamic in the lifestyle of playing WoW. Getting nerfed sucks, there's no doubt about it. But for every person who feels like the nerf hammer hit them especially hard, there's probably a few who realize that it was probably for a good reason.

I especially think Nyhm's vocal skills are on display in this video. It not only has a pretty catchy tune, but he really gets to show off his ability to use verse and intonation to bring it up to another level. The video is pretty fun also, and I'm thankful for the pseudo-subtitles for helping to keep me up with the lyrics.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

A tradesman without tools would be challenged to create any final product. WoW isn't much different. If you're looking to master multiple professions across multiple toons, and make the most of your crafting time, you may eventually consider picking up a mod or two to help you.

I was recently introduced to Advanced Trade Skill Window by a guild mate who, like myself, has multiple characters with many, many professions. The idea in my alt farm is that I'm trying to produce myself any final product I might need. This includes enchants, reagents, and even the transmutes required to produce gems. As we were chatting about this kind of set up, she immediately filled me in on the basics of ATSW. Gregg first looked at ATSW for AddOn Spotlight back in October. But considering how helpful it is to profession-hounds, I wanted to spend a little more time with it now.

Advanced Trade Skill Window replaces your standard in-game trade skill windows. Whenever you hit the action button for your profession, Advanced Trade Skill Window will automatically open. Right off the bat, you'll get one of my favorite benefits of the mod. The screen is much, much bigger than the native interface, which gives you a lot more room to scroll through your recipes. But, obviously, there's a lot more to the tool.

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Filed under: Insider Trader (Professions)

It's not my goal to discuss whether or not there are actually vampires in WoW. The Crimson Halls certainly seems to support the idea that the Cullen-crowd can get their bite on in Azeroth, maybe even cuddled up against the vampire LARPers. But even with the Sanlayn rocking the vampire thing in Northrend, there still aren't any playable vampires in WoW. (Blood death knights are arguably similar, but they still don't sprout fangs and lay the nom down on unsuspecting victims.)

Yet, people still yearn to play vampires. It happens. And I don't actually mind people playing these type of characters in the free-form style roleplay you see in Goldshire and Silvermoon, because that tends to be the sort of place where anything goes. And I'll admit. In a former life I've LARPed a vampire.

But in troupe-style roleplay, there are usually particular character conventions. A roleplay guild focused on defending Ashenvale from the encroaching Horde, for example, would have some trouble accepting a Draenei Shaman who is actually roleplaying an apologetic ex-Eredar making amends for his crimes.

It falls on the leaders of these troupes and guilds, therefore, to talk to the person playing an outside-the-box character. You don't want to just leave your junior vampire going down a bad track, leaving him without folks with whom to roleplay. Even worse, it can lead to backbiting, disruption in the troupe, and other negative things. Roleplay groups are fragile enough -- don't leave a wingman hanging, when you can help them with the trouble.

Take a look behind the jump, and let's see how you can help bring an Edward Cullen back into Azeroth, while still making everyone as happy as possible.

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Filed under: RP, All the World's a Stage (Roleplaying)

Yo dawg. Blizz heard you like heals, so they put a heal on your heal so you can heal while you heal. Was that a traumatic sentence to read? Sorry, couldn't help it, but I'll claim that I dropped that meme in honor of today's Phat Loot Phriday weapon: Trauma. Not only are the stats on this one-handed mace pretty sexy, but it was the beneficiary of a recent fix. (The heal it procs was only affecting folks in the same group as the person who received the heal, not anyone else in the raid.)

Also? It's totally a bunch of skulls with horns lashed together.

While the thread in which Ghostcrawler posted derailed into general discussion about Blizzard's QA, let's not allow that kind of tangent-hopping to happen here! Without further ado, Trauma:

Name: Trauma
Type: Main Hand Mace
Damage: 112 - 359 Damage, 130.9 damage per second
Speed: 1.80
Attritbutes:

• 53 Stamina
• 53 Intellect
• Increases spell power by 741.
• Each time your spells heal a target you have a chance to cause the target of your heal to heal themselves and friends within 10 yards for 217 each sec for 6 sec.

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Filed under: Phat Loot Phriday

Professor Putricide is the final boss in the Plagueworks. He's kind of the R&D guy for the Lich King's slime armies. If you recall from fighting Rotface, Putricide is the guy who's constantly screaming about what good news it is that the slime is working again. Frankly, I'm mostly motivated to kill the guy to get him to shut up about the slime.

Putricide is a movement fight. There's a lot of mechanics that will require your raid to rapidly swap targets (to kill adds), and then not-stand-in-stuff. (Most of the stuff you'll not be standing in is one variety of slime or another.) It's not really much of a coordination fight, per se, because your tanks are probably pretty well-versed in swapping aggro back and forth. However, Putricide is going to put to the test your raid's ability to get on an add quickly. And not stand in stuff.

Let's take a look behind the jump and talk about the fight in more detail.

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Filed under: Ready Check (Raiding)

You might remember Melvenor from his previous work, the Ballad of Matthias Lehner. He's now followed up with the Echoes of Lordaeron, which is (I think) a final homage piece to a roleplay thread than ran all through Wrath of the Lich King. As the story goes, Echoes of Lordaeron tells the tale of two soldiers who were friends before the wars. After the final defeat of Arthas, the two men have a final catharsis, as they both come to grips with what happened in Icecrown.

The thing that really struck me about Echoes of Loraderon wasn't the story or even the voiceovers. What really rocked me about the movie was just how sheer darn beautiful it was. This is one of those movies that felt like wall-to-wall eye candy. I don't know if some of these shots come from in-game cinematics, but if Melvenor created all of this from scratch . . . well, I sure as heck hope he keeps doing it.

Grats to Melvenor on a beautiful piece of work, and here's hoping you keep creating.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Michael Gray is your answer man today.

Howdy there, Queue-travellers. This is my first time answering The Queue, so I've gathered up questions from yesterday, earlier in the week, and even before. I'll be laying the answer-down on them. Wish me a tad bit of luck. Some of this is stuff that I always meant to get a full-time post out on, but never did manage to get a full article out of them.

Of course, it's not like there hasn't been big news lately, so it's possible everyone already has their own answers. It could happen. Take a look behind the jump and see what folks have asked WoW.com.

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Filed under: The Queue

This movie was created by RavenSylphG, who you might recall was the machinima creator of the incredibly popular Ninja Raiders. Raven has put together a new video for the song On the Horde. It's pretty nice to be able to feature more of her work, since I'm really finding myself enamored of her graphic style.

On the Horde is performed by Kirstieanne, Cryssy, and Sharm. (You're probably pretty familiar with Sharm from videos like I Kissed An Orc). This is the first time I've been exposed to Kirstieanne and Cryssy. I liked both of their performances, and think they did a good job singing with Sharm. I will admit that On the Horde didn't hit me as the best song ever, but I still respect the amount of work and effort that must have gone into creating it.

Ultimately, I'm really excited about seeing all four of these folks break out more music and videos into the WoW culture. I think theyr'e doing great things, and I'm eager to see what comes next.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

EmberIsolte's last movie, Ninja Raiders, was certainly a hit. She's now following up with Altaholic, which is a parody of Katy Perry's Hot 'n Cold. The video and lyrics were created by Gack and Eidni, while EmberIsolte performed the vocals.

The video for this song is pretty fun, with a heavy mix of machinima techniques and gameplay footage. The lyrics for this piece do a great job fitting the music, without any of the "forced" feeling which many parodies suffer. The vocals sounded a little funny to me, but that sometimes happen when checking out a movie through YouTube. However, EmberIsolte does a pretty good job of nailing Perry's voice technique from the original song.

It's nice to see Draenei surfacing as strong machinima characters. While that's not a direct commentary on movies like this, I think the choice of main character helps separate Altaholic from many of the other WoW parody pieces. Getting some variety in machinima is always a bonus.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch

I'm a man who likes to tank. If you find me in PvE content, it's almost always out there doing my very best to take as much damage as possible. It's kind of my thing. So when I first saw Ascension Gaming's This is Why I'm Prot, I was understandably excited.

The song is a parody of This is Why I'm Hot with a protection warrior spin. Still, I think it probably applies to all tanks about equally, even if the song pokes a bit of fun at the protection paladin crowd. The music itself is fairly straightforward, and completely accessible. It's got a solid beat, and I'd actually love to hear the rapper do other work -- he felt pretty solid to me.

The video itself was a little more bland. But if you consider that the video is meant to be a vehicle for the music, it served its purpose very well. The flashing lyrics were slightly distracting. But if you view the machinima portion as being a little more trailer-like, and a little less music video, I think the whole thing comes across better.

This was a fun video, and I'd definitely like to hear more from the performer. And at the end of the day, this is why I'm prot.

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Filed under: WoW Moviewatch