No Point: Stretching Time

Streams
Vimeo
WeGame (HD stream!)
GameTV (French website)

Downloads
HD720p x264 @ Megaupload (700 mb)
HD720p x264 @ Filefront (700mb)
HD720p XviD @ Megaupload (1.02gb)
HD720p XviD @ Filefront (1.02gb)

All-in-one
Warcraftmovies.com

In The Press
WoW Insider
Spooncraft
BPVolcano (german)
Whowho's review
Tamzin's review @ my forums

(If NP:ST gets featured on any blogs, other media etc, gimme a link to the comment section. Any language will do, I'll be glad to add it :)

Making of "No Point: Stretching Time"
The idea for this movie came to me late 2007 or early 2008. I went to the WoW.dev forums and asked people to send me their model changes. I wanted to create a movie which would feature new worlds from many directors. The other criterias for the movie weret that a) it should have gnomes as main characters and b) it should have a meaning or a plot.

Originally the movie was supposed to be created around one song, the DJ Orkidea remix of the Nightwish song "Bye Bye Beautiful". In the end, a good idea was replaced with an excellent one and that song is not in this movie at all.

The exact day when first recordings were made is 26th of february 2008. I finished editing the movie on 11th of December 2008. Between this time there was like a 5 month break when I did not do anything to the movie, it just was lying around in my HD.

Cool opening credit animation created by Pinkhair

That was definitely a good thing - now No Point: Stretching Time is almost exactly what I want it to be. I would have re-filmed a couple of really small scenes, but my laptop decided to blow up so that's a no go. I can honestly say that this is the machinima I'm most satisfied of.

Having no other games featured than WoW was part of the first plans, but later on I added multi-game scenes when the movie and story grew. It was no longer a "yet another Unlimited Escapism" but something more.


The plot - which can be interpreted in any way you want - was done the absolutely wrong way. On the beginnning I did have some ideas written on the paper, but at the final stages I just went with the philosophy "sync cool things to the music".

The name of the movie has nothing, 0% to do with the content. "No Point" comes from the lovely comments at WCM (which the UE series mostly got), "WTF?! THERE'S NO POINT!!11". Also, the phrase "No Point" will market the movie automatically - people use it in sentences. For example, "There's no point giving the Thunderfury to a warrior, since a warlock can also wield it nowadays." Hopefully this evil plan is successful!

"Stretching Time" is just an enormous salute to the song of same name in the movie (by Dj Orkidea).

Yes, I am a huuuuuge DJ Orkidea fanboi.


That's all folks! I hope you enjoy the movie and download it instead of streaming. Watch this machinima from the biggest video and audio system possible. The sound design by Caruu (also known as the prime messenger of Xenu) should make some sweet love to your stereo system.

A sequel? Not necessary, but not an impossible thought. I've told everything there is to this story. To get inspired to make a No Point 2, I need a bunch of new skillz an model changes.

My next machinima (the music video where I asked for people to send in their gnomes) is 99% ready. It will be delayed till I get my laptop back or come up with an alternative idea how to finish it.

STOP PRESS!

He is back! The DIVINE ONE has returned! AMAZING!

WTF, I don't get this.. NO POINT?!

This week, I am very certain of it.

Oldschool v2.0

This is not a machinima related post. Well, not for the most part!


Meet my lv60 oldskool vanity alt paladin, Metaverse.

I've managed to get him quite pimped out by hanging around with various PuGs to the oldschool instances. Being prot is hot, and throwing all the hammers has never been this fun.

My current main, Whitelabel is a paladin as well.

It is quite nice when the epics just fall from the sky to your hands while being carried by a raid of 80's.

I'd like to experience the old raids they were, this time as a horde paladin (I was a warlock in the previous life). For that, the world (of Warcraft) needs people at level 60.


So.. dear Blizzard, if anyone from your side is reading this, please consider this suggestion of mine.

There is quite a multitude of threads (on EU forums at least) asking for oldschool servers. That is something what I am not asking for.

Whilst vanilla WoW had it's pros, it sure had some really annoying cons.

Biggest of being them forcing class X into one role - healer, dps or tank. There were no real hybrids. With WotLK, the different talent trees of each (hybrid) class are more useful to it's purpose.

For example, the thought of bringing a shadow priest to dps in vanilla was a really, really crazy thought. It was either heal or gtfo.

I've always been horde so I can't say anything about the state of vanilla paladins, but the roots of "LOLRET" go long. As far as I know, prot paladins were not much of use in the days of vanilla. Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong :)

This picture has absolutely nothing to do with the subject of the post. However, those who understand what is going on.. are truly enlightened.

One of the most used counter-attack opinions against the oldschool servers is the "feeling of nostalgia", remembering only the good things from the past.

Completely true!

I did not even remember that when WoW started, there were no connected flight paths or linked Auction Houses.

The good old Southshore vs Tarren Mill battle was fun, as long as you were the high level character fighting the battle. But as a lowbie alt... ouch.

I'm raiding the new content and all, which I personally like a lot more than the raids introduced at the start of TBC. Our guild is a casual raiding guild, nothing too hardcore. We've been around since the vanilla times.

But I still like to experience the old world content. Call me a masochist, but I wanna take my protadin out there to Silithus and pewpew all those Twilight's Hammer cultists down just to get their encrypted texts for reputaiton.

Finally to the main point of this post: the thing I wish to suggest is simply the ability to lock your character to level 60.

Someone in the back row might yell "THEN GET A VANILLA ACCOUNT FFS!".

That is one alternative, but it removes the option for Horde paladins and Alliance shamans.

Back then those two classes were faction restricted.

Now, I would like to see how the oldskool content works with all possible classes. With a raid full of 60's the encounters still require effort and coordination. And more importantly, people enjoy playing shamans and paladins.

Why restrict them with classic accounts?

In my opinion, the "new" classes (Death Knights included) would bring a nice extra touch to the old world raiding experience, making things go smoother. Joining a new guild on the other faction to play shaman or paladin is not a thing that everyone is willing to do.



Instead of wasting money and time on getting an "oldschool server" running, implementing the option to lock a character down to 60, would be a lot easier - and probably cheaper - in terms of technical things (compared to setting up X amount of server machines).

Hell, I would be willing to pay a reasonable amount to lock the level of my character.

Both the playerbase (oldskool enthusiasts, I am sure that there are lot of us AND those who did not experience vanilla WoW) and Blizzard would benefit from this: I am quite sure that people who have their accounts cancelled would come out and try this option.

Do I need to dig deep into the ground to stay at 60?

And yes, there is a personal agenda in asking the lv60 lockdown: poor Metaverse is about 1.5 bars away from dinging 61. Getting Quel'Serrar, returning Onyxia's + Ossirian's heads etc have given quite a lot of XP.

And I really, o'rly-rly really want him to stay at 60.

Even with the option, I'd still like to see all the new content and instances.

The best part in my WoW experience has been the leveling: seeing the new quests, areas and instances for the first time. Learning new encounters and bosses, having them go down after all the frustrating wiping is a feeling made of win.

"A gnomeburger for Tyrael, some murloc eye soup for me please."

TLDR Version: Please Blizzard, give us an option to lock our characters to level 60. Thanks.



Lots of empty space here. Oh my, let's fill it with a rickroll!


And now the machinima part of this post:

No Point: Stretching Time is 99.99% finished. I got the excellent sounds from Caruu, a nice opening credit sequence from Pinkhair and some cool rendered pictures (a little preview of them in the picture below) from an artist by the name of Alexandra Vorobiova.


More about all this on the next posts to come :)

Fatality!

So, my laptop died, just like that.

It translates to machinimaking in a way that starting new videos will have a little delay (which sucks when I have a huge amount of inspiration and ideas!).

Especially ones which need more than one character on screen (no way I'll modelviewer those scenes which can be done faster and stuff :P)

Gladly, both No Point and are both completed in such way that there is no need for shots with multiple characters on them.

My inner sherlock tells me that the reasons for the sudden death of that poor laptop are either one or all of the following:

- I have not killed enough murlocs
- I have not rickrolled enough people
- I have not bashed enough emos and their shitty poemwriting
- I still don't have the Thunderfury bindings on Metaverse
- You know the rules and so do I
- Making lists like this is kinda stupid, don't you think?
- I'm on a boat, bitch!
- XENU!

A big plus is that the Fujitsu-Siemens customer service was nice and agreed to extend my warranty (it had ended like one month ago). Respect!

Yet another picture post

The key to decyphering these mysterious pictures are in their filenames.






Is it the Flying Spaghetti Monster? Invisible Pink Unicorn? Xenu?

Find it out when you find it out!

Now, what have we here..

Here's a screenshot of the project where lots of gnomes are supposed to be eliminated..


..I couldn't resist starting editing. I'm about halfway of the song and only two gnomes have been killed (Olibith and El). So I got about 80-ish left :D

This translates to it, that if the gnomes do not meet their doom on this video - another machinima must be made.

I'm very grateful for all the gnomes I've gotten and I can guarantee that there is an use for them - I got quite many ideas and concepts in mind involving the G-race.

This video is made in the terms of the story, if the gnome killing has got to go, then it goes. But as they say, "what g(n)o(m)es around, comes around".