Michael Bay Presents: World of Explosionscraft!

posted 2008/11/17 at 3:39 AM by SBMrClean

Warner BrothersthinktellingMonopolyfeelsaboutyourSBMrClean is a part time business jerk, part time writer in the video game industry. He plays horde-side on Draenor, and collects his other thoughts on videogames and storytelling at his personal website here.

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Comment by b0rk1983 FOR THE HORDE!

A fight against the Scourge and battling the alliance for towns sounds like the perfect flip-side to the Lord of The rings movie. Sorry gnomes! No more little people! (Granted, im no writer but id surely add more #$%^ to it) Comment by majino Just a little note, according to imdb: World of Warcraft (2011) Comment by Phagus I pray to god they don't do the "Dungeons and Dragons" cartoon thing and have Live actors get dragged through their computer monitors and into the game.

Let's have a movie that builds on the lore of something we haven't seen yet i.e The Emerald Dream/The Maelstrom etc. That way we have something to look forward to rather than nit pick on what was wrong. Comment by skullzbh Beginning with Arthas & Illidan for example is nice start imho, coz mostly those are major contributors in the storyline of the WoW we're playing (BC/WoTLK -- soz havent played pre-tbc).

i've always admired and read the information on wowwiki about illidan and arthas and such an incredible stories they were.

but at the end having to play WoW since BC got released i really dont know what to expect from a wow movie, it could be anything as WoW is so rich in content to fit in a 3hr movie even if you did have multiple parts like lord of the rings. Maybe the non-wow players will be fascinated by it but not the people who spent years playing it and know most of the story line they've been playing wont be as pleased as others as they will notice many holes and drop of characters or event in a movie.

sorry for my English tried my best ^^ Comment by b0rk1983 Just a little note, according to imdb: World of Warcraft (2011)Comment by scr00chy What does Michael Bay has to do with anything? Comment by CircaRevolt First let me just start off by adding that rumors have been circulating for some time that the story within the Warcraft movie is going to follow the journey of Varian Wrynn the once lost-now found King of Stormwind. Of course this is a rumor regardless of how many people back it. However, I can say that it is probably one of the better stories to tell through a movie. You can assume if that's true that it will follow Varian's journey as he is raised from a child to be a King then once he's a king he is kidnapped by the famed Defias gang comes into contact with Naga, loses his memories in a fall, washes ashore, gets taken captive by a slave cartel, is put to the test in the Arena, grows famous for his art in such and then begins his journey to find out who he is and later to reclaim the throne. Sounds pretty epic if you ignore the fact that a lot of the ideas have been taken from stories already told such as Gladiator among others.

That's beside the point. I got away from it I will admit.

The point I was going to make it that you can worry about such things when you are dealing with something set in stone being "ported" to a different medium of media. But this is so wide, you obviously can't just tell one story, because it's not about one story. It's an entire world thriving around thousands of characters. However, the thought process becomes less messy when you realize that Warcraft was Warcraft before it was World of Warcraft. You also have to take into account that players are playing through a story, but the main story is actually played by NPC characters such as Wrynn, Thrall, etc.

It's really not as hard to make a good videogame-film as people make it out to be. Most of these films fail because they simple aren't stylized the write way or written well enough. In order to relate toe veryone you only have to make them feel nostalgic. You don't have to show a actor killing thousands of enemies to "level up" in fact incorporating such things is just silly and so is thinking you have to to reach a certain audience.

The only thing people need is to recognize the movie is part of Warcraft without having to read the cover to figure it out. Which if they follow the Wrynn storyline it will. You will see locations, races, classes, etc - that will really make it a Warcraft movie. It touches on a lot of popular content such as the Ring of Blood in the outlands, Dunemaul, Stormwind, Defias Brotherhood.

So even if this is not what they plan on doing as far as choosing the story...it really doesn't matter as long as the story they tell is engulfed in a recognizable backdrop and is done in a way that is drowned in professionalism and the viewers can tell that it was taken seriously.

Sorry that was so long winded.

My basic point is that if you make a film about grinding, achievments, socializing with your guild, talking about chuck norris in trade chat, etc. Then you're going to have a terrible film.

Dropping one liners, putting the characters in areas that are familiar to the viewers, surrounding them with characters, classes and races that they can look at and whisper to their friends, "Oh %^&*, that's a Warlock!" in the theatre then you have a movie that fans of the game are going to respect. You certainly don't approach making a film as if you're developing WoW2. Comment by Nagarith 2 1/2 hours of Gnome Punting action. Comment by b0rk1983 You certainly don't approach making a film as if you're developing WoW2.

Oh god I hope they do, Id like to know what the next hero class is through the movie! Comment by Naqaj I found the video from the WoW movie panel at last years Blizzcon to be quite informative in regards to what to expect from the story.

You're not mentioning it at all, haven't you seen it yet? Or did they already release more detailed information? Comment by paunescudanutz well the thing is that Chris Metzen announced something about the story of the movie, and he said that they want to crate something to beat up LOTR and not only an adventure movie but one with some "big ass battles" as well, as far as i know they work with Legendary Pictures right now.About the story: actually WOW has a story if its divided in thousands of quests, not all connected to the same idea tho, basically you cannot make a movie out of WOW but you can make one out of Warcraft lore, same lore that is present in WOW.Metzen said that the action of the movie will be between warcraft 3 the frozen throne and the original wow, the Image that you posted should be part of the movie or related, as far as i analyzed it, its CGI and its Teldrasil, the starting point for the Night-elves.You can see all what they had in plan here, from blizzcon 2007.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSG2DiejFJ8 Comment by paunescudanutz Dude you are a Genius, now all makes sense to me, what Metzen wanted to say about some major moments in the lore, colliding into 1 point, an epic battle or something that is so important to the lore, and now the Teldrasil picture makes sense, Varian Wrynn went to Teldrasil after he escaped, and the big part of the story happens between warcraft 3 the frozen throne and world of warcraft.For me this story would be the perfect one if you know what I'm saying.And about the "big ass battle" they were saying, its about the first battle of Warsong Gulch (related fully to the game), when Varyan and the Night elf escaped the orcs by flight they helped a group of alliance in Ashenvale to beat a huge force of orcs, starting the conflict in Warsong Gulch. Comment by Winterborne6 Actually, I currently heading into the game design industry and all games technically have a storyline of some sort. It might not be a solid one that you would consider a true storyline, or one the player of the game would actually even think about, but it is there.

In Monopoly, you are a person (possibly banker or real estate broker) who is competing with others like yourself to make the most money. While a pretty lame concept for a plot line, consider all the individual storylines you could create from that. Not that I'm saying they will, but it they will probably create a decently thought out storyline from that idea that could go along with an individual game. I'm not saying that it won't suck. I'm just telling you the theory behind it.

As for World of Warcraft, as an MMORPG (or RPG in general) creating an individual storyline for that one, either following a certain character's 'story' or using one of the many novels that have already been put out, they have many ways to go with that one. It could turn out like the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or, it could turn out to be like the very many spoof reels and funny videos we see on YouTube. While hilarious and fun to watch, are not always something I'd like to pay 5-6 bucks to see.

I actually am interested in the idea of a World of Warcraft movie, and with Warner Brothers doing it, my expectations are high. I guess we shall see soon enough. Comment by evanborst lol, my movie would be about a bunch of friends on a quest...to become the best, but only through determination and many hard faught battles will they get there lol...

basically, i play the game to'hang out' with my friends, just to be able to have fun with them since i no longer live near them....and i have made alot more friends, friends of friends of friends you could say lol... everyone knows me as 'kadin' but yeah, i could go into more details but it would be more than 7500letters and i'm at work right now, so as of now...

see you all in Azeroth. Comment by smakapotatis Just a little note, according to imdb: World of Warcraft (2011)Warcraft (2009)Comment by BeQuietandDrive In order for it to make sense, it would have to center around Arthas - it would begin with his climb to Northrend, and there would be flashbacks of the events of WC 1-3, as well as the fight with Illidan. Also, the World Tree, Sargeras, etc., would have to be explained via prologue (think "Star Wars").

To appeal to players, I think it'd be cool if they did a band of Horde and a group of Alliance also serving some purpose (the characters would be involved in some kind of joint effort between the Horde and the Alliance, and these 10-ish people would bring down Arthas at the end).

Also, having a group of Alliance themed characters (human warlock, night elf druid, gnome rogue, dwarf paladin, draenei mage) and Horde characters (Orc warrior, Tauren shaman, Undead priest, Blood Elf paladin and Troll hunter) would make players of the game feel more like the movie is faithful to the game (I picked those races/classes because to me, that kind of mix just makes sense for story progression, etc.)

There's my 2 copper. Comment by BeQuietandDrive You certainly don't approach making a film as if you're developing WoW2.

Oh god I hope they do, Id like to know what the next hero class is through the movie!

Awesome, awesome, awesome, AWESOME idea - not only would I like to see that as well, but that would be a GENIUS marketing scheme on Blizzard's part.

Comment by paunescudanutz

on 2008-11-17T13:38:27-06:00

You all gave a few ideas, so there is a way to make a WOW or WoW related movie, even if its a MMORPG, it has multiple Epic story's that can be exploited, lets hope they will choose the best

Comment by rambaral

on 2008-11-17T13:56:46-06:00

Two ways to go about it. Either go the epic route and follow the story of characters basically going through the major raids of the game, but it would boil down to a 10 man doing what would normally be 25 since a movie with 25 characters is a bad idea.

The other would be a Galaxy Quest meets Tron and the Matrix kind of story where people find out their toons are real people that exist in some game world and are sucked into the game to play as their toon. Where Kil'jaden or some other demon really exists and is trying to take over the real universe and only WoW players can stop him.

Comment by beatphreek

on 2008-11-17T14:12:53-06:00

The other would be a Galaxy Quest meets Tron and the Matrix kind of story where people find out their toons are real people that exist in some game world and are sucked into the game to play as their toon. Where Kil'jaden or some other demon really exists and is trying to take over the real universe and only WoW players can stop him.

That is a terribad idea. That would ensure failure at the box office as it would really only appeal to a very young audience.

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