Project Lore

There's been one specific horse trampling his mark all over WoW news this week, and his name is Invincible. On the official World of Warcraft website Wednesday, Blizzard unveiled a page devoted to Arthas' horse along with the news that the Invincible Charger mount will drop upon defeat of the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel, on heroic difficulty. The site also goes into considerable depth on the history of Invincible -- in both life and undeath -- and just why he is so epic and frightening:

The mare Brightmane gave birth to Invincible as a young Prince Arthas watched with rapt attention. In the years following Invincible's birth, the horse and Arthas formed a bond that carried them across the warring nations of Azeroth, through the icy grip of death, and into the throes of battle. The stallion's coiled muscles were made for speed, and Arthas often felt that his mount flew rather than galloped across the countryside.

With the slightest touch of his heel, Arthas was able to convey his directions, and Invincible obeyed without question or hesitation. It was Invincible's unfaltering faith in his master that inevitably led to the stallion's death and unholy rebirth. On a cold winter afternoon as snow was blanketing the ground, Arthas was desperate to get away from the city even if it meant riding through harsh and unforgiving weather. Once outside, Arthas guided Invincible over a familiar jump, but the stallion slipped on slick ice, and the fall shattered his forelegs.With no way to save his companion, Arthas was forced to give Invincible a merciful death, and the prince carried that guilt with him for a very long time.

Years later, after the Lich King granted Arthas necromantic powers, Arthas returned to the grave where he had buried Invincible and raised his loyal servant into undeath. It was in this dark act that Arthas felt a sense of purpose. He believed that Invincible's death was not an accident; rather, it was essential to Arthas's destiny. Invincible was not bred to be a warhorse, but after he was brought back from the dead and made immune to hunger, pain, and exhaustion, he became the perfect steed for Arthas.

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I've been playing WoW since the open beta. Today, I made a discovery. You can set your addons to be enabled or disabled for each of your characters! After you have logged in and are on your character select screen, the familiar window that allows you to load out of date addons or disable addons without deleting them also has a drop down that allows you to configure which addons load for which characters. I stumbled upon this when I was trying to uninstall addons. I thought it would be useful to try to manually delete the files instead of using a manager because addons have complicated configuration files; there are files in /WTF/Account/AccountName/Server/Character and /WTF/Account/AccountName/Server/SavedVariables, and sometimes its unclear where data is stored for modular addons like Cartographer, Atlasloot, or FuBar. I searched my computer for the name of the addon and a few files came up. I curiously found some files called "Addons.txt" that contained a list of my addons and whether they were enabled or disabled. More importantly, they were in the configuration folders for each of my characters! It only took a couple seconds of carefully examining the addon window to find out that I have somehow missed this feature for who-knows-how-long. This is great for enabling or disabling class-specific addons like Cutup or FaceSmasher. I disabled all my combat related addons, like Deadly Boss Mods and Outfitter for my bank alt. The GUI is easy to use, but manually editting text allows users to copy/paste among other things, such as saving "addon profiles", allowing you to switch between interfaces for PvP or PvE easily. In fact, that sounds like a great idea for an application. The load time difference was enormous! I decided to check out how many resources my addons were using. I whipped out the good old PerformanceFu and took a look at my statistics. It showed me how much memory LootLink and QuestHelper were using. Surprisingly, Peggle was not among my highest resource-intensive addons! Players with a few addons can hover over the menu button for some similar statistics. I timed a login with all my addons on and another with all my addons off. With my approximately 120 addons, it took 32 seconds to login. With no addons, it took 2 seconds. This could be faster if I wasn't in windowed mode or listening to music and browsing the web at the same time, but the fact that addons cost me 30 seconds while logging in and likely lots of Dalaran lag inspired me to clean out my addons. What tips do you have for addon management?

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His WoW-inspired lyrical creations each have started out as karaoke fodder "on stage, in front of a bunch of people in a bar that have no idea who Arthas or Sartharion are, and just stare at me like I am insane." Ryan Myers has been dreaming up the parodies in his head for years, he said, but it was just within the past couple of months that he decided to act on the impulse. I first heard "Ninja Raiders" at the end of The Instance!, episode #141 (apparently I missed "Action Bars," which was played on episode #140). And the response was immediate. That night, I logged onto my main, got on Teamspeak, and sang along every time someone started belting out, "If you like it then you should have rolled need on it," and "QQQ♪..." Then I sought out the video, which Ryan made with his and his guildies' characters, along with "the assistance of a Party Grenade to make unwitting passers by part of the dancing shots," he said. Apparently, I wasn't the only one enthralled. Ryan said he has gotten an "overwhelmingly positive" response to those two songs, and also to "Clint Felwood."

"After that episode came out, Ninja Raiders seem to spread like wildfire, through forums and trade chat. I'm guessing it was a little more successful since it is a real 'video'. I was a little embarrassed when it became popular... it's the first video I've made, so there's a lot of rookie mistakes in there, like leaving the cursor on the screen and whatnot. I'll be going back to make videos for the other two, so hopefully those will look less amateurish."

Here's a little more about the man behind the lyrics, 30-year-old (with "the body of a 29 1/2 year old") Ryan Myers, from the suburbs of Chicago, Ill. Project Lore: How did you get into WoW?

"I've been playing for about 4 years. I downloaded the free trial just to give it a shot, though I was determined that I would never 'buy some stupid game that you have to pay for each month'. Well, you can see how well that plan worked out for me."

PL: What are you working on in-game?

"My main is Ember, an 80 night elf rogue on Aerie Peak. Though I have also been leveling a draenei shaman. I've been messing around with the Argent Tournament a bit, and just starting to get into Naxx (we have a very casual guild of just a few friends, so we're a bit behind). My friends have actually yelled at me to 'stop being creative and play more.' "

PL: How did you start making parody songs?

"I've been writing them in my head for years, but it's only recently that I started recording them. I didn't think anything would come of it, I just recorded 'Action Bars' while really bored one day, and then decided to send it off to the Instance just for the hell of it. I didn't think they'd ever even play it."

PL: Is anyone else involved in the creative process?

"No, though I do have to say that my wife gave me the first line of 'Clint Felwood' (if I didn't mention that, she'd kill me). Otherwise, it's all me. Except of course for my poor guild, that I force to dance while I film them."

PL: What kind of reaction have you gotten so far from anyone who's heard the songs?

"The reactions have been overwhelmingly positive... it seems like my only harsh critic is me. I know that my voice isn't the greatest, and I sing off key a little, so I get super self-conscious about that. But people don't seem to mind, they just dig the parodies. I always assume everyone will hate them, but that's never the case, thankfully."

PL: What's your favorite song you've done so far?

"Action Bars is still my favorite... not only because it was the first one I did, but also because it's about rogues, so obviously I identify with it the most. It's funny, I used to listen to the original song 'Handlebars' (by Flobots) all the time, but the other day when I tried to sing along with it with the real lyrics, I couldn't do it... I kept sliding back into Action Bars."

PL: Are any of your lyrics based on RL experiences?

"Ninja Raiders definitely, especially the 'hunter weapon' part. I've been part of some pugs where it is just mind blowing what some people will roll on. And I have heard the response of 'QQ more' on more than one occasion when someone was asked about their ninjaness... so I couldn't help but put it in as my own little revenge."

PL: Do you have any other upcoming songs that we can listen out for?

"I've got a couple bouncing around in my head, so there's definitely some on the way, I just haven't decided which one will be next. Ultimately, I'd like to have at least one song for each class. I'm heading to E3 next month, so I have made that a deadline for myself... I will have at least one more song and one new video done by then, if not sooner."

And here we have some of Ryan's favorite lyrics from each song: Action Bars: "I've won about a million Arathi Basins make druids AFK in exasperation they all try to heal with their restoration but I just respecced to assassination" Ninja Raiders: "I need no permission, did I mention everything is a hunter weapon... don't tell me that you don't secretly want to be just like me and need every boe that you see" Clint Felwood: "the boomkin aura, I'll bust it out for ya the fauna and flora all call me destroya" So is anyone else a fan? You can bet I'll be waiting for Ryan's next lyrical nugget. In the meantime, go download MP3s of each song at his Web site, Roboguzu Entertainment. Share the love with your buddies, and let us know what you think!

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Sometime in February my day job decided that it would be beneficial to the company's bottom line to disable Internet streaming for audio and video.  The IT department's shenanigans lead me to go on the hunt for my own ear-pleasing cuts.  Considering I haven't purchased a CD since high school, I didn't really know where to turn initially.  Then I remembered that the Wrath of the Lich King Collector's Edition came with the official soundtrack.  After ripping the disk to the hard drive and listening to the OST over and over, I can only say that Blizzard's soundtrack is even more amazing than I may have lead you to believe in the review. My new found appreciation of Wrath's auditory pleasures kicked off my first infatuation for non-MIDI music in video games.  Previous games have had fantastic music (BioShock), but I tended to overlook what the music, rather than sound effects or engineering, can really do for a title.  The fact that BioShock's - whose music is now part of my work collection - and Wrath's OST can remain entertaining pieces outside the game, or even the universe, says a lot.  If you don't believe me, try firing up the Wrath cinematic while some friends are over.  Just play the music and see what kind of responses you get.  The first half of that track is flat out brilliant. There has to be bigger video game OST audiophiles out there.  What OSTs would you recommend?  I am preferably looking for original music, not soundtracks like Grand Theft Auto's.  Currently my collection is fairly bare and very recent, the two aforementioned titles, The Witcher, Red Alert 3 (bad game, nostalgic OST), MadWorld and some random Final Fantasy CD I found. For those of you with the Collector's Edition, I suggest you add the CD to your digital library if you haven't already.  Seriously, play it for some none-WoW friends without telling them what it is, see what they say and report back to us.  If you don't have the cd, may I recommend a pair of e-tailers to you - Amazon and eBay?

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I have played my fair share of MMOGs. Many of them I only played for a few months, such as Ultima Online, Everquest, Asheron's Call, Auto Assault and Tabula Rasa. I can only truly say that I've been a hardcore player in World of Warcraft, sticking with it for years after its release – and still counting. But all of those games have at least one thing in common. And I don't mean that they have each sucked days of my life from me. As either a hardcore user or just a casual player looking for a new MMO world to immerse myself in, I always get tired of MMO music. After the first few hours, my hands will systematically reach for Control + M to see if that near-universal hotkey was added to the UI. More often than not, the combination will drop the soundtrack instantly. Finally, I am able to continue on my wolf/alien/bear/horde killing ways without hearing the same piece of music for the xth time. It isn't that I don't enjoy the music. In fact, I have shown my love for game music on numerous occasions. This is normally where I note some way to fix the problem. Unfortunately, I do not really have any suggestions on how a company could render the issue, other than constantly producing more tracks. Obviously, that is not really feasible in a business sense. At least, not unless the company is releasing the tracks as part of a large content patch or expansion. Perhaps the greatest screensaver ever created got it right. I am of course speaking of EVE Online. EVE works around the problem by incorporating an MP3 player into their client. This allows players to listen to their own soundtrack without having to alt-tab all the time. For EVE, the addition actually fits their game, but I doubt the citizens of Azeroth would listen to Journey or Tool during their hunting expeditions. What to do...

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