Exalted – Picture Of The Day

For those that don’t play WoW this won’t mean anything to you at all. Feel free to make a nerd joke and move on to the next post.

Ventertainment

With his innovative Ventrillo Harassment series, Video Compiler managed to spawn countless less talented copycats. One of the few people to live up to the legacy however is a YouTube account called Ventertainment. Each video credits Video Compiler as an influence and follows the same basic format of white text on a black screen. Despite this, Ventertainment certainly has his/her own distinct style which includes far more frequent use of sampling the people on the receiving end of the harassment and often later incorporates their voice into music.

No one has logged onto the Ventertainment account in about 2 months but apparently he/she has come and gone a few times in the past as well. I love this stuff so it’s another three video post.

Onyxia Wipe

I don’t know how this creep got a raid group together. What an asshole.

Ventrilo Harassment

I remember ages ago when a friend showed me the now famous clips of people using soundboards of Arnold Schwarzeneger to do prank calls. Of course it was funny at the time but you can only listen to a sample of “Who is your daddy and what does he do” for so long before it gets pretty boring. While the idea of using soundboards is basically the same, website Ventrilo Harassment has raised the bar tremendously to the level of fine art. As the name implies, most the clips take place on Ventrilo servers which are usually private and used by guilds in World of Warcraft to talk to each other during more involved raids.

For the first time in Fine Filter history I’m including three clips in one post because it’s just that good. The first one is made up of Chris Hansen clips from To Catch A Predator, and the second and third clips are somewhat related. In the second clip the victim, who is affectionately referred to as “Peggy,” has a near mental breakdown after being harassed by a Duke Nukem soundboard. The real stroke of genius is when he then turns her voice into it’s own soundboard itself in clip number three.

It’s difficult to provide links for further viewing because there is no central YouTube page as a result of Ventrilo Harassment creating new accounts for each separate video. They do however have a website. Enjoy the vids.

NoObz!

NoObz! is an online comic strip that centers primarily around The World of Warcraft and occasionally mentions other notable RPGs such as Conan and Lord of the Rings. I’ve seen several other online comic strips that deal with the same subject matter, but NoObz! exceeds by far in terms of both quality of humor and general tone. The comic’s biggest strength however is it’s simplicity. I’m by no means a comic connoisseur but I realized almost immediately that NoObz! has made sure that only the most essential dialog is written allowing for a quick and entertaining read that gets straight to the punchline without too much fuss.

Being a huge World of Warcraft fan myself, it’s a bit difficult for me to say whether or not NoObz! will be funny to those outside of the RPG scene. On the other side of the coin however, the jokes get to the heart of what it means to love WOW and the trials and tribulations that come along with it.

NoObz! can be found here.

Nerd Rage

This shit is so painful to watch, but still awesome. A couple dudes playing WOW at a tournament that results in crazy adolescent nerd rage.

WOW Insider

When it comes to getting the latest news about World Of Warcraft, I’m sure there are countless blogs out there to choose from. The one I decided on is WoW Insider. No matter what your main interest is when it comes to WoW, be it PVP, machinima, or leveling guides, they have it all and much more.

The site is visually appealing, well organized, and easy to navigate which is a wonder considering the sheer amount of content available on the site. The Insider is consistently updated several times a day, making it a staple of my web browsing routine. Some of my favorite sections include the class-specific news segments and the recently added “Ask A Beta Tester” which covers first hand accounts of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. The only negative criticism I have is that some posts take too long to get to the point, but from what I’ve read on past posts they’re aware of this fact.

WoW Insider can be found at www.WoWInsider.com.

Faces Of WoW

The concept behind the site Faces Of WoW is quite simple. Players upload pictures of themselves along with their character’s name, which are then searchable by realm (server). Much to my surprise there were several hundred people from my server, Echo Isles, that had uploaded pictures, many of which I had even played with several times before.

There may be a few similar sites around but this is the first of it’s kind that I’ve seen. Although seeing pictures of fellow players from your server is pretty cool, perhaps they could take it another step further by adding some social networking to the site.

The site is here and the link to my profile is here.

Project Lore

Project Lore is an online show spearheaded by Alex Albrecht most widely known as the co-host of Diggnation. Much like Diggnation, the concept of Project Lore is very simple which is what makes it so great. Along with 4 other players, they run various instances in World of Warcraft and discuss strategies for each. Each instance is divided between several episodes which are consistently posted throughout the week. They are currently into their 9th set of episodes, all of which can be found at ProjectLore.com.

Unfortunately, Project Lore disabled embedding of videos for some reason so I’m unable to post any here. One would think that tech-savvy people such as themselves wouldn’t do such a thing…go figure.

The Instance

The Instance is a podcast hosted by Scott Johnson and Randydeluxe about all things related to World Of Warcraft. The show features a variety of regular segments such as Big News, Drop of the Week, and Mod Of The Week. With good consistency they release a new episode every week after recording it live online.

Occasionally the sound quality leaves something to be desired, but compared to most other WOW podcasts I’ve heard it’s far more interesting. Both hosts are knowledgable about the game and humorous without getting too nerdy about it. Over the 2 years that the show has been running they’ve built up a strong community around the show and have a guild called Alea Iacta Est on the Earthen Ring server.

The Instance can be found in iTunes and at www.theinstance.net.