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Blizzard Debuts Cinematic for World of WarCraft: Warlords of Draenor

Like most cinematics from the folks at Blizzard, it's reaaaaaaal pretty.

Aug. 14 2014

Posted by: Patrick

120 Comments

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AndrewB

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Edited By AndrewB

Every effing time I see one of these...

I'm blown away and go "fuck yeah!"

I wish the moments weren't tied to an MMO.

Especially when there are moments directly tied to lore I remember from Warcrafts 1-3 :(

Hopefully Lothar survives this time. Never forget...

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wh00kie

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@huxleyy: I sort of had that thought in my head but didn't want to say it out loud and be wrong.. I have no f-ing clue about any of the back story here but the cinematic was cool.

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LarryDavis

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Orcs are still the coolest race, jussayin'.

Anyways, I'm a little confused by this lore - assuming that is indeed Grom Hellscream, Gul'Dan, and Mannoroth - wasn't the whole basis of WC3 based on Grom accepting and drinking the Blood of Mannoroth? Is this looking at like a canonical revision if Grom turned it down instead or something for the expansion?

Also, is that other orc at the end that pushed Grom out of the way Garrosh? Or someone else?

I'm confused... but goddamn do I still love the lore.

It's some time travel shit, man, I dunno. WoW has messed with the lore so much already it kinda doesn't matter anyway.

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nERVEcenter

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@heatdrive88: Pime taradox. Wrathion and Kairoz have some big plan to prepare Azeroth for another Legion invasion, and it means freeing Garrosh during his trial and sending him back to Draenor 35 years ago to create an alternate timeline.

Garrosh uses the timeway to bring awesome technology to the pre-corruption orcs, and convinces his father to refuse the blood of Mannoroth. They make a new Iron Horde, and start building the Dark Portal not just to link to Azeroth, but to link to present Azeroth post-Siege of Orgrimmar.

It's fuckin' weird timey-wimey shit.

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Humanity

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The Blizzard cinematics are always such a tease because they are always amazing and for games I have zero interest in playing.

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NoodleUnit

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YEAH HELLSCREAM
I'd be excited if the game actually looked like this. :(

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Charlee_CoCo

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Edited By Charlee_CoCo

@anobix said:

@vulshock said:

I would rather have a Warcraft movie like this instead of one with real actors.

You and me both. I can't imagine how much money it would cost to make a 90 minute movie out of the art from these cinematics, but I'd watch it for sure.

im pretty sure 90 percent of that movie is going to be cg anyway.

@stimpack said:

@efesell: I thought about that, and I imagine you're entirely correct. That said, I'm sure it wouldn't be hard for them to make their money back and more. I mean, I imagine a full CGI WoW movie would shatter box office records with ease.

Various companies like Blur are constantly asked about making full length CG movies like that of their trailers and ones like the one above and universally the same response is given regardless of the company asked which is that it would take 5 years and cost nearly $300 million to make a feature length film on this level.

Studios like Blur have also confirmed that part of the reason why these type of pre-rendered trailers are so amazing/impactful/beloved is because they're only minutes long and as such can devote more time and attention to every aspect of those few minutes that studios like Disney, Pixar, and Dreamworks can't with their features.

As for them making their money back and shattering box office records. No, that would not be the case. Even at WoW's most popular, a movie like that would never do the type of business of movies like Avengers, Transformers, Harry Potter, etc. I'm guessing that you're assuming the millions of people who play WoW would all go see it, but that's not the case. The truth of the matter is that only a small minority of that audience would actually leave their homes and go out to a theater and see it. Big box office numbers are generally (if not always) a result of the average movie going populace, not the original fans of X property the movie was adapted from. That's (part of the reason) why you don't see direct adaptions of things like video games, because nobody would go see it. "How awesome would it be if someone like Pixar made a MegaMan movie?" Yeah, that probably would be awesome, but only for us, and not the population at large and as such would never make financial sense or do well financially.

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Stimpack

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@charlee_coco: I was with you until the part where you said it wouldn't shatter records. You can't state your opinion as fact. None of us know how popular it would really be, but I believe that it would. World of Warcraft is not Mega Man, at all. It's an entirely different beast, and I don't think the people that play it or have played it are all shut-ins. I wouldn't have imagined Avatar being so ludicrously popular, but it most certainly was. If that pile of garbage can pull in the numbers, I don't think anything is outside the realm of possibility. I honestly wouldn't have thought World of Warcraft would have been such a breakout success, either.

Anyway, point being that we could discuss our opinions of why it would or would not be popular, but it's entirely pointless.

I'm aware of Blur's history, and how much dedication and care goes into their productions, though. I guess it all would just depend on how much they're willing to bet that it could work.

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Charlee_CoCo

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@stimpack said:

@charlee_coco: I was with you until the part where you said it wouldn't shatter records. You can't state your opinion as fact. None of us know how popular it would really be, but I believe that it would. World of Warcraft is not Mega Man, at all. It's an entirely different beast, and I don't think the people that play it or have played it are all shut-ins. I wouldn't have imagined Avatar being so ludicrously popular, but it most certainly was. If that pile of garbage can pull in the numbers, I don't think anything is outside the realm of possibility. I honestly wouldn't have thought World of Warcraft would have been such a breakout success, either.

Anyway, point being that we could discuss our opinions of why it would or would not be popular, but it's entirely pointless.

I'm aware of Blur's history, and how much dedication and care goes into their productions, though. I guess it all would just depend on how much they're willing to bet that it could work.

It would not shatter records like that of Avatar or Titanic. Nor would it make a billion like Avengers did.

And we do know that WoW is less popular than it ever has been in it's entire history thus there's no way a movie that's targeted at the fans like you're talking about could possibly be as successful as it would've been at the game's peak popularity.

I wasn't using Mega Man as a literal 1 to 1 comparison it was just something pulled from random. I could've easily said "X property" and my reference to people not going to see it has nothing to do with me believing they are shut ins but rather it's become more and more difficult to convince people to leave their houses now days in general given A) How much faster movies come to video & B) The constant amount of entertainment that's available to them at all times at home via TV, Hulu, Netflix, YouTube, video games, etc. Note <-that is a fact, not an opinion.

Avatar's success was not a surprise. It was billed, promoted, talked about, etc, as the next thing to revolutionize movies and as such many people went to see it. WoW's success wasn't really a surprise either. MMOs like Ultima and Everquest had already been successful at that point and here came a licensed MMO based on a property that already had a big + dedicated fan base who were already gamers unlike an MMO based on a movie or whatever where you might have some amount of crossover. Now WoW's mainstream success nobody could've predicted, ie it becoming the watershed MMO.

Blur knows that it can't work and knows that it's not possible for them to do because as they've said they don't have the resources and even they did it would be an astronomical undertaking. Far more people want to see Star Wars 7 than a CG KOTOR movie and it will always be that way. Live action movies will always possess a greater money making potential which is a big reason why these movies are live action and not CGI. Note - the potential, that's how a movie studio will always look at it.

The only time it's the other way around is when a studio doesn't want to spend a lot on something like the 2007 TMNT movie where WB opted to do a $35 million CG movie over a $100 million live action film because they didn't believe there was a big enough audience to support a $100 million turtles film. Cut to 7 years later and we have $100 million turtles film that's made over $100 million in less than a week.

Also while we're on the subject of history let's remember that graphical fidelity isn't going to win over an audience as The Spirits Within proved, and having a large fan base doesn't guarantee (super) success either. Final Fantasy VII sold over 9 million copies but how many copies didn't Advent Children sell?

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Rongaryen

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You know, Dragon Ball Z did this too and that turned out alright.

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Orcs are still the coolest race, jussayin'.

Anyways, I'm a little confused by this lore - assuming that is indeed Grom Hellscream, Gul'Dan, and Mannoroth - wasn't the whole basis of WC3 based on Grom accepting and drinking the Blood of Mannoroth? Is this looking at like a canonical revision if Grom turned it down instead or something for the expansion?

Also, is that other orc at the end that pushed Grom out of the way Garrosh? Or someone else?

I'm confused... but goddamn do I still love the lore.

As I understand it, Garrosh is in an alternate timeline, and it doesn't affect the current Azeroth. Instead, they (using MAGIC) make the Dark Portal connect this new Draenor to the current Azeroth, so Garrosh can stomp around with his new army.

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Turambar

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Non-green orcs look both weird and dumb.

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Edited By BatmanBatman

What's with "Use of Alcohol"?! I guess that was some sort of Orc Kiwi cocktail or sumthin...

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93The_Ace

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Ah, damn. I thought that was a tease for the movie before I started reading the comments. I... huh. Well, at least their cinematics still look good.

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Budwyzer

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Orcs are still the coolest race, jussayin'.

Anyways, I'm a little confused by this lore - assuming that is indeed Grom Hellscream, Gul'Dan, and Mannoroth - wasn't the whole basis of WC3 based on Grom accepting and drinking the Blood of Mannoroth? Is this looking at like a canonical revision if Grom turned it down instead or something for the expansion?

Also, is that other orc at the end that pushed Grom out of the way Garrosh? Or someone else?

I'm confused... but goddamn do I still love the lore.

Sounded like Rexxar to me. Going by appearances is too difficult, but that voice sure sounded familiar.

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Edited By Corvak

@budwyzer said:

@heatdrive88 said:

Orcs are still the coolest race, jussayin'.

Anyways, I'm a little confused by this lore - assuming that is indeed Grom Hellscream, Gul'Dan, and Mannoroth - wasn't the whole basis of WC3 based on Grom accepting and drinking the Blood of Mannoroth? Is this looking at like a canonical revision if Grom turned it down instead or something for the expansion?

Also, is that other orc at the end that pushed Grom out of the way Garrosh? Or someone else?

I'm confused... but goddamn do I still love the lore.

Sounded like Rexxar to me. Going by appearances is too difficult, but that voice sure sounded familiar.

It's not a revision, because Warlords of Draenor is an alternate version. That is, there are now TWO Draenors, the new one where the timeline is changed, and the one that still exists as Outland, the level 60-70 leveling area.

Sadly, this means the alliance heroes can't survive and reappear - because this timeline is from when the orcs first used the Portal (Warcraft: Orcs and Humans). Gul'Dan never ripped the planet in half, so it's not just floating rocks like Outland is...yet.

Also I want to see Thrall's reaction to alternate Grom. Please say Thrall is gonna come back... :)

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Edited By mr_creeper
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@trogd0r2 said:

This just makes me want a Warcraft 4.

yes, this