Jul 24, 2008 @ 09:00 am by Spiff
I got an invitation to join the Wrath of the Lich King beta the other day. At first I was afraid the email was a phish because it said I’d have to enter my account name and password to upgrade. And besides, I didn’t remember signing up to be invited to the beta. But then I started hearing that lots of invites were being received around the Interwebs, which helped me feel more comfortable that my invitation was legit.
Even so, I wasn’t sure I wanted to even do it. I’m not a big fan of beta software. I don’t want to have to stumble through bugs and unfinished content. I want to experience it when it’s good and done and ready for my consumption. But then a buddy of mine said he’d gotten an invite too (he went with me to Blizzcon last year, so that must be how both our names got on the list) and that he’d already downloaded the beta client and made a Death Knight and it was awesome. That was enough for me. I’m in! 
Jul 01, 2008 @ 09:29 am by Spiff
As if I weren’t going slowly enough on my new video, I recently discovered that the new UK division of Machinima.com is having a machinima contest (details here). The game is to make the best machinima video using one of two semi-obscure (IMO) Jonathan Coulton songs, “Todd the T1000″ or “Bacteria”.
At first, I thought I was out of luck, which wasn’t a bad thing. Only UK residents 18 years or older can enter this contest (I’m from the states), and I’ve never won a machinima contest ever, so having a solid excuse to not enter and lose this one seemed to be a plus. But then I got to thinking… perhaps only the video enterer needs to be a UK resident and perhaps the video maker can be from wherever they want. And it would be nice to win something for once. So, I emailed Machinima.com and got confirmation that as long as the video enterer is from the UK, they couldn’t care less who actually made the video. So, it looks like I can still make a video and then find a buddy in the UK to enter it for me and perhaps have a shot at winning something after all!
Let’s just say out loud that “Todd the T1000″ and “Bacteria” are not particularly inspired choices for a video contest. One is too specific (”Todd” describes the action going on very specifically, which makes it hard to generalize to other machinima settings) and one is too broad (”Bacteria” is about… well, bacteria). Still, a challenge is a challenge, and I’m on it.
So the bad news is that the video I was working on is officially on hold right now (I’ve gotten probably half-way through it). But the good news is that hopefully I’ll have two videos to release some time soon.
Now I just need to find a buddy in the UK who wants to enter this contest for me…