World of Warcraft Movie for WoW Followers

I have been playing games ever since I was a kid and I struggled for many years with people who thought online games were brainless and action games made you chaotic. I considered this an opportunity to present some knowledge into what gaming really can involve - passion, camaraderie and experiences you can't get in real life. ~ Ben Dressler

Let's face the facts, the gamer lifestyle is one thing that not a lot of people have an understanding of /AFK The Movie looks at the life of a video gamer asked to give up the one thing he's ever enjoyed: World of Warcraft.

To the people who don't play video games, that is called quitting. For hard-core gamers and MMORPG players around the world, that's referred to as "Euthanasia."

The film examines what life is like stepping away from the computer keyboard, to cut off the sole thing you adore doing, simply because you realize that it controls all that you do. But, what is the little difference between loving video games and being addicted with them? Does it make a difference and should we even care?

The subject matter of /AFK The Movie covers World of Warcraft and also online gaming. But you do not need to know the difference between Horde and Alliance to connect with the movie. We're all addicted to something, be it cell phones, websites, video games, or sweets (or even a dangerous combination of all 4). Step "away from your cellular phone" for 1 day and find out how you respond. Is a cellphone that much different than a video game? Exactly why is one an addiction and the other one is simply a habit?

I spoke with Ben Dressler, the moviemaker who made /AFK come to life.

What was the process like creating the movie, and from his point of view, what message was it wanting to relay to gamers and those telling so-called "addicts" they must stop:

JHS: What inspired you to make the script? Did you feel like you liked to write something which could speak "for all WOW players?"

2 things. First of all, the feeling that no person had ever done this in the past. I believe it is truly unusual that you have a concept that's kind of unique and not actually out there. When I first saw Memento I was so blown away that after a long time of filmmaking, someone could still come up with something so inventive. And even though we were not the first to combine real live action and video game video clips, I don't know of any movie who achieved it to the extent that we did.

Second, I wanted to have a stand for video gaming. I have been playing games since I was a child and I struggled for many years with individuals who thought online games were brainless and action games made you violent. I considered this an opportunity to show some insight into what gaming can really cover - passion, companionship and experiences you cannot get in real life.

JHS: In your own point of view, why do people desire to put down the "gamer" lifestyle?

I actually believe that they just don't know much better. The main character in /AFK says at some point: It is not just me sitting in front of a coloured window." But that is precisely what individuals see every time they see someone "game." They don't see what you think, feel or even experience while you play. I have had a lot of individuals that observed me play WoW and believed it was really boring. But when I let them play for an hour or more, they would buy the game themselves. Thankfully, people who have gaming experience will grow into important positions such as journalism or politics. So eventually that inclination to look down on gamers will diminish from society, I'm very optimistic on that.

JHS: You mentioned you basically had no budget because you could not make some money from the film, What kind of restrictions did that put on you as a moviemaker?

Since I knew there would not be a budget from the beginning, I could focus on writing a script that would deal with not many characters as well as locations. We had five days of shooting for a 25 minute film with a very small crew. And since I didn't want to rush the actors very much, there was short amount of time left for the camera and lighting unit. We also couldn't afford to buy plenty of props so we needed to work with everything we got in our homes. The room of the main character is actually made of geek stuff from ten people combined.

It basically came down to pulling lots of favors and utilizing to the very best what was already there. I do think if you choose to work with that restriction, it will easily lead to new, creative ways of telling your story. Although I recently read that German filmmakers particularly get into Hollywood mainly because they can make low-cost movies that look like expensive movies. Well, that is flattering, isn't it?

JHS: What would you tell individuals who deal with people asking them to "quit video games."

It's really hard to give a general answer to that one because it depends on the situations. Normally I would recommend to try and make those people know very well what gaming means to you. Determine why they believe games are stupid and show that you understand them also and take their concerns seriously. Do not just plunge to retaliation mode. When I was in college, I used to talk to my parents about the games I was looking forward to play and what I found enjoyable about them. Usually I could get them to relate to that in some way.

JHS: According to the insufficient success of a few major motion pictures, it seams very challenging to take the concept of a video game and turn it into a movie - with few films making an effort to "get into" the life of BEING a gamer. What was your experience in this regard?

I think there are two kinds of game movies... Adaptations and Sci-Fi movies. Adaptations are nearly always awful OR just solid action movies with the game's name in the title... And so yeah, there's hardly any films about real gamers - to be honest I cannot name a single one. And I am somewhat in wonder about that!

But it's hard, and I do think that the people who make it need to know video games as completely as films....My point is that to truly learn from Video Games as a medium, filmmakers have to understand how a game tells its story, what can be translated and what things can not.

JHS: What does WOW provide that hardly any other game on the face of the earth offers?

In all honesty - there are a couple of games on earth I have not played yet! However, I think that WoW did and does an incredible job at making hardcore gaming available to lots of individuals. Way back in EverQuest days, MMORPGs were a very exclusive genre that even most gamers did not know or care about. These days you will raid with people who wouldn't even look at themselves a genuine gamer. And yeah, maybe that is a bit of pioneer work that no other game can repeat again.

Rift PvP Guide - What Makes Rift So Much Fun?

PvP is actually one of the most entertaining things to do on Rift aside from the conventional questing, dungeon raids, invasion events and the likes. A well executed PvP provides more than enough thrills and frills to keep you coming back. For this reason, we've compiled a short Rift PvP guide to teach you the basics of PvP so you can maximize some of the unique features of Rift that set it apart from other MMORPGs.

There are two basic approaches to a PvP: Warfront and World PvP. To put thinks in perspective, a world PvP is a whole lot simpler in that there aren't that many things to consider when you roam around with friends taking on various challenges that come your way. By our book, that's about as self-explanatory as it could get. Warfronts on the other hand require a rift PvP guide in that they are more complex and more rewarding, literally and figuratively of course.

Each level section opens up your access to specific PvP games. At levels 10+, you have The Black Garden Guide, at level 20+ The Codex Guide; levels 30+ gets you the Whitefall Steppes Guide while The Battle of Port Scion Guide is accessed only at level 50. You can either approach each via pick-up groups - not that different from any pick-up game where you use whoever is there or premades which are pre-arranged PvPs planned ahead of time.

If you are using a Warrior class character, a Void Knight-Riftblade soul/off-soul will give you the best chances to succeed. This combination has adequate armor and damage protection but also sufficient mana burning and magic damage to render enemies incapacitated. Void Knights and Riftblades allow players to be anti-casters and anti-melee at the same time, neutralizing the PvP strengths of most other classes like Rogues and Mages. Always strive to maximize your setup for Soul Pillage, Catalyze and Flame Spear to do the most damage in PvP.

For Clerics, Purifiers are typically the main PvP souls with Inquisitor and Warden as off souls. Other Rift PvP guides will suggest Inquisitor-Cabalist builds but frankly we don't see the point for this since this is nothing more than a poor man's mage PVP build while going away from the cleric strength. Purifiers, on the other hand, have excellent healing abilities and combined with the high damage from the Inquisitor's Purge ability can be a formidable character on the PvP battlefield. The Purge in particular grants you the ability to strip healing over time spells, shields, and buffs rendering the enemy bare and naked especially against Focus Fire. The minor focus on the Warden off soul grants heal over time spells as auxiliary function while waiting to re-max.

Rogue characters can benefit from a Marksman-Bard hybrid on their Rift PvP guide and we agree; Marksman deals great damage while buffs come from Bards. Melee is the strength of the Rogue class and Rogues are excellent support classes in a PvP setting especially with strong allies that have excellent close combat abilities.

Mage PvP characters work off of the Stormcaller and Dominator souls but in general are weak for warfronts. Still, the Dominator is a generally versatile main soul that can easily adapt to PvP demands and combined with Archon and Stormcaller possess potent debuffs that can do much damage on the PvP battlefield. Intelligent use of abilities such as Knockback when assaulting the vault in Codex makes the Mage a powerful warfront character but it requires a great degree of skill to be effective.

Other Rift PvP builds can also offer insight into playing the proper PvP character. Try it out with a re-classed soul system and see how you will fare. Our best suggestion is to start early so you won't have to deal with high level opponents as you are learning the intricacies of PvP.

Huge Cash With Gathering in WoW

Although this at first not might make much sense, and I'll admit at first I didn't fully understand it either BUT...

Gathering professions are one of the quickest and easiest paths to thousands of gold in WoW. Now let me explain this a little bit. First off, players are ALWAYS going to need mats for enchants, jewel crafting, leather working, blacksmithing, etc. etc. and depending on how smartly you gather you can make hundreds of gold every hour using a simple system that you can make yourself with very little effort.

What do I mean by this?

I mean, that if you can learn how to make certain "routes" of where your gathering item is (whether that be mining nodes, herb spots, or good grinding locations) then you can run these routes over and over again and make tons of gold instead of running around like a chicken with its head cut off, wondering where to go next to farm for mats.

A great add-on is the "Routes" add-on which can be downloaded from Curse Gaming. This actually shows you on your mini-map places that certain gathering items respawn at, giving you the exact map, or route, for you to take...this eliminates all of the guesswork and makes farming a thousands times easier.

The KEY here however, is to sell your mats at opportune times. If you throw all your mining mats on the Auction House all at once and do it during a time when there is very low demand, not only are you going to find that your items sell a lot fewer. You're also going to find that you aren't going to be able to CHARGE as much money for these same items.

Great times to sell your mats are right after patches hit, or during peak hours when there's a lot of people on and there's a high demand for what your selling. Obviously the key here is to balance how many items your putting on the market at one time. You don't want to flood the market instantly or you're going to see a dip in how much you're going to be able to charge for your items.

Wanna know the greatest part about all of this?

You don't have to grind for hours and hours on end. You can spend a SOLID hour or two doing nothing but gathering mats and if you do that you're going to have a nice stockpile of items in your bank that you can sell at a later time or just throw on the market and log off.

The key here is uninterrupted focused action, as long as you can do this, you're going to find that your productivity shoots up and that you get a lot more farming done which ultimately leads to more gold in the bank. Bottom Line.

If you haven't yet reached 85, gather tons of mats as you level your character. This is a great way to make money and level yourself at the same time. I strongly recommend you to get to 85 before you do any hard-core farming because this is only going to help you in the long run. One hour of farming saronite hour will be 500 times more profitable then trying to sell the same amount of copper ore on the Auction house. (Extreme example but you get the picture)

Hope this helps you out, leveling is tough but hard work and dedication pay off big time in the long run, you've just gotta lift yourself out of that fog of uncertainty and keep on truckin...you'll get there soon enough!

Happy Farming!