Operation Smile: Eve Maria

My writing time is gradually being eaten up by work again, so I'll leave you with this video the CCP favored on its YouTube channel.  Something soothing when things get a little hectic.

Operation Smile: Someone Like Me

I've been waiting for when players start using avatars in Eve Online videos appearing on YouTube!, and I didn't have to wait for Incarna to see one.  The Dreddit community that makes up the core of Test Alliance Please Ignore has come up with a music video celebrating their victory over IT Alliance in Fountain.  The video comes complete with lip syncing avatars.

Enjoy!

Operation Smile: We Are The World

This has been a pretty crazy week for me.  I get on the train at 8am, fire up the laptop, and pretty much keep working until at least 10pm.  When you get home from work between midnight and 2am every day, there is not much time to do things like play games or blog.  And sleep?  What is that?

But everything isn't all doom and gloom.  I had a friend at work who doesn't play video games send me the below music video.  He's probably under the impression that the people who make Eve Online are a bunch of carebears.  But I got a smile out of it.

Operation Smile: Geek & Gamer Girlz Video

Sometimes I hear music while listening to Eve Radio and wonder where it came from.  I finally found one of those songs through a link at Fiddler's Edge.  Now, I'm not sure about how good the music really is because if it's not country, I'm not a good judge.  But I like the lyrics, and hey, any video that has Stan Lee in it can't be bad, right?

Operation Smile: The Craft of War: Blind

In World of Warcraft, I think the only race in which I would play a female character over a male character is the blood elves.  One reason admittedly is looks.  I like the way the male models look for all races over the female models, except for blood elves.  Blood elf females just look tougher than male blood elves.  Maybe that is because they are!  Exhibit A is this classic video by Percula showing an assassination attempt by a blood elf on an Alliance official in the heart of Stormwind. 

My New iPod

Work has been hard this week, but I figured with all the overtime I've been getting I could afford an iPod touch. The one I bought has a 32 GB hard drive. I've been having fun setting it up, but I have to admit I think I've turned into a big Eve geek. What was the first video from YouTube! I viewed? This classic. (Warning: not workplace safe.)



So then I went over to the iTunes store. And of course, you know what I downloaded, right? If you guessed the latest Van Hemlock podcast, then you're a regular reader. I just hope that the aliens that abduct podcasters once they hit 100 episodes don't find Tim & Jon.

I did try to listen to Eve Radio, but the player wouldn't work. I guess you can't have everything.

WoW Video: What Hurts The Most

Raiders versus casual players. Role players versus theory crafters. PvPers versus carebears. Players of massively multi-player online role playing games have developed a lot of different ways to play the same game. I was thinking about how the same game can play differently depending on a person’s play style when I thought about the song “Hurts The Most”. Two popular versions of the song became hits in two different genres of music. Below are two World of Warcraft music videos inspired by Rascal Flatts and Cascada. The lyrics are the same but the arrangements and style are very different, just like the way people play MMORPGs.


Rascal Flatts


Cascada

EQ2 Video: Jethal Silverwing's I Want That Rock

Fighting for resources happens in MMOs. Whether the game is a free-to-play title like Runes of Magic, an indy sci-fi game like Eve Online, or the giant of them all, World of Warcraft, sooner or later players find themself harvesting resources. Jethal Silverwing of Online Gaming Radio's Jethal Silverwing Show is a master of the EQ & EQ2 parody song and wrote a song based on Twisted Sister's I Wanna Rock about mining that his wife Elquinjena made into a video. The video was shot on location in the Thundering Steppes, a location where I've spent hours harvesting and looking for that elusive rock myself.

WoW Video - Taylor Swift and LightonRox

I've written before that I like country music. One of the up-and-coming artists that I like is a young lady named Taylor Swift. Not only do I like her music, but I like her story. How many other singers have ever released an album at the age of 16 on which she wrote or co-wrote every song and watched that album go triple-platnum? She was also the youngest writer to win the Nashville Songwriters Association International's Songwriter/Artist of the Year award and the youngest to win the Country Music Association's Album of the Year award.

Why do I bring up all of Taylor's accomplishments and stress her youth? Because of the young lady who's work I found when I was looking for Taylor Swift WoW videos. Her YouTube handle is LightonRox and according to her site she's only 14. Despite her age (or maybe because of it) she has produced some pretty good work. Being a Taylor Swift fan, I'll link two of LightonRox's videos, Love Story & You Belong With Me, here. Enjoy.

WoW Video - That Don't Impress Me Much

Real life has kept me from logging into any games for 3 days now. I could list the reasons, but who's going to be impressed? Certainly not the blood elf in this WoW adaptation of Shania Twain's You Don't Impress Me Much.



And did I mention my main is a master alchemist in EQ2? Oh well. Hope you had fun watching.

Edit: YouTube disabled the embedding feature for the original video. If you are interested in seeing it, click here.

WoW Videos - Country Music

One of the reasons I think World of Warcraft maintains its popularity is that so many people are able to make their own videos with footage from within the game. I was hooked from the first time I saw the Leeroy Jenkins video. Yes, EverQuest 2 does have talented people like Jethal Silverwing around, but the sheer volume of work by WoW fans is easy to find on popular places like YouTube.

I do have to say that I'm really into country music, so I do tend to shy away from all of the blood-elf inspired Brittney Spears videos. But I can even find music videos for country music. Below is a video from country star Brad Paisley. He is known for some of his humorous songs, Alcohol being one of them.




For those who don't think alcoholism is a laughing matter, he also performed a duet with Allison Krauss, Whiskey Lullaby, which was also made into a video.





Enjoy.