WoW: Emergent Media Phenomenon was an art exhibition based on the on-line fantasy game World of Warcraft and the popular culture of internet role-playing games. [1] [2] The collection comprised works by artists within the game-culture movement, artwork by Blizzard Entertainment (the developer of World of Warcraft), fan art and machinima. Among the participating artists were game designer Chris Metzen, Aram Bartholl, Mez Breeze as part of the Third Faction Collective, Jorg Dubin, UC Irvine professor Antoinette LaFarge, Eddo Stern; Tale of Tales developers Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn, The T-Shirt Issue - [Murat Koçyigit, Hande Akcayli, Linda Kostowski] and Chinese photographer Zeng Han.
The exhibition was on display at Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, California from 14 June to 4 October 2009. [1]
Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded in February 1991 as Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduates of the University of California, Los Angeles: Michael Morhaime, Frank Pearce and Allen Adham. The company originally concentrated on the creation of game ports for other studios' games before beginning development of their own software in 1993, with games like Rock n' Roll Racing and The Lost Vikings. In 1993, the company became Chaos Studios, Inc., and then Blizzard Entertainment soon after being acquired by distributor Davidson & Associates early in the following year. Shortly after, Blizzard released Warcraft: Orcs & Humans.
World of Warcraft (WoW) is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) released in 2004 by Blizzard Entertainment. Set in the Warcraft fantasy universe, World of Warcraft takes place within the world of Azeroth, approximately four years after the events of the previous game in the series, Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. The game was announced in 2001, and was released for the 10th anniversary of the Warcraft franchise on November 23, 2004. Since launch, World of Warcraft has had nine major expansion packs: The Burning Crusade (2007), Wrath of the Lich King (2008), Cataclysm (2010), Mists of Pandaria (2012), Warlords of Draenor (2014), Legion (2016), Battle for Azeroth (2018), Shadowlands (2020), and Dragonflight (2022). Three further expansions, The War Within, Midnight, and The Last Titan, were announced in 2023.
Warcraft Adventures: Lord of the Clans is a cancelled graphic adventure game developed by Blizzard Entertainment and Animation Magic from 1996 until 1998. Set in the Warcraft universe after the events of Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal, it followed the orc character Thrall in his quest to reunite his race, then living on reservations and in slavery following its defeat by the human Alliance. Assuming the role of Thrall, the player would have used a point-and-click interface to explore the world, solve puzzles and interact with characters from the wider Warcraft series.
Emergent gameplay refers to complex situations in video games, board games, or table top role-playing games that emerge from the interaction of relatively simple game mechanics.
mezangelle is a poetic-artistic language developed in the 1990s by Australian-based Internet artist Mez Breeze. It is recognized as a central contribution to Codework, Electronic literature, Internet Art and digital writing in general.
In video games, an exploit is the use of a bug or glitch, or use elements of a game system in a manner not intended by the game's designers, in a way that gives a substantial unfair advantage to players using it. However, whether particular acts constitute an exploit can be controversial, typically involving the argument that the issues are part of the game, and no changes or external programs are needed to take advantage of them.
The Corrupted Blood incident took place between September 13 and October 8, 2005, in World of Warcraft, a massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by Blizzard Entertainment. When participating in a boss battle at the end of a raid, player characters would become infected with a debuff that was transmitted between characters in close proximity. While developers intended to keep the effects of the debuff in the boss's game region, a programming oversight soon led to an in-game pandemic throughout the fictional world of Azeroth.
Gold farming is the practice of playing a massively multiplayer online game (MMO) to acquire in-game currency, later selling it for real-world money.
The Laguna Art Museum (LAM) is a museum located in Laguna Beach, California, on Pacific Coast Highway. LAM exclusively features California art and is the oldest cultural institution in the area. It has been known as the Laguna Beach Art Association, as well as the Laguna Beach Museum of Art.
Christopher Vincent Metzen is an American game designer, artist, voice actor, and author known for his work creating the fictional universes and scripts for Blizzard Entertainment's three major award-winning media franchises: Warcraft, Diablo and StarCraft. Metzen was hired by Blizzard Entertainment as an animator and an artist; his first work for the company was with the video game Justice League Task Force.
Aaron Kraten is a mixed media artist from Costa Mesa, California.
Leeroy Jenkins is a player character created by Ben Schulz in Blizzard Entertainment's multiplayer online video game World of Warcraft. The character became popular in 2005 from his role in a viral video of game footage where, having been absent during his group's discussion of a meticulous battle plan, Leeroy returns and ruins it by charging straight into combat while shouting his own name as a battle cry. The video capturing the character's behavior became an Internet meme. As a result of positive reception to the meme, Blizzard subsequently added Leeroy Jenkins into World of Warcraft as an official non-player character and as a minion card and later as a hero in the online card game Hearthstone.
The Endless Forest is a multiplayer online game for Microsoft Windows by Belgian studio Tale of Tales. In the game, the player is a deer in a forest without direct goals or the ability to chat with other players. Pictograms above player's heads represent their names. Players communicate with one another through sounds and body language.
Warcraft Wiki is a wiki about the Warcraft fictional universe. It covers all of the Warcraft games, including the MMORPG World of Warcraft. It is both a specialized wiki built around the Warcraft universe and a collaborative space for players to develop and publish strategies for Warcraft games. It was officially announced on 25 October 2010.
Armand Cabrera is an American oil painter recognized for his en plein air landscape art, seascapes, cityscapes, still lifes and figurative works. He is also well known as a game art designer who has delivered over 25 shipped games as a Lead and Senior Artist. His clients include Lucasfilm Games, Disney, Electronic Arts, Virgin Entertainment, Nickelodeon, Microsoft and Paramount Pictures.
Auriea Harvey and Michaël Samyn are two artists who collaborate on creating art video games. Auriea Harvey is a Professor for Games at the Kunsthochschule Kassel.
Angela Washko is an American new media artist and facilitator based in New York. She is currently associate professor of art at Carnegie Mellon University. Washko mobilizes communities and creates new forums for discussions of feminism where they do not exist.
Critical Gameplay is a video game developer, founded in 2009 by game developer Lindsay Grace.
Nostalrius was a private World of Warcraft server, which opened on February 28, 2015. The server ran Patch 1.12, catering to aficionados of the early version of the game, nicknamed "Vanilla". Stating breach of copyright, Blizzard Entertainment issued the administrators of the server a cease and desist letter, and so the Nostalrius server was shut down on April 10, 2016, leading to outcry on Facebook and Twitter and large-scale coverage in mainstream computing journalism.
World of Warcraft Classic is a 2019 MMORPG video game developed and published by Blizzard Entertainment. Running alongside the main version of the game, Classic recreates World of Warcraft in the state it was in before the release of its first expansion, The Burning Crusade. It was announced at BlizzCon 2017 and was released globally August 26, 2019. The Burning Crusade Classic and Wrath of the Lich King Classic versions of the game were later released to allow players to progress to those expansions.