6 Things We Learned About Warcraft From Its Director

T’S HARD TO believe that it was only years ago that director Duncan Jones was freaking out in Comic-Con’s Hall H about the fact that he was adapting one of his favorite videogames. Now, he’s in the homestretch on Warcraft; there are only, like, 50 more visual effects shots to go.

Sound like a lot? When Jones started working with Industrial Light and Magic on the film, they needed to do well over 1,000. “It’s been an incredibly ambitious thing,” Jones says. “I think we’ve delivered something pretty special.”

He’d better. Not only is World of Warcraft, the MMORPG he’s adapting, a huge game with a massive fanbase he needs to please, but he also has to also deliver a movie that non-gamers will pay money for. As history has shown, that’s not something that’s necessarily easy. (See: Prince of Persia, Doom, Postal, Bloodrayne, Wing Commander … should we keep going?)

“We’ve delivered as far as the film goes, but the challenge is going to be to get people into the seats in the cinemas in the first place,” says Jones. “To find a way to convince people who haven’t played Warcraft.” With nearly a year to go until we find out if audiences like Jones’ world of Warcraft, WIRED checked in with the director to see how the film was coming along. (Short answer: Pretty freaking good.) Here’s what we learned.

Although There’s a Lot of VFX, Jones Tried to Keep It as Real as Possible
Warcraft is an origin story about a first encounter between humans and orcs. (It’s a callback to the franchise’s genesis, Blizzard’s 1994 Warcraft: Ocs & Humans.) That means a lot of motion-capture acting and visual effects are necessary to bring those characters—and their world of Azeroth—to life. But it doesn’t mean the entire film was made on a server farm. “Motion capture has become very specialized but also still just a tool of filmmaking,” Jones says. “We tried to do a lot of large, in-camera sets so that we had an actual reality that the film was built on top of. Some of the time we had [actors doing motion capture] on location, some of the time we had them on set, sometimes there was green screen.”

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 JON SNYDER/WIRED
Warcraft’s Orcs Got a Little Inspiration from the Hulk
During filming, Jones says, he had to keep his focus on the performances, not whether his actors were serving good mo-cap face. That’s OK. He had his VFX supervisor—two-time Oscar winner Bill Westenhofer—on set in Vancouver all the time. He also had Jeff White and Jason Smith from ILM on set as well, making sure the motions he captured would work when they were wearing a digital skin. White previously worked on the design of the Hulk for The Avengers. “He absolutely nailed that character, and orcs feel like they may have some of the same genetic background as the Hulk,” Jones says. That wasn’t the only thing that made White well-suited to the job. “When we found out that Jeff himself was actually an avid Warcraft player as well, it became clear how excited he was about playing in this universe,” Jones adds. “It was a match made in heaven.”

ILM Had Something to Prove with Warcraft
Considering its fantasy setting and plethora of orcs, one might wonder why Warcraft’s visual effects aren’t being done by that other studio known for those things. Jones doesn’t mention Weta by name, but he does note that ILM might have wanted to flex their non-superhero, non-kaiju, non-space opera muscles. “There was an absolute hunger from ILM to be working on this project,” Jones says. “There is another facility—whose name shall not be mentioned—that is also incredibly good at this kind of work, and for ILM this was an opportunity to show they are still the best in the world at special effects.”

Blizzard Made the Concept Art for the Film
The Warcraft world is one that gamers have spent hundreds of hours in, so they’ll notice if it doesn’t look right. “We worked very closely with Blizzard on the visualization of those characters,” Jones says. “We tried to stay as honest to that as possible.” To do that, ILM’s team took photographs and scans of the actors playing orcs and integrated those images with concept art done by Blizzard. “There is a translation process between concept artwork and what happens when you create 3-D models, but we had two fantastic teams on either side,” Jones says. “The ILM guys did a terrific job of taking this fantastic starting place and turning it into a living, breathing character.”

Sometimes Actors Had to Sit on Makeshift Rocking Horses and Pretend They Were Wolves
As with any movie made using motion-capture and green screen, oftentimes everyone involved just has to pretend. Like, for example, having Clancy Brown, who plays Blackhand, ride around on “something that looked a bit like a rocking horse” in order to simulate riding a giant beastly wolf. “And to have Clancy Brown try to give this really impressive emotional speech while he’s on a rocking horse, man…” Jones laughs. “There’s just lots of moments like that where you’re doing things that are just extraordinarily silly when you look at them objectively.”

There Might Be a Second Warcraft
Emphasis on the might, but Jones, who says he’d like to work on a project of his own creation after Warcraft, isn’t opposed to the idea of making a sequel. “If I have the good fortune to work with the same group of people,” he says, “I’d love to.”

FIFA 15 Update Brings Improved Ultimate Team Search Functionality on PS4

FIFA 15 recently received a new update (1.06) which brought new changes to PlayStation 4. The update should install once you sign in to your console. In addition, the update brings improved search functionality in FUT 15. Developers also addressed stability issues and further improvements to gameplay.

You can see the full patch notes below.

Improved Transfer Market Search functionality in Fifa Ultimate Team.

Added tournament reset ability to address instances of being stuck in a Fifa Ultimate Team tournament tree.

Various stability fixes to improve the Fifa 15 experience.

Note: The patch notes are from the PlayStation 4 version of the game. PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Xbox One and PC users may receive a different changelog.

Fifa 16 is expected to be in stores by late September and featured at next months E3 conference. There are rumors that suggest FIFA will finally get a Story Mode similar to that of NBA 2K. Furthermore, issues to address the recent Price Range update and Manager mode are top priorities for gamers. For more details on FIFA 16rumors and our wishlist, click the link below...

FIFA 15 kicks Destiny from top spot in UK Xtmmo news

Its the post-FIFA portion of the year on the Chart-Track UK sales charts. Historically this means well likely have EA Sports FIFA XX at the top until Activisions Call of Duty shows up, but theres always the possibility for Just Dance or a Zumba game to mess with that.

Anyway, FIFA 15 is out now and it accounted for 80 percent of all software sales and 87 percent of all revenue for the week. Chart-Track estimates if one were to align all the week-one FIFA sales for every platform (it was staggered last year), FIFA 15 unit sales would be flat year-over-year, with a 6 percent revenue increase. The Xbox One and PS4 versions account for 54 percent of unit sales.

The only new release last week to break the Top 40 is Fantasy Life, the Level-5 (Prof. Layton, Dark Cloud) RPG, which debuted in the eight spot. The UK top ten can be found after the break.

Top 10 UK Software Sales (All Formats); week ending September 27:

    FIFA 15
    Destiny
    Disney Infinity 2.0
    Minecraft: Xbox 360 Edition
    Call of Duty: Ghosts
    Watch Dogs
    The Sims 4
    Fantasy Life
    Minecraft PS3 Edition
    Plants vs. Zombies: Garden Warfare

EA Sports Boosts Tim Cahills Rating in FIFA 15

The other week, we saw the top player rankings released for FIFA 15. Amid the usual arguing about ratings assigned, there was a particular outcry by fans on the behalf of New York Red Bulls midfielder Tim Cahill. EA Sports had assigned the Socceroos stars rating as just 69. Tim Cahill is actually featured on the cover of the Australian edition of FIFA 15, and is one of the brands ambassadors. Gamers, furious about his low rating, launched a deluge of complaints at EA, stating that the decision was disrespectful, a disgrace, disgusting, and other words which we probably shouldnt type here. Some gamers even threatened to boycott FIFA 15 Coins.

We still dont why EA made the initial decision it did. Having hunted around, we havent found much in the way of comment from the publisher-except an excuse which may or may not have any truth in it. EA claims they never rated Cahill with a 69, and that the number in question was pulled from a resource without access to final FIFA 15 data.

The statement is a bit strange, since the word final suggests that at some point they were considering giving Cahill a 69. Regardless of the details, they have listened to their players and have boosted Tim Cahills rating from 69 up to 74. This is only partially satisfactory, and in some ways still seems to be an insult. Why? Last year, Cahill rated a 75. Players with ratings of 75 and above are considered gold cards, in the FIFA games. While EA has boosted Cahills rating, they have not returned him to gold card status.

Do you think EA was being deliberately misleading with their vague statement, or that the 69 rating really was just a false rumor? Are you angry that Cahill still doesnt rate a 75? Vent your frustrations in the comments below. Be sure and check out the Top 50 player list if you havent yet to see where all of your favorite stars rank.

And finally, make sure you pre-order FIFA 15 before the pre-order time window closes! FIFA 15 is coming out in just a couple of days, and you really dont want to miss out on the incredible bonuses. Right now for $59.99, you can pre-order the standard edition and get 15 free Ultimate Team packs! For just $10 more, you can get 40 Ultimate Team packs, Messi on loan for your first 5 season games, the Adidas Predator collection, the Adidas All-Star team, and three new celebrations!

ArcheAge Players Getting Refunds After Bots Make Unauthorized Purchases

Earlier this week, numerous ArcheAge players wrote in the games forums that their accounts were seeing unauthorized transactions, in some cases totalling as much as $150. Now, publisher Trion Worlds has responded, issuing a statement that explains the situation.

Let us start by saying this very clearly: Trion Worlds security has not been compromised in any way, the publisher said. There has been absolutely no breach in Trions servers.

The unauthorized transactions were the result of bots obtaining user information from other sites and then gaining access to ArcheAge accounts if the username/password combinations matched up. What happened was, unfortunately, not a new occurrence, a Trion Worlds representative said.

If players consistently use simple or repeated passwords across different online services, these bots may get access to their accounts, Trion Worlds said. Because of the current momentum around ArcheAge, hundreds of millions of such attempts were made from well over a million different IP addresses in the last few weeks, only a fraction of which ended up being successful [on August 26].

Trion Worlds will provide full refunds to affected players, some of whom say they were affected even though they never played ArchAge. And beginning tomorrow, Trion Worlds will roll out a new security feature to its Glyph account management system that will ask you to input a special, one-time-use code when accessing the service from another computer or a computer you havent used in a while.

You should also change your password and make sure you dont use the same password for multiple sites, Trion Worlds said (though that is good advice anyway). You can change your Trion Worlds password right now through this link.

ArcheAge is a PC MMO created by Jake Song, the man perhaps best known for his work on the Lineage series. The game, developed by XLGames, aims to separate itself from the pack by letting players adventure through the world at their own pace and by blazing their own trails. You wont find pre-defined paths. For more, check out GameSpots previous coverage.

Wowgoldweb: SWTOR subscriber numbers have remained steady

Wowgoldweb claims subscriptions for the pricey Star Wars: The Old Republic haven't dropped, merely that concurrent users at peak times have declined. Speaking to PC Gamer, Wowgoldweb lead writer Daniel Erickson noted the change in player behavior and that server mergers are coming, but not a priority.
The response comes following a report by Cowen and Company analyst Doug Creutz, who believes SWTOR subscribers peaked at 1.7 million in February, and estimates the population will be around 1.25 million by March of 2013 in the game's current state.Wowgoldweb Cheap Wow Gold On Sale & Wow Power Leveling.
"Nothing is off the table when it comes to making sure our communities are strong and active on each server," Erickson told PC Gamer.
Nothing? Hmm, let's talk about that subscription fee then...

FIFA 15, UFC paid Xbox One demos a 'system error,' says EA rep

Xbox One users sensed an apocalypse when they found the system's online store charging $5/£4 for demos of EA games FIFA 14 and EA Sports UFC this morning. However, according to an EA Australia representative, panic stations needn't be manned just yet as the listings are the result of a system error.

Destiny For PS3 representative told Polygon that the demos should reset to free within the next 24 hours. The representative also noted the error isn't on the PlayStation Network, and we've verified the demos remain free on PS4. When we approached an EA UK representative he wasn't able to offer official comment at the time of publication.

A system error isn't hard to believe considering prior to today the FIFA 14 demo had been free for more than half a year. Also, it's more than a bit odd for it be free on one system and paid on another. In any case, if for some mad reason you're thinking of purchasing one of the demos, wait it out and hopefully we'll get further word from EA soon. Also, if this is an error let's hope EA and Microsoft will be issuing out refunds.

Update: An EA UK representative confirmed to Joystiq the priced demos were "due to a technical error," which has now been corrected. We've confirmed both the UFC demo and FIFA 14 Ultimate Team Coins demo have been reverted to free.