30 - Marksman

Sweet, 30th comic uploaded on the 30th of the month. Hope everyone has some good new years plans for tomorrow. I know I do.... and work at 8am on January 1st. I'll still enjoy myself despite that.

I must admit I felt like this when I started my hunter. I just wanted to shoot my bow and not worry about a pet. Luckily they brought in the wolf howl buff in Wrath which was the perfect pet for me. Don't have to worry about him at all, he'll just keep me buffed.

29 - Christmas Special 2

Merry Christmas everyone!

Wow, Largest Comic I've made so far. Hopefully the joke isn't lost to too much talking, but at least Remmy is there to poke fun at everything.

The bird is rummaging in the background through the presents and has its own little narrative in the background, but unfortunately I may have made it too small to see, unless someone tells you to specifically look for it...

Edit (26/12/10): Huh... I uploaded this comic on the 24th and made it a few days before hand. Lorgrokni's bird pet is being chased by a paper zepplin that popped out of one of the presents (I picked it at random when I went to Dalaran's toy shop).

Funny thing is that this year the in game item from the presents on Christmas day was a remote controlled zepplin. Sweet, that worked out conveniently.

Secret Santa Special - AFR

This comic is part of WoWInsiders Sunday Morning Funnies Secret Santa. Those who wrote comics that were featured on the site (who expressed interest in the idea) were shuffled around and given a random comic that they then had to write a christmas themed comic for using the other comic's characters but done in our own style.

I received Away From Reality http://wowafr.wordpress.com/ as my secret santa, and here is my contribution.

After reading through AFR's comic and trying to work out how best to use his characters, I settled on http://wowafr.wordpress.com/2010/10/08/afr-101-heavy-petting/ as my inspiration and hope that I didn't wreck his character's too much :).

The Daily Blink drew my comic as their secret santa: http://www.thedailyblink.com/2010/12/wow-insider-secret-santa/
Love it!

28 - Christmas Special 1

This comic has largely been inspired by Cataclysm leveling, and a running my new Tauren Pallly through the christmas achievements.

Also, good old Horde christmas tree of death. The weapons hung from it can be used in the event of an invasion. Very practical.

There will be a second Christmas comic uploaded later this week on christmas eve.

27 - The New Recruit

Next week will be two Christmas Special comics that will be uploaded on Tuesday the 21st and Friday the 24th (so that I can have the weekend free).

This plot will pick back up on Thursday December 30th and will be back to two uploads a week, as was originally planned, as Lorgrokni heads to the Barrens.

26 - Lovable Oaf

Remmy's got Lorgrokni's back.

Just another comic to build on Marley's character and solidify that role.

This comic assumes that Lorg took the loan and went to train. I toyed with a comic to link these two but found it felt forced, so I left it out. Looking back it may have detracted from the clarity of the comic.

25 - Goblin Loan 2

A nice short one for today.

24 - Goblin Loan 1

The start of a backing plot that I have enjoyed writing; keeps the other plots lively.

I'm also very happy with how Remmy acts in this comic, the fourth panel particularly. Having a character who doesn't take things too seriously makes writing serious plot building dialogue that much more interesting.

I've also found that writing and photshopping these comics has become most efficient to do while waiting for the 1600 people queue to let me onto WoW. A good few hours there to burn.

23 - On a Budget

22 - Little Flashing Buttons

It took longer than it should have to get that flashing button for the fourth panel.

After having played around with the Goblin animations I feel like the Tauren have very few, particularly in this comic. There seems to be only one real shocked/shouting animation that looks good to use.

Also, like every trip to a capital in game, just when you're about to leave you remember something else to do and spend naother 10 minutes there.

As a closing note, I've uploaded this comic earlier just incase people are waiting in line for Cataclysm and need something to pass the time. As for me, I live in Australia and already picked up my copy this morning while I was out. It's sitting next to me, taunting me. A few more hours and it will actually have a use...

21 - Girl Gamers

Always perceptive Lorgrokni.
This comic should set up a bit of Marley's story which I will come back to later, but the story will return to the main plot for the moment.

I'm not actually sure how far I intend to take this storyline with Marley. For the moment I think I'll keep it as a side joke until it feels right to expand on it.

20 - Pet Selection

I'm bringing back a little fo the small narratives with the pet, doing his own thing in each panel. They add a lot to the comic, I feel, but most in most cases I would rather the pet just not be there.

Also after having a look at petopia it looks like you can tame a monkey that carries a mining pick with it. Pet with a weapon... badass.

19 - Grouping Up

Stupid capital cities and all the distractions they hold. If I'm trying to level quickly I'll try and hold out as long as possible before going to learn my spells because I know I'll spend a while doing other things and not leveling.

18 - Party Chat

New gear and new characters!
Introducing Marley, the undead rogue.

Like I said the gear isn't anything flash, but at least Remmy has a robe now. Feels a bit more magey. Unfortunatly, I have now found that the leveling armour is different post-shattering, so their armour isn't up to date now. I'll add some new stuff to their future gear, but for now they're retro.

Speaking of the Post-shattered world. I just quested in Stonetalon Mountains as horde.
wow.
The narrative there is so well told and the ending is epic with voice acting and all. The poor chieftain though, such a sad ending for him.
The emotional depth in the story at cliffwatcher post is why I play a Tauren.

This comic also sparks an update in the Banner image to include Marley in it.

17 - Goblin Dealers

Introducing Hendrix. He will be a face you'll see often during the comic.

Also, I love the Goblin animations. There's a bug in the WoW Model Viewer at the moment which makes some animations have his hanky on his belt (used in the in game cry animation), but besides that I scrolled through them all and could see a hundred uses for them in my comic. I used three different ones in this comic and they all add a lot of character to his dialogue (plus the last frame which is just a look to the side, something a lot of the races don't have).

16 - Eve of Shattering [Special]

It seems that Patch 4.0.3a, The Shattering, will most likely go live during the maintainence (here's hoping), so here's a little special comic I made for the occassion.

The regular comic will pick back up on Thursday as usual.

Also, the original one that I made for this comic had Lorgrokni on the bridge just south of this area where I thought the scar would be. After checking the PTR I found that it was actually here and quickly had to fix it.
Enjoy the shattered world.

15 - Level Appropriate Gear (LAG)

So close to Lorgrokni and Remmy getting new gear. Just a few more comics. Not that the gear is anything special. It just looks different.

Unfortunatly, the second panel is a little text heavy, something I want to avoid as much as possible, but the extra description helps build tension for the pause in panel 3....
I want to keep my comic as easy to read as possible so it doesn't require you to wade through a wall of text.
Maybe I can just split it up over speech bubbles and different frames like I did in comic 13.

14 - Killing Quests

This is a pretty good summary of the progression of quests. Except the Burning crusade one could also include doing a bombing run on the quillboar.

I know just last update I mentioned how I wanted to do less of these wide angle talking shots, but here there wasn't much else to do. I at least made a different first and last panel. That's a start.

Also, I have counted up the comics that I will need to do before the Christmas Special I have planned, and for the storyline to be in the right place I'll need to keep uploading three times a week. Bonus for you guys I guess.

13 - Grinding

I love Remmy's face in the last panel. It just fits perfectly.

As Thunder Bluff is a little more interesting than an open field in Mulgore I've been experimenting with different angles and shots to spice up the comic panels, so it's not all the same wide angle shot with just different stances for the characters.

12 - Immersion

hmm... that first shot looks awfully familiar...

In case it's hard to see, the last shot has a big crowd around Baine (who luckily doesn't look too bad shopped in). I was feeling very good about how I made them the correct height to the guards and then I zoomed out and realised they were a bit small... then I shrunk it again for the comic panel.

This is an unfortunate issue with MMO's. In a single player RPG you feel very unique, like the hero of the story who makes a difference. In an MMO its hard to feel like you made a difference when there are heaps of other players around you. Thankfully the phasing mechanic has helped a lot with this.

11 - Spirit Guide

I'm a little late to the party in making Inception jokes, but I like it none the less. This is just a random comic that doesn't seem to fit into the main story line, as the last comic saw them walking to Thunder Bluff.

Also, the third panel on this was hard to photoshop. I intended to so something like that with the other panels, but as WoW model viewer only allows one animation at a time (ie. sitting) it was just too time consuming, and in some cases looked horrible, to photoshop all of them.

10 - Treehouse

This comic pretty much caps off the story in Mulgore and, after one random comic, we'll be heading to Thunder Bluff where some more characters can join.

Out of all the comics I've uploaded so far this has to be one of my favourites. I love absurd comedy, Monty Python particularly.

Also. Big thanks to Amanda Miller at WoWInsider (http://wow.joystiq.com/) for linking my comic in this weeks Sunday Morning Funnies.

9 - Magic Staves

Had a massive writing session last night and managed to write about 4 months worth of dialogue and jokes for the comic, on top of what i already had. I'm actually looking forward to where this plot will go as it's really enjoyable to write.

Also i decided the bonus third comic for the next two weeks will be uploaded on Tuesday as it falls evenly between the other two days, and the WoW servers go down at that time so it'll be at a good time.

8 - Tactics

Hello to those who have come to this site through WoWInsider. Hopefully I can get my comic on the Sunday Morning Funnies list soon.

I was planning out what I was going to do with this comic for Christmas to do some kind of special comic, and after writing it and planning where in the story it would fit best I've found out that I am out about 2 comics or so. So i decided for about 2 weeks I'll try and put out 3 comics a week to even the numbers out.

I'm not sure what day I'll release the 3rd comic but I'll try and space it out evenly.

New banner for the site as well. Thought it would look good for the comic. It will be updated to show all of the characters as they are introduced into the comic, but for now it's only Lorg and Remmy.
If you want to see the finished banner you can click through on the ComicRank button on the side bar to see a small version of it. Or you can wait for it to update here.

Also, good old Frogger Boss in Naxxramas. Only killed me once when I was putting out 1k latency. I don't know how people constantly died on it.

7 - Shiny Things

I'm very guilty of this.

I just like the look of some of the low level sets you can buy. Hell, when I made a Blood Elf alt I had to send some money to him just to buy the armour right at the start. It was just so cool with the blood elf theme to it and not at all pointless in about a levels time...

Anyway, the fire effect I used in this comic is obviously not a WoW effect. The fire spell effect in the WoW Model Viewer looks like a slight red glow. Not at all fire like. So I found something reasonably more epic.

6 - Moon Guard

So sick at the moment, lucky I had this comic pre-done otherwise I might not have had the effort.

Also just realised while uploading it that I misspelt 'guard' in the comic. Oh well.

5 - Remmy and Acorns

Now we start to see Remmy's character come out a bit. So far in writing the dialogue for this comic he's one of the most enjoyable to write for, next to another character which will be coming later on.

Also I successfully managed to forget the bird last comic while rushing to get it up, but with some stealthy photoshop you'd barely notice in terms of the story this week.

4 - RP

Sorry that this comic was delayed. The 4.0.1 patch for WoW that dropped last week messed up the WoW model viewer. I finally managed to fix it so the comics can continue as usual.

Introducing Remmy, the Troll Mage. Our first member of this party for the comic.

Also I'd like to give a reference to TotalBiscuit over at http://www.cynicalbrit.com/category/blue-plz/ for the inspiration of the race/class combo of Remmy. When writing up all the characters I decided I had to make a Troll Mage in the comic while watching some of his videos

3 - The Grimtotem Well

Only last comic I wondered if I'd slip up and forget to put the pet in and I've already fallen for that. Quick fix up in photoshop and he's back in there doing nothing like he does best.

This comic explores my idea that a group of mobs holds some value of community and are not just there for our own personal slaughter. If only they chose to aggro like this ingame though, giving me time to run away and chose a safer path around them.

Also, as a side it took a lot of precision killing to clear out that well on the live Wrath servers to get a clean shot for this comic.

2 - A Heroes Work...

Next comic and the begininngs of plot.

I feel that this is an all too easy joke to make at WoW; all too many quests revolve around menial tasks.
It didn't feel too heroic back in vanilla to collect items for an NPC when you were max level and had played a part in a lot of the big story pieces. At least in Wrath the NPCs react to you if you have completed some important quests for them in the past as if you are a hero... before they ask you to do their menial tasks.

Also on a side note I feel that I'll slip up and forget to include the pet in a frame somewhere in the future. He doesn't really do anything but is kind of nescessary.

1 - New Beginnings

First comic of the series.

This comic is going to take place just after the start of Cataclysm, which makes it difficult as I'm starting this in the last few months of Wrath... without a beta key. So hopefully I don't make any glaring errors before Cataclysm launches, or after for that matter.
Also I double checked videos, pictures and petopia from the beta to make sure I wasn't wrong, and yeah, tauren hunters start off with the tallstrider from Terokkar Forest in Outland. Weird. Apparently the ones back home weren't purple enough.

Welcome

Hello,

This comic follows the adventures and exploits of Lorgrokni, a Tauren hunter in the World of Warcraft, along with his group of friends.

First of all I know there are a lot of WoW comics out there on the internet, but I still want to write my own one and hope that some people will like it. On that topic of other WoW comics, I'd like to link to Flintlocke's guide to Azeroth: http://au.pc.gamespy.com/flintlockes-guide-to-azeroth/introduction/897826p1.html, in my opinion the best of this genre, which has been a great inspiration for me in writing this.

Something I feel the Flintlocke comic's have is a universal humour, something non-WoW players can enjoy, which I hope to aim for in Lorgrokni's comic.

I am writing this on the Blogger site as I do not own a site of my own and this was easily accessible. Hopefully the reverse scrolling of comics won't detract from it too much.

So with that all covered I present Lorgrokni's Travels through Azeroth.