The theatre of Ironforge
Some friends of mine had to play a theatric scene in an “unusual enviroment” as an assignment, so they chose Ironforge as their stage for a rather short version of the balcony scene from Romeo & Juliet, with a level 19 pally twink and a freshly created female human warlock as the actors.
This is not only a great idea in my humble opinion, but it also faces a very real problem in WoW: What do you do after you hit the big 60? Sure, there’s new dungeons to raid and loot to acquire, but after some time, you’re all set in epic gear and can slay Onyxia with half a dozen people. Something like a theatre play can really bring life and joy to an “old” server, as the slideshow displays.
Also, for me, this is a very interesting take at reversed Machinima – instead of using the game to create a movie, you bring the acting right into it. It’s a bit of the next step after the Velvet Strike movement.
Within a few minutes, the troupe got an audience of about twenty people, and they had to do two encores – one of the balcony scene, and a part from Goethe’s Faust as a bonus. In the end, they got the usual fireworks and blizzards, and even collected a tip of 3,5 Gold – not bad for 15 minutes of fame, I think :)
Not to be cynical, but I find it astounding that they managed to perform it a number of times without someone trying to ruin it for everyone by “jumping on stage”, so to speak.
I still think this is great, and would like to see more of it. An idea i’d find funny is a staged duel over the honor of a guildmate.
At one point, one guy actually wanted to disturb the play by running around and shouting, but the actors weren’t disturbed by it, and the audience actually silenced him with “STFU”‘s and “Get lost or we’ll never take you on a raid again”. Worked pretty well.