While we're discussing the pvp, let's address a few common accusations.

Accusation 1: "The fights were staged!" No one would destroy their reputation over a video. If anyone honestly believed this, they could have easily proven/disproven it by now. They could have gone to Arthas and whispered any one of the 28 opponents of Episode 3, 13 opponents of Episode 2, or over 50 opponents of Episode 1. How hard would it be to get one of these countless players to confess? Or get one of the players or their guild mates to admit they knew Mute previous to being in the videos?

Many of the opponents who lost to Mute's naked rogue have been laughed about every since (not our intention). One poor player named Demise still can't make a post without "worn dagger" comments. Why would they go through that? To make Mute look good? A player of the opposite faction they didn't even know? To make rogues look bad? Then how do you explain all of the rogues in the video? This is such an idiotic accusation that even the accusers know it. When we point out how obviously false it is, the rogues will always immediately abandon this accusation (there is never any attempt to defend it) and switch to different accusations. That is until the next time they make a post about us.

Accusation 2: "You fought noobs!" Rogues will often jump to this accusation when confronted with the last. They try to defend it by writing theorycraft posts about what opponents should have done, had they known Mute was coming, and had they had time to prepare. No, not everyone Mute fought was an expert. But that's pvp for you. It wasn't possible to find dozens of rank 14's at that time. To fight only highly skilled players would have required arranging duels, and that is not pvp. Mute spent a week searching for the 2 warrior fights in the Burning Steps. Not because warriors were hard to beat naked, but because warriors were just plain hard to find. You try searching in the Burning Steps for a specific class, try to find them alone, and see how easy it is to finish a two minute fight without being interrupted. If we had decided to set our standards unrealistically high, higher than any other rogue pvp video, and search only for amazing players, it would have taken us months (as it did for Episode 1). And it would not have accurately depicted rogue pvp. You did not fight non-stop brilliant rank 14s. People on pvp servers are what we showed. And if you watch any other pvp video made at the time...

http://www.warcraftmovies.com/viewclass.php?id=7&sort=dl

... you will see;

• Warriors that miss chances to overpower (STAGED!)
• Mages that don't blink out of gouge (AFK GOLD FARMERS!)
• Victories instead of losses (EDITED!)
• Evasion against warriors (NOOB!)
• Opponents stunlocked 90-100% of the fight (LIES!)
• And you will see that in general, the World of Warcraft player base is not made up of lightning reflexed video game savants (PROPAGANDA!)

Players in general made mistakes, especially when they were surprised by a rogue. Compare Mute's fights with any other video and you'll see that the main difference is not the skill of the opponents, but the speed they were killed. When a rogue in epics fought, their opponents didn't live long enough to make mistakes. The reason rogues scream "NOOBS! STAGED! EDITED! LIES!" has more to do with the message of the movie than the skill of the opponents.

What are the common complaints against Mute's opponents? "The warriors never use overpower!!!"

Warrior 1 Western Plaguelands.
3 dodges during fight.
Dodge 1: Mute immediately gouges him.
Dodge 2-3: The warrior applies rend and within one second Mute dodges two times. The warrior has a 1.5 second global cooldown from Rend. 2 seconds from the first dodge Mute gouges the warrior.

Warrior 2 Eastern Plaguelands.
6 dodges during fight.
Dodge 1-6: All 6 of the dodges happened within a few seconds. The warrior is in the wrong stance. He switches to battle, and hits Mute with overpower. As the 6 second cooldown ends, Mute hits him with a blind. He never dodges again the entire fight.

Warrior 3, Burning Steps.
1 dodge during fight.
Dodge 1: the single missed overpower in the entire video, and he may not have even been in the right stance.

Warrior 4, Black Rock Mountain.
1 dodge during fight.
Dodge 1: Mute immediately gouges him.

"Mages didn't blink out of stunlock!!!"

You can't blink out of gouge. It's a disorient, not a stun. This was one of the most disturbing accusations, because it revealed how absolutely clueless most rogues were. Nearly every rogue response to the movie included this accusation, and I just shook my head, and thought "this guy has a 60 rogue?" It's so simple even a warlock on an alt figured it out after a week, and yet many rogues who had played since release didn't understand why mages couldn't blink.

There was this rogue named Slai, who made a series of pvp movies called "what would jesus do", and he went on about how horrible Mute’s opponents were. So I downloaded his video out of curiosity. As a dagger rogue, he opened on every mage with cheap shot. No wonder he thought they were bad, not one of the mages blinked out of Mute's opening stun. Amazing! But how can you blame the rogues who've never learning their class? 90% of the time, spamming sinister strike/eviscerate was enough.

There was only one mage in the movie that Mute opened with cheapshot on (one of his first recorded fights). He didn't blink (it's possible it was still on cooldown), instead he waits the 4 seconds, and ice blocks. I mean, he's standing in the middle of a crowd, and he says something, I'm guessing "help", but no one does. They just let him die. The main reason I included this fight was for the cool moment when everyone backs away after the mage dies.

Accusation 3: "They were lucky fights!" Let’s say Mute fought someone a dozen times, and got lucky once. You think that player isn't going to remember when the video comes out and say something? Or do you suppose that 27 fights were all lucky "1 in 100"s? And that Mute fought thousands of opponents to get them? It took so long to find opponents, that if all of those fights had been lucky, he'd still be working on Episode 3 to this day. Mute only fought opponents one time, and he almost always won. Where was the luck? That he got the first hit? That called stealth. It always let you have the first hit. Stunlocks? Stunlocks were extremely reliable. Anyone who played a rogue at that time knows this is true. It was easy to win. You chose your opponent, you chose when to fight, and if things didn't go your way, you had several options to escape. There was no luck required.

Accusation 4: "Your opponents were afk!" No one was afk. The only person with an afk tag was fighting back the entire time. The rest were stunlocked.

Accusation 5: "You fought gold farmers!" There were no gold farmers. Dungeon sets were considered end game at this time. Gold farmers did not wear Shadowcraft or Magisters.

Accusation 6: "Your opponents had horrible gear!" An amazingly retarded accusation. No one had gear yet. Mute still wore two greens. Seeing a player in full dungeon set was rare.

Summary: As explained, there was only one potentially missed overpower in Episode 3 (and the warrior may not have been in the right stance). Try finding a pvp video made in the first year where no warriors miss overpowers. Unfortunately most rogues could not comprehend keeping track of their dodges or warrior stances, and gouging to prevent overpower. They don't understand the idea that warriors have different stances, and they can't use Berzerker Rage in Battle or overpower in Berzerker. They can't imagine why a player who is effectively stunlocked doesn't move (so they claim they are afk). They can't understand why mages don't blink out of gouge. They first major factor behind these claims is the lack of knowledge by rogues on game mechanics. Many of their perceived flaws were misunderstandings of how things actually worked.

The second and larger reason is an attempt to discredit the movie. It had nothing to do with reality. They call the opponents bad the same way they call the points we made lies, or Mute a noob. It's mudslinging. They throw everything they can think of and hope something sticks. Mute made Episode 1 almost as an experiment. He spent months collecting fights against the most geared and skilled players. An absurd showcase of battles against a level of opponents no players would ever fight in real pvp. They still called them bad, staged, and lucky! Not a few rogues, but the rogue community in general sat around circle jerking, and comforting each other with claims that Mute had got lucky on every fight against dozens of rank 14s who didn't know how to pvp, and who were lining up to ruin their reputations. We had expected this and were amused.

We have never disagreed that the opponents were imperfect. We did not arrange duels with the best geared opponents in the game or the creators of other videos (there weren't many good people making videos). We couldn't have found perfect opponents. They don't exist. However, we strongly disagree with the claim that Mute's opponents were worse than other rogue videos, or worse than players in general were, on this, or any server.

Rogues have a habit of saying "on my server...", as if every player on their server is a video game savant. That's bullshit. At that stage of the game and against a surprise rogue attack, every player made mistakes. I have never seen a perfect player that would stand up to the scrutiny of critics who have weeks to analyze the fights, determined to find mistakes, and who are often terrible players themselves who don't understand what they are seeing or the game's mechanics.

A look at individual fights from the episodes; Episode 2

This is an insult rather than a statement of fact. It was like "die in a fire" or "f*** you" (they'd say that too). Many rogues were offended that our movies said they may not have been as good as they thought they were. They responded with personal attacks. Mute is confident of his abilities. Hearing a shitty rogue say he's bad is more humorous than insulting. While you'll never hear Mute say that he's good, if he said he wasn't, you'd know he was lying.

When we made episode 3, Mute didn't know every detail of the class. You see his first experiences as a rogue.

- Failing to break Intimidating Shout. There were two fights were Mute didn't break fear. In the first fight it was a mistake. The second was intentional. Mute did not have his trinket equipped. He only never broke fear more than once in a fight, and only when he had his trinket equipped. This was to stop claims that he had advantages by being Undead.
- Vanishing after blind (Episode 3); you see this in a few fights, these were his first. He quickly realized it wasn't required.
- Evasion against warriors; this was not a mistake. The rogues who called this a mistake didn't know how to play.
- Evasion against casters; this was not a mistake. Mute used evasion against casters because he didn't give a shit. It's a cool looking move, and it was always immediately before preparation.
- Sapping warriors (Episode 1); After Episode 1, rogues giggled like school girls at the mid-combat saps. They couldn't understand why anyone would do this. It was to reset diminishing returns and decay rage.
- Evasion during sap against warriors (Episode 1); They also laughed at evasion during sap. This was because sap had a chance to break early, and it was immediately before preparation.

I'm curious, can you please inform me of the lies that we told?

1) Rogues whined about warriors, and trash talked any class that complained about them
2) In 1.6, the problem with warriors was due to their scaling with items
3) In 1.6, itemization favored melee classes
4) In 1.6, stunlocks were extremely powerful
5) In 1.6-1.7, warlocks had far more pressing issues than rogues
6) In 1.6.-1.7, the rogue class was not difficult to play
7) In 1.6-1.7, the element of surprise was a huge advantage
8) In 1.6.-1.7, stealth was a huge advantage
9) In 1.6.-1.7, Rogues could, for the most part, choose their fights
10) In 1.6.-1.7, warlocks defenses were extremely lacking against melee classes, rogues in particular
11) In 1.6.-1.7, warlocks do not have a high crit rate, it was very unlikely for them to get huge crits
Etc

Mute made the movies to educate and dispel theorycraft. But some angry players didn't like it so they screamed "lies! propaganda! staged!" and they continue to say the same things to this day, despite the fact that it doesn't make any more sense now than it did back then. We didn't lie about anything. And while some of the points in the movies were our opinions, they certainly weren't false. Anyone with half a brain knows this. The idiots who say otherwise will never change their opinion because their opinions are not based on facts or reason. It's just the angry ranting of some immature kids who are mad at a video that says they may not have been as good as they think they were.

Most rogues know, deep down, that nothing we said was false. So they use the word "bias", because how can anyone argue with that? Of course, everyone is biased, just as the rogues who disagree with the movies are "biased". What they imply by using that word "bias" is "lie". Adding to "biased", they use the word "propaganda", citing the definition "an attempt to convince" to show it's accurate usage, but implying a Michael Moore twisting of the truth. By using the word propaganda, they hope to associate our movies with his, and movies that have manufactured evidence. Then from "propaganda", they claim we faked and "staged" the fights, which is absurd, because no one is going to destroy their reputation over a video.

Look at Paladincraft, some small film made to spoof our videos. The creator staged a fight between a naked paladin and a warrior. When people started saying the warrior sucked, he immediately admitted he staged the fight. Even though his main was a rogue, and he hated our movies, it wasn't worth his reputation. How hard would it be to get a confession out of one of the dozens of players that Mute beat? There is one poor player named Demise who was absolutely tormented over losing to a naked rogue. They went through months and months of being mocked. Would they have done that for someone they didn't even know, from the opposite faction, for a movie that no one could have expected to do so well?

There is not a single lie in our films. You can disagree with our opinions, but that doesn't make them lie. Of course, rogues will just invent lies. They'll claim opponents had combo points on them before a fight (they didn't). Or that we sprinted, used speed enchants, speed potions etc in the stealth section, of course, they could just recreate the videos. Maybe some of them have, but you never see those videos, because of course they would have got the same results.

If had lied about any of the tests, why didn't any rogues make a video to prove we lied? And if we lied about pvp, why didn't they make any videos to show how what it was really like? They did. They made hundreds. There were countless videos made then, showing rogues killing casters in 2-3 seconds, rogues stunlocking opponents for the entire fight, rogues destroying everyone with easy. Perhaps those show a more accurate depiction of rogue pvp No, those aren't real either? You mean show rogues waiting for cooldowns, unstealthed, sitting there like retards waiting to be hit, then charging at their opponents in the open, without skill and with no clue how to play, letting warriors intercept them, mages kite them, and losing 99% of their fights? You mean, show pvp for a fucking idiot? Cause that'd be real pvp? Probably would be real for the people who say this.

They pretend that Mute wasn't naked while fighting. They tell themselves that his fights were no different than theirs. The difference (and Mute's deceit) is that he didn't show himself waiting for his cooldowns. They pretend that like the naked demonstration of rogue abilities, they must cower in fear while they wait. They claim that if Mute had shown the truth, he'd have shown that well geared rogues have the same dps while naked, same hp, same crit, same dodge, same armor, BUT they have to wait to kill opponents! What absoulte horseshit. They're right, the videos didn't show real pvp. In real fights, rogues were murdering opponents in seconds, people were half dead after the cheapshot, if they lasted that long. Rogues didn't have time to use their cooldowns. "A one kill per 10 minute class!" The whole thing is a fantasy by players who can't understand the point. Naked fights only showed that surpise, stealth, and stunlocks were extremely powerful even without gear. It didn't show the strength of rogues. Because rogues wear gear! It wasn’t inaccurate because real pvp was worse than the naked fights, but because it was much much better.

Rogues inaccurately claim that WoRC was successful because of editing. The reason WoRC became so big was because it said what everyone already knew. The people who watched it have all been there. They have first hand experience with rogues. They knew what it was like to be stunlocked with no way to fight back. If we had made a video about pre 1.8 warlocks, or druids, etc, it would have been shrugged off and forgotten.

No shit. How do you think videos are made? The rogues who throw this accusation around don't even know what the word means. They just like the sound of "propaganda", "staged", and "edited". What they mean is; "you only show the fights you won, and not ALL of the times you lost". Honestly, any rogue who lost often at this time period was a horrible rogue. You didn't ever have to die. You picked your fights, you controlled the fight (unless you didn't know how to play), and if things didn't go as planned, you could easily escape. Mute almost never died while recording fights for Episodes 3/2. Not because he's good, but because that was the way it was. No one that experienced rogue pvp at this time could honestly argue with that.

It's often been brought up that a naked rogue video existed before ours. That's true, although we hadn't heard of it. I remember it being mentioned during the drama following Episode 3. There were also other "naked" videos made around that time. Although Mute was the first to do it completely naked without any items, and with worn dagger x 1 (and only against 60s with full health). It was amusing to hear rogues reference other players without gear. You see, Mute never claimed it was the result of skill. In fact, he was saying "it's so easy any retard can do it". And he constantly reminded people that he was a warlock, and had recorded all of his fights within the first month after hitting 60. This was the golden age of rogue videos. Everyone was putting out their own rogue video. It was kind of like the 90s, when every basketball player was putting out a rap video. Well here comes this Warlock who's mocking rogue players, and his movie is the most downloaded rogue video of all time. They hated him (and still do), not so much for the points we made, but Mute personally. And in their posts, they rarely tried to argue the actual points, but instead said things like "you're a noob! Look someone else did a naked video before you! And BETTER!" Every time they'd bring other naked videos, I'd laugh and thank them for helping us make our point.

In case you’re interested, we weren't aware that rogues could fight naked until Mute tried it himself. And I don't believe anyone could truly take credit for coming up with the idea. It was the logical conclusion that many rogues were coming to at the same time. It was simply so easy to win that players were trying to increase the challenge through multiple opponents or less gear. Here's how it happened for Mute; We were seeing how long he could keep me from casting fear. I would die before he ran out of stuns, so he made a new rogue and took the starting dagger. After stunlocking me to death with it, we thought "hey, I bet a rogue could do this in real pvp". So he challenged another player to a duel (I still have the video of that first worn dagger battle), and easily won. So that’s when he took off to get more fights. The next day he had like a dozen, and said "I'm going to try it with wildheart". Again he took off to pvp, this time with almost no agility. The next day he had several more videos. Each day continued this way, until eventually there was nothing left. When he told me he was going to look for warriors with a single worn dagger, I honestly did not believe it could be done. I told him "there's no way". He woke me up the next morning with a video. I was truly shocked.

I was not surprised when I heard that there were other rogues discovering the same thing. The reason I hadn't heard of them was because they were rather obscure videos made during a time when rogues were putting out videos extremely fast. After we had finished collecting the videos, it took me about 2 months to edit Episode 1. Shortly before we released it, I grouped with this arrogant rogue. He was in a theorycraft debate with a mage, and said something to the effect of "you're a noob! Until you can kill people with only your weapons, don't talk to me!" Obviously he had tried something similar, and believed it to be a sign of great skill.

Anyway, we didn't originally even plan to put naked fights in the video. The only original plan was to put in "pvp", and the rest developed as Mute went along.

Of course they can, just take off your armor and fight. But no other class could do it so easily. How else do explain all of the naked rogue videos that existed before ours? Or the fact that no other classes had naked videos? Since the video, there have been a few attempts to show others fighting naked. One needed to be sped up to 4x to hide the absurdity.

I'm aware of only one video that attempted to show a warlock naked. Of course, these were duels, I've heard they later admitted asking their opponents to fight poorly (I didn't read this post myself (threads still deleted at this time)). The difference between a naked and geared caster was much smaller than for melee classes (the only difference was hp). That is why warriors were so powerful in epics, and so weak naked. Rogues were vastly improved by gear. Yet the naked fights showed that even without the enormous damage of gear and weapons, the strength of stealth and stuns were enough to win a fight. No other class was able to control a fight as easily.

Rogues say the naked fights actually prove they were broken. They claim that because Eviscerate did not scale, a naked rogue had the same damage as a rogue in epics. And because Eviscerate had not scaled with the epics, it was no longer worth using. Let's look at Eviscerate. Eviscerate typically crit for 1.5 to 1.9k damage. It would take a warlock over 400 spell damage and a 21 point talent to crit that hard with Shadow Bolt. In the early days, Eviscerate was way fucking overpowered. As epics became more common, its damage was fairly balanced. Eventually when players were wearing Naxx gear, Eviscerate began to lack. This was when a new rank was released. Yet rogues claim it was such insignificant damage that it wasn't worth using at all (a 10 energy (Relentless Strikes) instant ability that would crit (30% typical crit%, 100% with cold blood) for nearly 2k (that was over half of any opponents life in the blue days, and still over 1/3 of any opponents health in 1.11)) And yet I can't count the number of times I heard rogues say they didn't bother using Eviscerate.

Rogues claim that Mute's videos proved how broken their dps was; "A naked rogue hits as hard as a rogue in epics!". They refused to acknowledge the rest of their damage which scaled very well. It took Mute 1-2 full minutes to kill an opponent with only Eviscerate. While wearing epics, he took down two epic warriors in an alliance auction house in a fraction of that time. Let’s not pretend a Perdition's Blade is going to Backstab for the same as a worn dagger. And let’s not pretend 1.8k life is the same as 4.5-5k. Or that 30%+ crit/dodge makes no difference.

These retards claimed that a naked fight demonstrated their typical pvp. They claim they it showed how they were unable to fight opponents without every cooldown. "A one kill per 10 minute class", that's what they called rogues. I would say this is dishonest, but sadly it was true for some. And these were the shittiest players alive. As if a naked rogue is no different in AQ40 gear. A rogue in epics did not need cooldowns to fight (unless he was facing an epic opponent with their own cooldowns (example: frost mage).

Some of these accusations are so brain dead stupid I hate to acknowledge them. I picture these people sitting there drooling over themselves as they type out their nonsense. I hate to be mean. I think it's wonderful that they are able to function in society at all.

There were only 3 builds used in the movie, Build 1: Combat. Mute's leveling build. As soon as he hit 60, he began filming. Build 2: Full Subtlety. Mute decided to try daggers. Build 3: CB/Prep. Mute didn't like full subtlety, so he decided to try a mix (believe it or not, he didn't have to look it up. It doesn't take a rocket scientist to discover you can get 2 21 point talents). A total of 6 gold was spent specializing his rogue. Somehow, countless rogues have been unable to comprehend that fights can be shown out of chronological order. I know it's hard to grasp, but when he's fighting with daggers, then swords, and then daggers again... it's because the fights aren't in the order recorded.

Wrong. It proved that stealth, stunlocks, and surprise matter.

Mute always wore the pvp trinket. He never once used both the pvp trinket and WOTF in the same fight (excluding the pvp trinket/wotf demonstration). The few times he used WOTF, he could have just as easily clicked the trinket hotkey. When Mute was naked, he never used WOTF. There was never any fight where Mute had an advantage as undead over other rogues.

In the first version of Episode 3, we had the paladin fight full screen, but many people felt it was too long. It's one of my favorite fights in the video, so I couldn't cut it. Instead I decided to make it smaller and play alongside other fights. I'm not sure what exactly we were supposed to be hiding. Rogues also claim that Mute didn't have his combat log showing because he was hiding some sinister secrets. If you'd like to see the Paladin fight full screen, please download the Original Version from the Episode 3 page.

This is usually part of the "Mute sucks!" comments. At this time, rogues were putting out pvp videos like basketball players in the 90's were putting out rap videos. Everyone wanted to be famous. It was every rogue's dream. Then this warlock comes along, and puts out the most successful rogue video of all time, and he said it didn't even take skill! Rogues will often respond to Mute with "you suck!" and "I'm better than you!", almost as if they were saying "I should be the famous one! Not Mute!". Mute has never claimed to be good. But you aren't better. You and I both know that you suck ass.

Rogues got a noob build? They got builds that made winning so easy that they were categorized as a noob build? And skilled rogues didn't use easy builds. How very thoughtful of them.

Warlocks didn't have death coil yet. At the time, "death coil" was a nuke on a 10 minute timer. Mute actually uses it in "simple" fight. You didn't notice it, because it wasn’t worth noticing.

Well no shit! The movie was made in 2005. Many things have changed. Rogues have been unable to argue with the points in their original context. So they take the points made over two years ago, that were addressed by Blizzard long ago, and argue them in today's context as if we just made the movies. Then they call us liars because the points don't relate to today. It takes a special kind of moron to make such retarded arguments, and yet that's how the majority of rogues respond to Roguecraft. They bring up our section on caster gear from Episode 1, and list items that did not exist. They take the section about warlock defenses, and describe warlocks after the buffs several months later. There was a particularly clever rogue (posting on an alt named Dude) who went through every section of episodes 3 and 2, comparing them to the game in 2006. I pointed out that he was comparing a video made in 1.6 to the game in 1.11. To this he stated that I (Aaron) believed it was still exactly the same. I swear talking with these idiots makes you feel dumber.

If our arguments had not been legitimate, Blizzard would not have fixed the issues. Nearly all of the points made in episode 3 and 2 have been addressed.

Every line the rogue says in the video are real things we have heard over and over and over from real rogues. Not all rogues are idiots, but the majority of rogues who post on the forums are, and that's who the movie was aimed at. How do you take retards, who says idiotic things and make them look intelligent? We don't apologize for showing them as they really are. You just need to realize that we're portraying a type of player and mentality, not a class. If some people see that rogue as representing most rogues, I can't blame them. But I know rogues who also dislike that type of arrogant idiot, and they enjoy the movies without being offended.

There was only one warrior in Episode 2 who missed an opportunity to overpower.

Gold farmers wearing epics? Tyrs Hand was not just gold farmers. It was a popular area for members of alliance raiding guilds to farm. If you were looking for well geared opponents, Tyrs Hand was the fastest way to find them.

Prior to the movies, Mute had terrorized the alliance in Tyrs Hand. He used the apple from the "Champion of the Banshee Queen" quest line to disguise himself from the mobs. Then he'd harass them and retreat to the elite mobs. Why? It was fun, and these were the days when horde and alliance actually harassed each other. This caused a drama on the Arthas forums. Not by gold farmers, but by advanced alliance raiding guilds. It was the same alliance Mute fought in Episode 2 and 3.

I don't understand how this even got started. The warrior had over 4k health. The total damage was 4179. Addition is hard.

There were many rogues who argued that we were wrong about diminishing returns, and that all stuns did share them. Sad, but also kind of amusing. While other classes had their diminishing returns put on shared timers, Kidney Shot, Cheapshot, Sap/Gouge, and Blind all remained separate.

When you have the choice between a once per 5 minute conditional cc escape and a AQ40 trinket, what do you chose? These were opponents in the most powerful items that existed. The pvp trinket had been fantastic when everyone was in blue gear from Scholomance. Later, when players were farming amazing trinkets from AQ40 or Cenarion Circle, and they had the option between insanely powerful epics that gave massive damage bonuses, and the blue pvp trinket, they usually chose the epics. It still only broke 3 forms of cc per class, and still had a 5 minute timer. It needed to be buffed to compete with new items. Today it's on a 2 minute timer, and removes all forms of cc. It's invaluable for pvp. But in August of 2006 (a year after our last movies), that was not the case, and finding players in AQ40 and High Warlord Gear wearing their trinket was unusual.

I swear, this was a real accusation, and an extremely common one. When rogues knew that Mute had fought nearly every rank 14 on Arthas, they claimed that rank 14 meant nothing. Rank 14 meant nothing, except the best gear and 3-4 months spent pvp'ing all day.

I've heard people say the combos were flawed or warriors should have done this or that. Most of these people have no idea how things like stances work or what gear was typically worn at the time. You can't intercept someone within a certain range, you can't intercept someone if you have no rage, you can't intercept if you're in the wrong stance, or if you're stunned, or if they are stealthed. Mute fought nearly a dozen high rank warriors using the naked combo and none of them ever broke sap. Because who would expect to be sapped in the middle of a fight? What rogue has EVER used sap in the middle of a fight before Mute? Show me a video where this is commonly used, one that might have made a warrior expect a mid fight sap. You can say the warriors were bad but they didn't expect it and neither would you have before you saw this video. Against many classes, the combo was impossible to break, not allowing even an instant from 100% to zero. It's all theorycraft by players who would have done no better in their situation.

Know any rank 14s that continued to pvp 16 hours a day after hitting High Warlord? Neither do I. When we said rank 14, obviously we meant they had been rank 14.

Against opponents who had their cooldowns available as well. Don't ignore the frost mages Mute fought (perhaps the hardest single opponent for rogues) who had coldsnap. Hell, one warrior even used Shield Wall. Other classes have cooldowns as well. Using a cooldown in a fight against mages, paladins, warriors, rogues, who are using their own cooldowns (usually far more), is part of pvp.

I lose hope for humanity when I read the brain dead posts of rogues. Yep, Mute was fighting rank 14s and wearing AQ40 gear before honor ranks or AQ40. The video for Episode 1 was recorded in the patch prior to the rogue review.

Rogues claimed that in battlegrounds, they were at the mercy of every opponent. They claimed that they could only win once per 5 minutes when they had every cooldown available. The rest of the time they were forced to hide or die. What kind of idiot is so clueless about how battlegrounds work? You don't pair off into one on one fights. Almost your entire time in Arathi Basin (the battleground they were referring to) is spent assisting dps. You do not need every cooldown every time you dps down a healer. You must prioritize. Any rogue who claimed they needed every cooldown to fight any opponent, and that they were then helpless for 5 minutes is a horrible rogue who doesn't understand their class, pvp, or battlegrounds. Why didn't we show battlegrounds? We did. There were several fights in Arathi Basin. Why didn't we show 20 minutes of assisting our group take down enemy players? Because that'd be pretty damn boring.

BTW, rogues are not the only class with cooldowns. How well do paladins do in one on one without shields? What about frost mages without ice block or cold snap? And yet they did alright in Arathi Basin. Strange isn't it.

The rogue interrupted him.

There have been claims that we somehow changed the models or secretly used gear. Look at the damage. If Mute had been using gear, would it have taken 2 minutes to kill them? I swear some people don't even think before they post.

There are people who claim Mute made these movies out of arrogance, or to show how good he was. Mute never once trash talked opponents or made them feel bad for losing (in fact Mute later became friends with many of these players). If Mute wanted to show how good he was he'd make a flashy pvp video like every other rogue in WoW, and talk about how he "pwns" his opponents. He certainly wouldn't make a movie saying how easy the class is and how anyone could do the same thing. He wouldn't make a guild called "Rogues take zero skill". It's the arrogance of most rogues that annoyed him enough to make the movies. It's what annoys most people about them.

The motivation for making the movies was the enormous amount of theorycraft on the forums. Anyone that played then will remember this. We focused on rogues because they were the most annoying. We wanted to cut down the arrogance of these retards by showing how things really worked. Anybody that played at that time and is honest with themselves, knows that rogues were over powered during Episodes 3 and 2, and certainly weren't broken in Episode 1. We didn't make the movies to get rogues nerfed, or warlocks buffed. It was meant to educate and dispel theorycraft.

Mute did. There were several priests in the video. We would have liked to have had more. Unfortunately, there was a bug at the time involving fear. If a player was feared, there was a very high chance that his hotbar would freeze, making it impossible to respond. The only fix involved unclicking your opponent and pressing escape (or something like that). By that time you were usually dead. Several fights ended with this bug. Since Mute usually fought opponents once, and his list of famous or well geared priests was already short, we ended with fewer priests than we would have liked. It was fixed the following patch.

RTZS was on Ragnaros prior to Episode 1. There were several long threads in the rogue forum with countless pages of QFTs that claimed Mute could not understand pvp because his guild had not killed Ragnaros. This was truly brilliance in action.

Raiding has nothing to do with pvp. Raiding is following simple directions and tapping buttons when you're told. Prior to TBC, raiding was 90% wearing the right resist gear. To even bring up something like pve raiding in response to a pvp discussion is fucking idiotic. Yet countless rogues did. Ragnaros is fire resist gear. You could be the world's greatest expert on pvp, and unless you had 40 people in 150-300 fire resist, you were not going to kill him. Like every guild, we had to collect fire resist before downing Ragnaros. We did kill him after few weeks and went on through BWL and into AQ4 in only a few months. We raided further and faster than the majority of guilds.

Did I mention Mute was the GM of his guild? I can’t begin to explain the complexities of running a successful raiding guild. The rogues who made these posts couldn't imagine what is required to organize 40 people for raiding. All they knew of raiding was how to do as they were told. They show up to follow orders and simple instructions. They didn't know any more about pve than they did about pvp, and that was very little indeed.

There has been some controversy over whether the Maydie in Roguecraft Episode 1 is the Maydie who made the popular warrior video. Some say this must be a different Maydie on another server, or a private or test server. It's also said that he is in a different guild and is not rank 14. And Maydie has since said that it wasn't him playing. While it’s impossible to settle every issue surrounding the controversy, we'll say what we do know for certain. This was Maydie's account. That is a simple fact. This was recorded on Arthas. He was rank 14 (look at his sword (rank 14s do not stay rank 14 indefinitely)), and that is the character who made the popular videos. Whether Maydie was actually sitting at his computer, or whether a a friend was logged on his account, it's impossible to say for certain. Only he knows this. But regardless, it is his character and account.

"Ownage Factory" is not a different guild. It was the pvp guild for "Hidden" players. Ownage Factory had the same players. Mute fought Maydie several times around this period (usually on Castorius) while he was in both Hidden and Ownage Factory. The same tactics were used by this warrior in every fight, which led Mute to believe the same player was always playing. We did not include these fights because we had no desire to make opponents look bad. After the fight in the video, several members of Hidden confirmed that they believed it was him, and that Maydie did always use these same tactics (free action potions, etc). Since then, some of the stories have changed, such as a friend was on the account, or the account had been sold, etc.

Having fought this Maydie before, having seen similar tactics, members of Hidden thinking it was him, being in their pvp guild, and stories having changed, led us to believe that it was in fact the account owner playing. But it is not possible to know this for certain, since we could not see who was logged on the account. Mute has since talked to Maydie, who is an extremely nice individual. He has said it was not him on the account. And we will not, and have no desire to call him a liar. I know there were times Mute loaned his account to friends, and there are no doubt people who think they’ve fought Mute, when they only fought his character. That does happen.

But, it would also not be a surprise to us if a player who had a very high reputation, upon learning that he was defeated by a naked rogue, and that the fight would be seen by hundreds of thousands of players, and after having bitter and retarded rogues smear him, wouldn't be anxious to admit it was him. No one wants to be in a Roguecraft video. Bitter rogues, who hate Mute for the message of Roguecraft, attack the opponents in an effort to discredit us. It honestly surprises me that there haven't been more people who've said they weren’t playing. But there is no reason to be truly embarrassed. The rogues who call Mute's opponents bad are retarded theorycrafters who studied the video looking for mistakes without even understanding the game, and had no clue how warriors or even their own class works. They try to disprove our points by claiming warriors or opponents should have done things that can't be done, or are not reasonable to expect, and that they should have anticipated Mute's strategies which had (perhaps) never been used. Hearing them insult Mute's opponents is a joke. They would not have done any better.

Even if it wasn't Maydie, the player behind his character did well considering the circumstance. There are very few warriors that would have done much better. Mute fought dozens of the highest ranked, most skilled, and best geared warriors, and none of them won, or if they did, not by much. Not once, ever, did any warrior know how to counter Mute, because no one would have anticipated his strategy. The only warriors who beat Mute escaped with a fraction of life left because they got in a lucky hit, or Mute's ping was too high to time the stuns. Not once, ever, did a warrior do significantly better than this player. Unlike many rogues, Mute knew what he was doing. He stayed out of range when there was a danger, and knew how to counter warrior abilities. The rogues who laughed at these fights had no clue what they were even watching. "Why is he using sap? LAWL!" Maybe it wasn't Maydie, in that case his friend reacts well, and plays a warrior as well as most of the other high rank players Mute fought. Even if it was not Maydie, I do not believe Maydie could have done much better (this is not meant as an insult).

Our videos had nothing to do with showing how skilled Mute was, or how unskilled others are. It was meant to show the strength of the class. A single fight against a stun lock does not accurately show a player's full skill or how they do overall in PvP. Maydie is a very skilled player, and no one should insult him because his character was beaten in a very difficult situation. I hope that none of our fans would insult Mute's opponents or post hateful comments on their videos. I believe only hateful rogues have posted these ignorant comments. No one takes these people seriously anyway, or their idiotic rants. It was never our intention to negatively affect the reputation of any of the players who have been referenced or shown in our videos.

Capture - Fraps
Editing - Adobe Premiere 1.5 Pro
Effects - Adobe After Effects 6.5
Compression - VirtualDub/XviD (video) Besweet/Lame (audio)

Mute pvp'd and gave me his videos. After collecting the video with Fraps, we plan out our movie with a script. For the pvp, Mute selected the music and let me select the fights. I selected the fights I found most enjoyable. Many fights were not included. Perhaps some had better opponents, but they were not as entertaining to me. I wanted to make an enjoyable film. No matter how valid your points are, if the film isn't interesting, no one will see it. I did not consider excluding regular opponents, I did not expect rogues to make such absurd accusations against us. I synced the fights with the music as I found it most exciting. Some fights were included simply for how well they went with music; for example the fight with the NE warrior in BRM went perfectly with Brad Fidel's Terminator theme. And the mage running up the hill during "Gonna Fly Now" fit the music so well we had to use it. Some very dumb individuals were confused by this. They claimed it was Mute spec'ing for each fight.

I edit each part of the video in an individual project in Adobe Premiere. Mute and I recorded our audio using some random free audio recordind program. It doesn't make much difference, the mic is fairly nice though. After each section is edited, I import all of the projects together into one large project and export the uncompressed video and audio. After the video is exported, I use Virtualdub to compress the video with XviD, doing 2 passes. I compress the audio using Besweet and the Lame encoder. After I have both the audio and video compressed, I use Virtualdub again to join them together.

Filters and eye candy effects are no substitute for interesting material. In the first two roguecraft films there were no filters or special effects used at all. Make sure you have something worth watching before you go to After Effects.

Know what you want to do before you start. Have an idea of what you want to convey, and picture it in your mind. Adobe Premiere is a very powerful tool that will let you do anything you can imagine.

Pacing is one of the most important (and overlooked) aspects of a video. You do not want your audience to become bored by letting the same thing go on too long. You may find you have to cut something in order to have an overall stronger film.

Spend the time necessary to get things right. It can be a very long process to properly sync fights with music.

Not all music is right for a pvp video. It needs to have the right tempo. I've found many songs to be too fast. This gives a cartoon like feel. Other music may be too slow and will make the pvp boring. Try watching pvp with your choices in music, and see how it feels.

You do not need expensive software to create videos. I've seen many great videos made with windows movie maker. A good video is almost entirely interesting material and careful editing. There are things you can't do with free software, but those aren't always necessary.

If you want to really get into editing, and learn Adobe Premiere, I'd recommend Lynda's series of instructional videos, or getting an instructional book. Do not try to learn from random websites. Most websites are just tutorials. You'll have a much easier time if have a complete guide through the basics.

I often get asked questions by people new to Adobe Premiere. This is a post written in response to a question about adding text to video. While there is nothing advanced here, it explains many of the basics that might be needed to get started.

It's easy. First off, text and what not are called "titles". Lets say you want to add a screen at the beginning that says "Awesome Movie". Go to file and make a new "title". You'll get a screen that allows you to type in text with various fonts, or use symbols or shapes or whatever. The text tool should already be selected, just pick a fancy font, click the screen, and type out "Awsome Movie". You can stretch that, or you can highlight it and select different font sizes. You can also select things on the right like fill color to change how it looks. Now save your title.

This title is now added to your project files on the left. It's like it's own little video clip. Take it and pull it down on to the time line before your video. There you go. It says your title now. What if you want it to be over your video? Easy, just pull it into the time line above your video. As you probably know, there are endless layers for both sound and video, you can add more if needed. You can take things and have them lay over each other like various drawings on separate planes of glass laying over each other for an animation. So just pull your title over the video on the next layer up. There you go, now you see "Awesome Video" over the actual video.

Lets say you want it to last longer, move your mouse over the edge of the clip on the time line. Now you can stretch it to whatever length you want.

Remember that you can stretch any video clip the same way. When you stretch video clips, it'll pull out the remaining video. So if you have a 10 minute video, and you cut off the last 5 minutes, you can grab the end of the video and pull it out. Then it'll past that part where you cut it at 5 minutes. You can keep pulling it and then it'll show up to 8 minutes. Or pull it all the way to the full thing. This way you can easily edit your videos on the time line. If you cut too early and missed something, just grab it and pull it out longer. Or if it's too long, pull it back to change where it's cut. If you want to actually change the speed it plays, you use the rate stretch tool. You do not have to use the rate stretch tool for titles.

If you want the title to scroll up like the credits in movies, there is an option in the title making screen to set it to "scroll up" or whatever. This will make the credits scroll up for the duration of their time in your video. You can pull it longer to make the scroll up slower. Just type in whatever you want and it'll go through them. Theres also options to make it start completely off the screen.

Now, lets say you've got two clips, you've got them showing just what you want, and they are beside each other on the timeline, one after another. Right now it just cuts between them. But you want it to do a smooth blend, like one fades out while the other fades in. Or you want one to fade to black, then it to fade from black into the next video. These are called transitions. Push page down or page up to jump to the end or beginning of a clip on the time line. Now that you've got your little cursor in between two clips, you can add a transition. Go to the effects window. It should be a little tab beside the list of your files on the left. If you don't have it open, go to windows or something like that, and find the effects window. There are several groups, open the "video transitions" folder. Go to disolve (I believe that's what it's called), and find "crossfade", grab it and pull it onto the time line, or double click it. It should add a little bar between the two clips. Now watch that between the two clips. You've got a nice transition. A cross fade requires that there be a little of each video left beyond the cut, so it has something to show as it fades into the other video. So if it says "not enough frames", grab the edges of each video and pull them back slightly, then pull them together and add the transition again. Other transitions don't require the extra video. Try using fade to black. Those two are usually all you need for transitions. If you want to make your video look silly, try out all of the others. Some are kind of cool. Transitions do not need to be between two clips. You can put them on the edges of single clips. Like you can put a fade to black at the start of your entire video, and it'll fade in from black.

Now, these transitions can be used on "titles" just the same as real video clips. Pull your title right before the real video so it snaps up to it. Then put a transition between them like fade to black. now it'll say "Awesome Video", fade out black, and then fade into your video. Want something a little fancier? Put the title over your video on the layer above. Now put a cross fade at the start of the title, and a cross fade at the end. Now the title "Awesome Video" will fade in over your video, then it will fade back out after a few seconds". Very nice.

Now lets say you want to add some special effects. Special effects are added to each clip. Highlight a clip, then go back to the effects window. Go into video effects. Select something like a blur, or a glow or something. Pull it down onto your video. If you have your cursor over the video, you should see a change immediately. Now to play with the effects. Go to the effects control window (think that's what it's called). It should be beside the effects window tab on the left, if it's not, open through window, effect controls or whatever. Something like that. Now you see first "Motion" then "Opacity" then the effect you just added. Click the twirl down triangle. There is a list of options. You can play with it to get it the way you want. Lets say we want to make the effect do something over time. Ok, lets try out something. Let's say we want to make a video clip come spinning up from the blackness.

Twirl open the motion effect that's already there. Motion and opacity are defaults on every effect. We're going to use something called key frames. Key frames are basically you telling the clip to do certain things at certain times. It lets you animate effects. To use a keyframe, there is a little watch button beside each effect or effect option. Under motion is two options scale and rotation. On the timeframe, hit page up so it goes to the start of the clip you've highlighted. Click the watch so you can use key frames. It'll automatically add the first keyframe where ever you are on the video clip. Now, take the rotation option, and click on it and hold down the mouse button, then move your mouse left or right to change the option, or you can just click and type in a new number. You'll see the video spin around. Now on the time line, hit page down to jump to the end of the clip. Now set the rotation back to zero. You can see that a new keyframe is automatically added. (it's possible the keyframes can't be seen in the effect control window, theres a little button in the upper right corner with a <<. Click that and you'll see a time line for your clip). You can grab key frames and pull them around, or delete them. If you push the stop watch again, it'll delete them all. Just remember, whatever you set your clip to be at one keyframe, Premiere will automatically make it animate into whatever you have at the next key frame for that effect. Watch your video clip. You can see it starts out upside down or whatever and spins around back to the right way. Now lets do the same thing with scale. Push page up to jump to the start of the clip. Set the scale to zero. Push page down to jump to the end. Set the scale to 100%. Now watch it again, your video will spin in. You can do this with every effect, and make it animate in anyway you want. You can also do this with your titles. If you want "Awesome Video" to spin in, now you know how.

Ok, so you get your video perfectly edited the way you want. You have your titles with text and pictures or whatever. Remember you can import any picture and use it as a title. Now you want to add some real effects with After Effects. Export the movie. Make sure in the settings it's set no none for compression. It may be easier to work with each piece individually, so maybe you've edited each scene separately in Premiere, or maybe you want to cut it up. You can use VirtualDub you can get from the downloads at doom9.net.

To cut up a video, open it in virtual dub, then use the little /_ and _\ buttons to set the start and end. Set the video to "direct stream copy", same for audio, but we're not really worried about audio yet if we're using after effects. Or you can just bring the whole thing into After Effects.

In After Effects, make a new composition, or whatever it's called. When you first make your composition, you need to set it's resolution and length, so make sure it's the right size. Import your video, and pull it down onto the compositions time line. Now you can add effects. There are many more effects in After Effects, and they are much more powerful than the ones in Premiere. You can find many extra effects out there too to do all kinds of cool stuff. Highlight your clip and then go to the effects tab and select one. Or right click on it, and go to effects. Same as premiere, you'll notice an change right away. There should be a window to control the effects on the top left. I can't remember the exact name. Or to the left of the time line, you can twirl down each layer and see the effects. There you can play with the options, and set key frames in the same way as Premiere. Lets say you want to only have an effect for a certain part of the video. You can add a new adjustment layer. Just right click anywhere on the time line, and add a new adjustment layer. Adjustment layers affect whatever is below them. So you can put it above your video on the timeline, it'll start out there as like a pinkish red layer, then you can add effects to it. Then pull it's edges to make it only cover what parts you want. It will add the effects to the video underneath, but can easily be moved around. You can also add text layers which can have text in them. Then you can add effects to them, and pull them around to cover only what you want as well. After effects can do it all, but it's easiest to use it only to add effects to video you've already put together in premiere. After you're done adding your effects. Export the video. Make sure it's set to no compression! Now if you had it all cut up, you can import it back into Premiere. Then you can put the video with effects together and resync it with your audio if needed. If you exported it from Premiere with audio, it will have audio when you bring it back in. It will be a teal video with an audio clip connected to it. If you need to resync the audio, right click on the teal clip, go to unlink audio and video. Then delete the audio it came with, and fix the audio up again.

Now if you have a newer version of Premiere than me, you can just compress the video and audio when you export the video. That will make it easier. Premiere 1.5 Pro does a crap job. And I just do it myself outside of Premiere. I export the video uncompressed with no audio. Then I open it up in VirtualDub. I use XviD to compress. Make sure you have it installed. Then under video select compression and go to XviD, click the options. Set it to 2 pass, first pass. Select full processing mode under video. Don't worry about the audio yet. Then save as avi, call it like "pass one" or whatever. DO NOT CLOSE VIRTUAL DUB! Now go back to the video compression options, click on the xvid options again. Set it to 2 pass, second pass. Set the size. You don't know what the best size is yet, if you're video is 30 minutes, try something like 500,000 (it's in k, not mbs). If it's a short video, try something like 50mb (50000). Again make sure it's full processing mode. Save it as an avi again, this time calling it "second pass 50mb" or whatever. After it's done, look at the video. Does it look like crap? Do the same thing again "2 pass, second pass" with the video size larger. Keep trying this, not closing the program or you have to do the 2 pass, first pass again. After you get it right, close the program.

Man, this is taking a while to type. Now to compress the audio. Export your audio from premiere uncompressed. Download the program Besweet with the gui Belight (or belite, can't remember) from doom9.net. You use that to compress your audio. It has some instructions and it's pretty straight forward. Do not compress your audio using Variable Bitrate MP3! Use a constant bitrate or else you may have syncing problems with your final video. Now download VirtualDubmod from doom9.net, it's a variation on VirtualDub. Open up your compressed video ("2 pass 50mb or whatever"), go to audio and click Streams. Click Add Sream, select the compressed audio mp3, and add it. Now select under video "direct stream copy", then click "save as avi" and call it whatever you want for the final thing.

You know what, just compress it with Premiere, it'll be a lot easier. Just set the compression to XviD and the audio to whatever when you export.

There is much more, but my hands hurt. Feel free to ask any questions (roguecraft.com/forums). I check the forums as often as I can and will respond asap.