Forged Alliance

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/wrath/intro.xml    

I like it. I'm out of touch on my lore, but pretty much the jist of what I gather is that is the blue dragon Azuregos(sp) and the voice narrating is Arthas' father probably reading a note or something that he wrote to his son who was going to be King right?

Beautiful cinematic and epic quality, however overall content wise I found it lacking. I guess they saw no need to do a quick shot of each of the races like in the previous trailers, but those were pretty good.

Azuregos? I thought it was a frost wyrm. o.O And yeah...compared to the other trailers it seemed kind of mild and slow, but it was still awesome.

I think that Blizzard needs to rethink how they do their trailers.  For myself, the first trailer was awesome because I got a preview of the abilities for the various races/classes and recognized abilities and locales that were 'reimaginations' of what I was familiar with in Warcraft 1-3.  Seeing a dwarven hunter outside Ironforge and the mage frost nova were pretty cool at the time. The second trailer was pretty dumb because 'you are not prepared' isn't very catchy.  They did showcase the new races, but it wasn't as appealing as the first trailer. In my opinion, the third trailer should have incorporated previews of the new level 70-80 abilities in cinematic form (e.g., cinematic of a priest using that divine angel thingy to save a tank) and finish up with a death knight busting out something really cool.  This could have been woven with the Arthas speech thing in some manner if they really wanted to push the lore aspect. Now for a good comparison, check out the new Warhammer trailer.  I came away with the impression that it was a forced copy of the original WoW trailer and a little cheesy. -HP

...But it's not a trailer...these are the cinematic openings for the game after you had bought it. They just realized early for hype. As the first thing you see when you load up the game, I think it's awesome, esp cause of the loading screen right after. The first one had to be pretty generic cause it had a whole world to introduce, while the second one was introducing the two new races and reminding us of Illidan. I like the focus of this one more. Fits in well with how story heavy everything seems to be this time around.

I also really liked the new cinematic.  I thought the writing and filmmaking were far more polished than their previous forays.  And I enjoyed the shift from the frenetic, battle-driven BC trailer to the slower, moodier WotLK one.  I think it sets up the mood of the world much better and gives you a greater sense of what entering Northrend will feel like - a creeping coldness slowly sapping the life out of the world.

Agreed.  I'd definitely like to see a feature-length film made by the Blizzard folks.  But, it'd probably take forever to make =P Regarding the "You are not prepared" hook: I think the phrase got the job done.  Regardless of whether you thought it was stupid and campy or cool and challenging, you definitely heard the phrase and knew that there was an expansion coming out soon.  It's similar to the name "World of Warcraft."   When it was announced, many mocked the acronym "WoW," but even mocking the name markets the name more.  Same thing happened for the Nintendo Revolution, aka Wii.  These names and phrases succeeded in making the brand name known to the public, so they fulfilled their goal despite the public's perception of their quality. Also, spoilers: the area shown in the cinematic actually has an in-game representation of it in Sholazar Basin in the area called "The Avalanche."  Ask Tsuni about his adventures there (also, on that note, never /follow Tsuni anywhere =P)

Legendary Pictures is working with Blizzard on a WoW movie, due for release in 2009 (ppffttt yeah sure) and filmed from an alliance perspective, apparently it will have a PG 13+ rating? Even if it sucks I'm going to watch it