Make Love, Not Warcraft

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South Park episode
"Make Love, Not Warcraft"
Machinima was used extensively in Make Love, Not Warcraft, albeit in a manner inconsistent with the gameplay of World of Warcraft. Stan, Kyle, Cartman, and Kenny's characters are shown in the background.
Episode no.	147
Prod. code	1008
Airdate	October 4, 2006
South Park - Season 10 March 22, 2006 – November 15, 2006
The Return of Chef Smug Alert! Cartoon Wars Part I Cartoon Wars Part II A Million Little Fibers Manbearpig Tsst Make Love, Not Warcraft Mystery of the Urinal Deuce Miss Teacher Bangs a Boy Hell on Earth 2006 Go God Go Go God Go XII Stanley's Cup

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"Make Love, Not Warcraft" is episode 1008 (#147) of Comedy Central's animated series South Park and aired on October 4, 2006. This episode is a parody of the popularity of the massive multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG), World of Warcraft, or rather, gamers themselves, and was announced by Comedy Central on September 30, 2006. It was advertised as the tenth season second half premiere.^[1]

The episode uses machinima in many of its scenes to create a better emulation of the game.^[2] It was originally scheduled to air as episode #914, but was later delayed because of difficulties in creating the machinima.^[3]

Since the airing of the episode, it was planned that the fictitious Sword of a Thousand Truths used in the episode will be added as a part of The Burning Crusade, although it would not have the same capabilities as in the show.^[4]

1 Plot
2 Production details
- 2.1 Collaboration
- 2.2 Production time
3 Reception
4 Notes
5 References
6 External links

[edit] Plot

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The Blizzard Entertainment executives as seen in the episode.

A rogue player (griefer) named Jenkins^[I] plays World of Warcraft for a long time, stated to be "everyday for a year and a half", and advances by many levels, allowing him to disobey the rule stating that a character must accept a duel before fighting - something the developers of the game did not anticipate. Jenkins kills players' in-game characters, including those of South Park characters,^[II] so much that they all become incredibly frustrated with the game. So Cartman, along with Stan, Kyle and Kenny, stages a revolt with the other boys of South Park to gang up on and defeat this mysterious menace. But despite the boys' superior on-line numbers, the renegade player summons giant scorpions and easily dispatches all of them. At Blizzard headquarters, the makers of the game become concerned that this griefer's mindless destruction will eventually cause people to stop playing altogether. They are dealing, as their president says, with "someone who has absolutely no life," to which an executive responds, "How do you kill that which has no life?"

Cartman then has an idea — the four boys can spend all their time playing the game (around 20 hours per day, for seven weeks), not going on quests as usual, but killing exactly 65,340,285 boars in the forest to boost their level (grinding), while staying in the forest so that Jenkins cannot find them. In the process, the boys become grossly overweight, acne-ridden, and begin to use large amounts of Internet slang, such as uber and pwned.^[III] They become so lazy that Cartman speaks to his mother through an intercom, ordering Hot Pockets and asking her to provide a bedpan to pass diarrhea while they continuously play in his basement.

Stan, Kyle, Cartman and Kenny playing World of Warcraft in the computer lab.

The boys' characters grow so quickly that Blizzard executives take notice, marvelling that "they must have no lives at all." Determined to help them slay the enemy (another geek, who resembles what the boys have become now), Blizzard decides to give the four boys the Sword of a Thousand Truths — a weapon that was considered so powerful that it was removed from the game before release, though Salzman in accounting prophesied that it would one day be used. However, the boys, not privy to the plan, have already begun the 17-hour battle, at a level where the executives predict a 90% chance of failure.

The executives arrive at Stan's house, but he is, unknown to them, at Cartman's house fighting the enemy with the others. Randy, Stan's father and a so-called "noob" also obsessed with the game, takes the Sword (which is stored on a 1 gb USB flash drive) and is determined to sign onto the game to give it to Stan (the Blizzard execs don't have WoW accounts - they confess to Randy that they "have lives"). After running around town trying to find a suitable computer, Randy finally finds one at a Best Buy store, and, on a demo of the game's first expansion pack, manages to give the Sword to Stan's character before he is killed in the game. Stan then uses the sword to weaken the foe, so the others can kill him: Kenny shoots the renegade in the chest with an arrow, then Kyle casts a fire spell on the renegade, knocking him down. With the defiant words: "Looks like you're about to get pwned," Cartman smashes Jenkins' character's head into a bloody pulp, leaving the real Jenkins stunned. Stan's character holds Randy's dying character for a moment before his death, sharing an emotional father-son moment, while a crowd of other Warcraft players run from their former hiding places in celebration.

Back in Cartman's basement, Stan finally asks what they'll do now that the mission has been accomplished. Cartman responds, "What do you mean? Now we can finally play the game."

[edit] Production details

[edit] Collaboration

The South Park creators collaborated with Blizzard Entertainment, the company that created the Warcraft, StarCraft, and Diablo franchises, to craft the machinima used in the episode. The machinima scenes were created using shots of the in-game footage, and re-creation of the characters in Maya, with Blizzard Entertainment providing their own character models and computers to test with.^[3] Blizzard also gave the producers permission to use the alpha server of the expansion pack World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade to shoot the scenes on.^[3] Mike Morhaime, president and cofounder of Blizzard Entertainment, issued a statement over the collaboration:

We were excited to hear that the creators of 'South Park' were interested in featuring World of Warcraft in the opening of their new season, and we really enjoyed collaborating with them to make this happen. We're looking forward to sharing the experience with our employees and our players as well when the season debuts this week.^[5]

However, the animation in the episode is modified from the gameplay of World of Warcraft,^[6] and contains elements that do not exist in the game: talking animations, controlled NPCs, human hunters, and a gory scene.

[edit] Production time

Although the planning of the episode and data-collecting began on September 1, 2006, the actual production of the machinima was done in five "shooting" days, the first being September 20, 2006, which lasted about 3-5 hours, and the last being October 3, 2006.^[3] The regular South Park animation was created simultaneously, with all the other non-machinima episodes of the series routinely finishing within 12 hours of their airing as well.^[3]

[edit] Reception

The episode received generally high review ratings. IGN, a multimedia news and reviews website, reviewed the episode and gave it an overall rating of 9.3, labeling it as "one of the funniest episodes ever produced".^[7] The episode also shows a user average score of 9.4 at TV.com,^[8] an 8.6 average at IMDb,^[9] and a reader average of 9.6 at IGN.^[7]

The original television airing of the episode drew 3.4 million viewers, most between the ages of 18 and 49.^[10] This popularity made the episode Comedy Central's highest-rated midseason premiere since the year 2000.^[10] However, the highest ratings for the tenth season belong to the season's premiere, "The Return of Chef", which drew more than 3.5 million viewers.^[11]

[edit] Notes

I^ Although never named within the episode, the official FAQ of the show states that the renegade is named Jenkins, probably after Leeroy Jenkins, an Internet phenomenon character from the game.^[12]

II^ Kenny's World of Warcraft character dies after being killed by the renegade character several times like the rest of the group. Although he doesn't die outside the game, when he is first killed, Stan and Kyle say their catchphrase ("Oh my God! He killed Kenny!" "You bastard!").

III^ During this scene, Live to Win, the title track from Kiss vocalist Paul Stanley's solo album is played in the background.^[13] This episode, however, was aired over two weeks before the release of the album.

IIII^ Although the Blizzard Executives claim that Stan's character's name is Lovestospooge, on Stan's nameplate in-game it states that his character's name is infact Staniscool.