Filed under: 15 Minutes of Fame

We love our readers -- and come to think of it, they're probably a big part of the reason you love us, too. At a time when the comment sections of many sites are overwhelmed by trolling and pettiness, WoW Insider maintains an even-natured profile with a crop of commenters known for their level-headed touch.

Making his mark among those commenters is long-time reader Revynn, noted again and again by WI writers themselves for the insightful profile of comments he's built across the site.

"I think I'm going on four years now," Revynn says of his longevity as a WoW Insider reader. "I stumbled across WoW Insider during Wrath when I was trying to get to the official World of Warcraft site and just typed in 'wow.com.' When I finally decided to stop lurking and start actually saying things, it was under a different username that I abandoned when I changed mains at the end of ICC."

"It's easy to look back and be surprised at how much time I've dedicated to a website that I don't own or receive any compensation from, but it's a lot like WoW in that respect," he continues. "I can think 'I've really wasted a lot of time here,' or I can reflect fondly on the good people and good conversations that have come and gone over the years. People like Krotzer, Cutaia, Draknfyre, Pyro, Grovin, Ravyncat, Killik, Jeff and many, many others are what make WI such a fantastic place to come to for information or just to hang out."

Evidently, the EU realms are a hotbed of death knight creativity and initiative. While he might be among the best-known players for his crazy soloing accomplishments, Raegwyn is hardly the only DK to crack the code of soloing endgame content. Mionee, a savvy and seasoned death knight from top EU guild Envy, is also making name for herself from soloing a few little things. What kind of things? Everything from Deathwing, Ragnaros, and a challenge mode dungeon down to older content such as Yogg-Saron/0 keepers and the Lich King.

"The only normal mode encounters that cannot be soloed right now as a DK are Kalecgos in Sunwell Plateau, Valithria Dreamwalker in Icecrown Citadel (unless you're a draenei with Gift of the Naaru), Conclave of Wind in Throne of the Four Winds, as well as Hagara the Stormbinder and Spine of Deathwing in Dragon Soul," Mionee muses. "That leaves quite a lot of soloable encounters. On a more general note, what's left to solo are the heroic versions of some encounters, or the 25-man versions of bosses that have only been soloed in 10-man."

"To give a rough estimate," she continues, "by the end of Wrath of the Lich King, I was doing Mount Hyjal; by the end of Cata, I had completed nearly every possible heroic encounter from Wrath (a few exceptions aside); and right now, I have completed everything in Cata aside from the three above-mentioned encounters."

Mionee gives us the inside scoop on soloing some of the game's toughest content and answers the question of whether death knights are really overpowered, after the break.

At last, our look back at five years of WoW personality interviews rolls around to the duo everyone's been asking about: Hexu and Davidian, the British soldier blinded in Iraq and his redoubtable "guide dog" guildmate who steered him through full participation in current raid content. Their story exploded across the internet after we interviewed Davidian here on WoW Insider, and Blizzard recognized the dynamic duo with in-game helms with flavor text alluding to their inspiring bond of friendship.

Hexu and Davidian are both still playing World of Warcraft -- but the duo is together no more. As of the new year, the ever-energetic Hexu has been raiding on a new rogue, Dirtypawz, in Unqualified on Stormrage (EU). "I know!" he replies to my unspoken exclamation of surprise and sadness. "It was just that people were only raid logging, and it got boring -- but it was all amicable and cool. I still speak to people in Die Safe. I just wanted to do more than raid three nights a week." Hexu/Dirtypawz says a "very nice bloke" named Vatic is serving as his current raiding "guide dog" helper. "The people in the guild are all nice people," he adds, "and there [are] always things going on."

We'll visit with Hexu/Dirtypawz next month about how he's settling in and dig into his tips for the many sight-disabled players who've written to us during the past year trying to reach him for advice.

Meanwhile, Davidian reports that the year since we interviewed him has been packed with recognition and encouragement. "The publicity was just unreal," he says. "Even to this day, I get people coming to our server just to say how much the story inspired them and restored their faith in the gaming community. The biggest thing of all, though, was the fact that it made its way to Blizzard, and myself and Ben got signed copies of the collectors edition of Cataclysm signed by at least 50 members of the Blizzard team, and [we] received in-game pets also. Then to top it off, having in-game items with our names on them was just outstanding -- I mean, to be immortal in a game that we love to play is just, well words couldn't possibly describe it."

All good people connecting to play a game that's close to our hearts ... Keep reading for more updates about people who love World of Warcraft, from our interviews during 2012.

Quite a few of today's World of Warcraft players first set foot in Azeroth during the Cataclysm era. The years 2010 and 2011 saw gaming in general move into its own, and we began interviewing more and more WoW players and public personalities who were confident and eager to talk about their game of choice.

Are they still playing today in Mists of Pandaria? Many are -- although the exploits of those who aren't are sometimes equally as interesting to hear! Catch up on 2008 and 2009 in part 1 of our retrospective, and be sure click the bold subheadings at the beginning of each entry below to see the original interviews.

Pulverizing WoW MMA fighter Jens "Little Evil" Pulver has been trying his hand at Mists while preparing for his next fights. "I have not been inside a dungeon or raid but I have enjoyed leveling a few characters," he writes. "My hunter is my PvP character, and I try to get in a few games in the evening. Outside of WoW, I have been wrapping up my career as a MMA fighter and will be fighting in the semi's of the ONEFC bantamweight Grand Prix in April." Jens is also hard at work on projects including gaming hardware, depression, and motivational speaking; find out more at JensPulver.com or @jens_pulver on Twitter.

Marie Lazar got the chance to step into the shoes of a Blizzard Entertainment intern last summer -- and there's still a chance that you could, too. The deadline for this year's Blizzard student art contest is next week. If you're an aspiring 3D artist, get your portfolios in by Jan. 15 for a shot at a three-month mentorship at Blizzard under the wing of a member of the WoW art team, plus a one-year subscription to WoW and some delicious WoW memorabilia and goodies.

You'd best be up for a stiff challenge, though, because this is no mere fan art contest. You'll face artists the likes of last year's winners Jessica Dinh, Peter K. Lee -- and the subject of this week's interview, the detail-oriented Marie Lazar.

"It's all about the details," said WoW lead environment artist Gary Platner of Marie's work. "When we create art for WoW, we have to follow some rules. Pieces must have hand painted textures that match our unique art style and they must tell a story. Marie's work does this very well! And, if you look close enough, some great details come through. It's a library of the afterlife floating on an island in the sky! There are book references everywhere, books lying around, book grave stones, even the roof is made to look like an open book. All of us could look at this piece and come up with a great story."

Azeroth is certainly not the same place it was back in 2008 when we began interviewing players and people associated with World of Warcraft for WoW Insider's "15 Minutes of Fame" feature. We face a new landscape with new threats, new stories, new opportunities. While many of the people we've talked with over the years have moved on to other horizons, plenty of them are still right here in Azeroth -- and many of them are doing things as remarkable as those that first caught our attention

Where are they now? To find out, we have to go way, way back -- all the way to January of 2008 ... Be sure to click the bold subheadings at the beginning of each entry to read the original interviews.

Noor the pacifist Five years ago, the idea of someone playing an MMO like WoW without killing any monsters seemed incredible at best and ridiculous to many. But Noor kept at it -- and he's at it still. "I've got my mage up to 90, but haven't done much with Noor for a while," he reports. "I missed the small window of opportunity to create a neutral pandaran by getting off the starting turtle without choosing a faction by using Zen Pilgrimage; there's still a way that should work, but it's a very long grind ... (Basically, herb and mine to level 41, which takes more than 50,000 nodes, then take up inscription and make a scroll of recall and read it.)" Um, yikes. Read more of Noor's exploits at Pacifist Undead Priest.

From 0 to 90 with no gear, no talents, no grouping or professions, and perma-death -- no more playing that character if you die ... It's a grim challenge that only one player so far has managed to take to its conclusion. Yet so compelling and addictive is the unforgiving gameplay of the player-created Ironman Challenge that Mists champion Lyssan is already rolling a new monk down the iron path.

An interview with the triumphant Lyssan, a Diablo 2 hardcore mode veteran, reveals a player bubbling with wry humor, an adventurous spirit, and an abiding appreciation for the very fabric of the World of Warcraft.

WoW Insider: Leveling under these conditions sounds absolutely brutal. How much do the restrictions of the challenge impinge on normal game play?

Lyssan: Playing under Ironman rules makes WoW an entirely different game. You no longer have the luxury of trial and error with the "one death" rule. The skillset available is very limited, and you need to use it to its fullest in order to advance. One mob that for a regular toon is just a minor nuisance on the way to the quest objective is most of the time a deadly puzzle for an Ironman toon: Do I have enough HP/mana to take it down? Will it call reinforcements? Do I have an exit strategy in case something goes bad? Are all my cooldowns ready?

Due to these restrictions, playing content at the character level is usually not a very good idea. With Lyssan, I was most of the time at least two to three levels above the content I was doing, except for quests that didn't involve any killing. (I've done some of those in Pandaria.)

There's more than one World of Warcraft within Azeroth. The high-stakes realm of competitive arena play is one such microscosm. Compared to WoW's gargantuan PvE player base, relatively few players delve very deeply into arena play, and an extensive fandom for arenas as an e-sport has been slow to catch on. So when Blizzard took the Battle.net World Championship to Shanghai last month, the StarCraft II-crazed event cracked the door wider for gladiators from World of Warcraft.

At stake: international dominance and a prize pool of nearly $200,000. The BWC threw the top 10 WoW 3v3 arena teams from across the world into a high-pressure, best-of-five round robin series. The top four teams emerged to face a brutal double-elimination bracket for the global championship. When the void zones dispersed, one team remained: Bring It, a North American team composed of frost mage Venruki (Elliott Venczel of Calgary, Canada), BlizzCon veteran and warlock Snutz (Kelvin Nguyen, also of Canada), and well-known PvP shaman Kollektiv (Timothy Yen, United States). We caught up with Venruki to crack the high-stakes world of WoW arena as an e-sport.

WoW Insider: Congratulations on your win! I'm guessing you've been kicking back and taking it easy since the championship?

Venruki: Thank you very much! I have been taking it easy since the championship. It's funny though, I thought after BWC was over I could finally take a break from World of Warcraft ... Recently seems like I play more than I did before. I'm still having a lot of fun with the game.

How do you go about preparing for a championship like the BWC, anyway?

Because the game was on the new expansion Mists of Pandaria, I knew that I had to play ... a lot. I practiced over 1,000 games of 3v3 arena in the couple of months I had to prepare. When my team was on, I played with them; otherwise I would practice with whomever I could find. I knew that to do well, it was going to take knowing the game inside and out.

Blizzard only wishes they'd made art like Blizzard student art contest winner Peter K. Lee -- no, seriously. "The carousel," writes a stunned-sounding Eric Browning, WoW's lead prop artist. "Holy crap. It was the exact right mix of 'WTF' and 'Why didn't we think of that?' Stylistically he nailed it, so it wasn't just a goofball idea that we loved (it was); it also fit almost perfectly into the game. Literally. It's now in the game. It has its OWN THEME SONG! That's how awesome it is, and I'm not even sure if our sound department made music or that it's just so excellent that it makes music on its own."

"And I challenge anyone to look at those carved wooden mounts and not," he continued, "in some dark and quiet place in their brains whisper, 'I want that. I want it to be my friend and go on adventures with me. So baaaad.'"

Like fellow contest winner Jessica Dinh, Lee's top-notch work in the art contest earned him a 2012 summer internship at Blizzard. We checked in with him to find out what it was like to work with a team he both admired and had managed to astound.

Break time? Tilt the screen away from your boss's line of fire, fire up a fresh playlist with your earbuds, and pull up some WoW Insider. (Much healthier than something out of the vending machine, am I right?) How about a behind-the-scenes interview? Who would you like to read more about? Tell us!

Who's doing something useful for other players or playing the game in a way that makes you say, "Wow, that sounds cool!"? Let us know what they're up to.

• Send us your nominations! While an interview with 15 Minutes of Fame isn't exactly designed to be an achievement award for good behavior or service to the gaming community, we'd love to talk with anyone out there who's doing good stuff. (Examples: A guild for players with social anxiety, the quadriplegic player compiling resources for other disabled players, the raider who plays "guide dog" to a blind guildmate.) Know anyone out there who's doing it right?
• Send us your requests! Who's the Mr. Nice Guy behind that warrior on your realm that everyone seems to know and like? Who's the gnome behind the WoW-themed crochet patterns you download as quickly as can post them? Who's the savvy player behind your favorite resource site? We'll find out.

Tip me at lisa@wowinsider.com or @lisapoisso on Twitter.

Azeroth's Most Wanted List We're betting you know where the interesting folks are hiding. Check out our Most Wanted List after the break.

Sometimes we're so busy geeking out over the ways Blizzard inspires us with World of Warcraft that we forget that behind the curtain, the folks at Blizzard are busy geeking out over the people and things that inspire them. So when we learned that Blizzard had commissioned fantasy art legend Michael Whelan to create a painting of Deathwing for Blizzard's headquarters, we knew we had to bring you the inside story of how this singular vision of the iconic dragon came to fruition.

The most honored artist in science fiction, Whelan has created book and album covers for authors and musicians like Isaac Asimov, Stephen King, Ray Bradbury, the Jacksons and Meat Loaf. He was inducted into the Science Fiction Hall of Fame in 2009, the first living artist to join such luminaries as H.G. Wells, Steven Spielberg, and Ursula K. Le Guin.

While Whelan actually executed the commission for Blizzard early last year, his enthusiasm for the project remains undimmed. The world-renowned painter of imaginative realism chatted with us about his rueful discovery of Deathwing's unique draconic qualities, his admiration for Blizzard's art team, and the special project he's working on now in memory of "Dragonriders of Pern" author Anne McCaffrey.

WoW Insider: Your artwork is such a part of the fantasy world that we need to go back a bit to get the full perspective of what you've done here, the long view you bring to an upstart like Deathwing.

Michael Whelan: It's been a little ways ... (laughs) I've been working at this for what, 35 years?

We have a Pern fan on staff who's curious about how you reconcile the stylistic differences between the art for Pern and art like what you've just done with Deathwing for Blizzard. Now that you're focusing more on fine art than illustration, was it odd to switch back to working on a commission with someone else's vision?

Yeah, it's really hard. Try as I might, there's always a period of adjustment between working on a commission piece and doing something for the gallery, where I'm just trying to satisfy my own aesthetic and intellectual sensibilities. It's funny; it can take me days, even, to switch gears and go from one mindset to the other.

It's only been a couple of weeks since we reported on the crowdsourcing effort to fund the autism research of well-known Restokin blogger and Blizzard MVP poster Lissanna, aka Dr. Elisabeth Whyte of the Laboratory of Developmental Neuroscience at Penn State. So far, supporters have boosted Dr. Whyte to just over a quarter of her funding goal for the project, which focuses on how children and adolescents with autism understand language and process information from faces (such as recognizing people or understanding emotional expressions). Her goal: designing a video game to help kids with autism improve these skills.

How does an MMO-playing grad student transform from anonymous gamer to well-known WoW blogger, Blizzard forum MVP, and Ph.D.-level researcher bringing gamification to the treatment of autism? If you follow the example of this lady: with ease.

WoW Insider: One-fourth of your funding already under your belt -- congratulations! Our readers already know that WoW can be beneficial to kids with autism, so it's exciting to hear about a gamification project designed to help kids with autism.

Lissanna: Many kids and adults with autism seem to enjoy playing video games. We have some evidence that using fun activities can motivate learning. Our goal is to develop and test the efficacy of an educational game that impacts face processing abilities and social skills. With much of the research focused on important early intervention work, there is a huge gap in the services that individuals with autism can receive when they are older. We think that a sophisticated game can fill the need for social skills services targeting older individuals to help with tasks like preparing them for jobs or developing friendships with their peers.

"Look! Look! Someone wrote something and actually mentioned World of Warcraft!" That used to be A Thing, a Really Big Thing. After eight years and millions and millions of players, though, it's much less of A Thing. Everybody knows WoW. In fact, the last time a group tried to make a big deal out of the fact that someone played WoW, the outcome didn't turn out in their favor.

So WoW has evolved from A Weird Thing to An Everybody Thing, sort of like the latest hot TV show or book. It's something people talk about over coffee. And that's why author Rachel Gold chose to have the teenage protagonists of her young adult novel Being Emily play WoW -- that, and the opportunity WoW provides to try on different gender roles by playing characters of the opposite sex. You see, Being Emily is the first YA novel to tell the story of a transsexual girl from her perspective.

"I've been playing WoW since its first weekend, and although I'm not transsexual myself, I know that a lot of my trans friends who game found relief in the ability to play a character that matched the gender they know themselves to be, regardless of what body they were born into," Gold observes. "I included that feature of gaming in the novel by having the main character and her girlfriend both play WoW (casually, since they're in high school)."

Since Being Emily arrived in bookstores at the end of June, it's hit #2 on Amazon.com's Hot New Releases in Teen Fiction & Literature. Gold talks with us about why the book resonates with teens and how WoW is helping open doors for people searching for new identities and places to be accepted for themselves.

What WoW player wouldn't want to intern for three months inside the hallowed halls of Blizzard Entertainment? Surely, it's a dream scenario for 3D game artists trying to wedge a foot in the door of this incredibly competitive field. For three lucky art students, the scenario became a reality this summer via Blizzard's first student art contest.

To be clear, this is no mere fan art contest. The student art contest was put together by Blizzard's University Relations department, challenging aspiring professionals to come up with 3D artwork that fit into the Warcraft universe while being "wholly new and unlike anything the art team had seen before." The three artists who best met that challenge would earn a three-month mentorship at Blizzard by a member of the WoW art team, a one-year subscription to WoW, and of course, some delicious WoW memorabilia and goodies.

Top dog for the 2012 contest: Laguna College of Art and Design student Jessica Dinh. "Jessica set up her scene and composed it in a way that immediately captured the viewer," says Wendy Vetter, WoW's lead dungeon artist and Jessica's internship mentor. "It was colorful, whimsical, almost like an intro to a fairytale. I was struck by the amount of detail she put into the piece, right down to the cow's head peering at the viewer in the corner."

Jessica tells us what it was like working on World of Warcraft as an artist inside Blizzard, and she rounds up what she learned there with five tips for artists trying to break into the field.

Playing on a PvP realm spins World of Warcraft in an entirely different direction. In this Azeroth, there's no such thing as "wait until I'm ready." Every single moment is rife with danger, even when you're merely trying to remain unnoticed long enough to race through a few dailies. Every player is ripe for the picking, whether you're fully healed and bristling with cooldowns or half-buried beneath an accidental overpull. Protest all you like -- if this isn't your cup of tea, you don't belong on a PvP realm.

Danger is palpable. At any given moment, someone's likely to be lurking in the shadows with the specific intent of blocking your progress. If you're an Alliance player on Maelstrom (US), that somebody is likely to be a member of Horde Strike Force.

"One of the first things you need to learn on a PvP realm is to expect the unexpected," explains Horde Strike Force GM Gug. "One of the second things you need to learn is to accept the fact that sometimes you're going to get attacked and killed by somebody or somebodies much more powerful or skilled than you are. The sooner you can absorb and roll with this, the faster you'll progress in level."

"PvP leveling is not for the faint of heart," he continues. "You've got to be tough and able to react positively to negative situations. 'OK, I died but I can rez and go quest somewhere else for awhile' is a good code to live by while leveling. Don't get stuck in a rut; there are a lot of quest options out there. All this being said, the game doesn't get any more fun or alive and breathing than on a PvP realm. Once you go PvP, you never truly go back."