The Instance Group – A Look Back at Our First Year

The regular Saturday night group passed its five year anniversary back in October.  Yes, it was back in 2006 when we got together and decided to take on World of Warcraft with a focus on the group content.

To honor that date I decided during the summer that I ought to make a video of some sort.

I have always been impressed with the Mirage guild video Sayonara Norrath and thought it would be great if I could make something even remotely like that.

And then I totally blew it off.

But recently I have been making a few EVE Online related videos, like the one about the Drake Fleet at EWN-2U.  That gave me some minor experience with Windows Live Movie Maker, the free Windows competitor to iMovie.  I reached a skill level where I figured I could make the anniversary movie or at least produce a typical Woody Allen feature.

So I started on the movie.  Only I immediately realized that I had a lot of screen shots to go through.  I found over 3,000 WoW screen shots for the instance group time frame, and I was missing all of 2008. (Since found, adding in another 1,200 screen shots.)

So I cut it back to the first year of the group.  And so, in belated honor of our five year anniversary, I give you this video.

You should probably click on the YouTube logo (or click on this link if you are in an RSS reader or mobile device) and go watch it there in the large viewer.  Being just pictures, it streams pretty quickly even at larger resolutions, and you can see a lot more detail.

For those interested in more details about the video, you can find the director’s commentary after the cut.