A group of adventurers assisted by the Ashen Verdict managed the impossible: to down the Lich King in the very heart of his Ice Crown Citadel. There is no underestimating how much the Fall of the Lich King meant for Azeroth – and how cool the in-game cinematic was for its time. A group of fans banded together to give Arthas’ death a bit of glamour and remaster the iconic scene.
Wrath of the Lich King was the first expansion we fully experienced and the last chance to connect to our roots from the original Warcraft 3 game. This is where we met most of our friends, felt the thrill of raiding and competitive pvp and followed the story of Arthas to its bitter end. It has now been over a decade and as our time in wow slowly comes to an end, this remains our fondest memory. We feel there is no better way to remember and appreciate half a life spent in WoW, than with the cinematic that ended our favorite expansion.
- Pivotal – Animation, Camera
- MasterVertex – Lightning, simulation, VFX, rigging
- Both – Character remodelling, compositing, texture editing
- Huge shoutout to Dedrich for making the hard-to-do fluids in this animation. Link to his channel below.
- Finally, special thanks to Kayes(Grave). She’s pushed us together as a team at the start of the project. Without her, Dedrich would not have been here to make the simulations. She’s also been vital to spot critical mistakes in the first drafts of our redesign of Arthas.
This is a passion project that has taken us more than 5 months to do, as we wanted to upscale and remodel all the characters in the video and try out technologies none of us have ever attempted. Blood, sweat and tears have gone into this project, with more than 1000+ hours put into it. We would really appreciate if you would like the video and consider subscribing as well.
No shout out to Autodesk Maya. This thing spent more time crashing than running and siphoned more life energy from us than Frostmourne ever could.
For comparison’s sake, below you can find the original cinematic that plays out when you defeat Arthas in ICC raid:
