How to Paladin



How to Paladin is a series of machinima movies featuring Shepiwot; a blood elf paladin and is supposedly meant to be teaching viewers how to play this particular class in World of Warcraft, taking approximately five minutes for every piece of cinema. Created by a 23 year old Dutch player nicknamed “Stoker”, the series has garnered much praise and disapproval for being ‘silly’. The footage is usually played at many times the gaming speed, and background music from the anime One Piece is used as a soundtrack (the most frequently used piece is from a track titled 'Escape' on BGM Music Disc Two). Each video shows Shepiwot jumping, buffing, healing, dancing and killing mobs for no apparent reason. The series as a whole shows different aspects of the game; we can see Shepiwot leveling up, PvP’ing running instances and even raiding after he had managed to reach level 70. Everything is filmed with the camera often changing focus and position (several times within three seconds is not unusual). Clips used in the movies usually do not last longer than four seconds. The sum of this knowledge has led many viewers to refer to ‘How to Paladin’ as stupid and unnecessary.

Nevertheless, the overall response seems positive since WarcraftMovies.com statistics indicate the average rating for all the installments up to ‘How to Paladin XXII’ is 3.29 out of 5. In addition, each individual part has attracted over 2500 downloads, with part XV even having over 50000. YouTube also shows that all parts have a rating of at least 4 out of 5. Stoker has also tried to bend the negative responses in his own benefit by making a laugh out of them. Every episode after the first part starts with screenshots of negative comments on previous installments on WarcraftMovies.com accompanied by ironic and poorly spelled remarks such as “After the great succes of…”. As of October 2, 2009, there are 35 episodes, with 10 specials, such as "How To Paladin: Insanity Remix" and "How To Paladin: Comments on Comments".