In case you were longing for some sort of post from me I took it upon myself to make a quick one.

Since we have so much of a huge following here (read no following and probably if I ask you all for something I will get the opposite) I figured I’d tell you all how I have already voted in my lovely swing state of Nevada.

OBAMA!!

Comments Galore!

P.S. I heard Wedge55 voted early in his opposite of a swing state California as well, and so did…your MOM!

Free-to-play games publisher Aeria Games (not the company I work for) has announced that they will be localizing and publishing Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine Online in the United States and Europe. As you almost certainly don’t remember, I spent some time with the Japanese version of the game last December and came away hugely impressed.

Aeria promises all sorts of “unique” features in their press release, including:

• Strategic Real-time Fighting System - Choose between attacking, parrying and defending in real time.
• Devil Partnership – Players negotiate with devils to assist in battle and missions.
• Devil Fusing – Players can combine multiple devils to create new breeds.

But really all you need to know is that it’s post-apocalyptic Pokémon, it’s awesome, and it’ll be available to download for free at an indeterminate point in the future.

I won’t be around this weekend to Star Trek RP in Diablo 2 or /special in Warhammer Online. Instead, I’ll be hocking my wares at the Penny Arcade Expo. My life is nothing but a series of increasingly elaborate exercises in self-torture.

On the rare chance you’re also spending your weekend at the biggest video game conference run by a pair of web comic creators and want to spend some time with someone who only hates Penny Arcade fans more than he hates himself, look for the sleep-deprived idiot in a “Free Piyo!” T-shirt.

I am a weak, pathetic waste of man-meat. This isn’t news.

I pre-ordered Warhammer Online through Direct 2 Drive in order to get access to the “open” beta. I am nothing if not predictable.

It was the awesome cinematic trailer and this series of informative videos that finally eroded my paper-thin self-control, forcing EA Mythic’s opus into my (now slightly more) pathetic life.

More than just a blatant World of Warcraft ripoff, Warhammer Online promises to do away with WoW’s poop-socking endgame by integrating features usually reserved for the end of a lengthy leveling treadmill - epic pvp encounters, tiered armor sets, “raid” content - into the leveling experience itself. And then adding an additonal pvp-centric means of progression in the form of 80 renown levels on top of it. Realm vs. realm gameplay, guilds capturing and holding keeps, and the adorable squig herder are just icing on a very delicious cake. Plus there’s that damn Tome of Knowledge—an obsessive-compulsive’s wet dream.

So now you know how I’m going to be spending my weekend, minus the trip to Best Buy so my ancient PC can do this game justice. Pity me, and don’t expect to see this space updated for at least another month.

I finally joined the current generation and bought an Xbox 360 this past weekend. Now I can sit at the grownups’ table and do stuff like this:

Can a sidebar widget be far behind?

“Going forward,” expect lots of impressions of years old games that are no longer relevant and poorly edited Halo 3 videos. On the Internet! The DORK Club innovates again.

I think I’m finally over World of Warcraft.

As you can see, I scrounged together enough honor to purchase four pieces of the season 2 honor gear. Sure, they’re welfare epics, but at least I finally look cool again. I’m just not motived to log on and play any more, and didn’t even touch the game all weekend. While World of Warcraft is a significantly better game at 70 than it ever was at 60, The Burning Crusade lacks that original magic that infused every tediously repetitive moment of vanilla WoW.

For me, World of Warcraft, and MMOs in general, have always been more about goofing off with friends than playing the actual game; we raid and run PvP trains because it’s an excuse to play together. And at this point, none of my friends are playing. The majority of the characters on my friends list have transfered to other servers, and most of those who remain are banned or inactive. Running around Shattrath, I don’t recognize any of the names I see in any of the chat channels; the players and the guilds on both sides of the Horde-Alliance divide that once made the game so much fun for me on Dark Iron are long gone. Most of the characters standing in my way at the bank or in front of the flight master probably didn’t even exist before the expansion, back when Insane Kitties was neck-deep in Naxxramas.

That was in the Fall of 2006 (18 months already!), which was also the last time I played Diablo 2 with any real seriousness. At the time, the dorkclub.com extended family and I would spend most of our gaming time leveling a handful of oddball Hardcore characters, only venturing back into Naxx at night when the Australians woke up.

The differences between the two games were startling, and we joked in channel ikpriest that you could run a dozen Baal runs in the time it took to get the raid together and inside Naxxramas. Finding new loot in Diablo 2 took hours, not weeks, and you could reach any place in the game world in minutes. Obviously, we were having a lot more fun with Diablo 2 than we were with World of Warcraft.

Though I’ve sunk more hours into Blizzard’s MMORPG, no other game has held my interest as long as Diablo 2. Just yesterday I started up a new raise skeleton/dexterity necromancer (clearly a recipe for success) after a few unsuccessful minutes spent with SamWaterson, the fist of the heavens/holy shock paladin. It’s a game that never gets old. For all its failings – and there are many – Diablo 2 is a game that is infinitely replayable, and always rewards teamwork and cleverness. I can see myself still hoping on Diablo 2 every few years and leveling a character to that “proof of concept” point even after downloading Diablo 3 through Blizzard’s proprietary digital download service in 2011. I can’t imagine myself ever spending much time with World of Warcraft again, except maybe to level a Deathknight to 80.

And there’s a “zombie wall” skill.

There are no more dreams left.

Diablo III [Awesome-saturated official site]

Me working at an MMO company is like a pedophile getting a job at a preschool. Nevermind the games we publish; not a day goes by without at least one lengthy World of Warcraft discussion. My boss tells me about his pick-up Sunwell Plateau raid and relays last night’s PvP stories. Half the office does their daily quests during their lunch break. And then on Thursday night, I shared a BART ride home with a co-worker—A solid forty minutes spent reminiscing about those halcyon days of raiding at 60.

It was only a matter of time:

I’m weak. I couldn’t hold out until Wrath of the Lich King.

PvP zones, destructible buildings, siege weapons, and a new class that plays like the combination of an affliction warlock, a frost mage, and a vampire ensures I’ll at least level to 80. But in the meantime, arena season 4 starts on June 24, and I’ve got AVs to AFK in so I can buy the season 2 arena set when it’s downgraded to honor gear. If everyone’s favorite figureprintable priest is going to lay dormant, nothing more than a searchable query in the Armory, then he may as well look awesome while doing it.

EDIT – The first thing I see when I log in:

:(

The DORK Club is now a games developer. If Nibris can get away with being classified as one in the eyes of the gaming “press,” than consarn it, so can we. We’ve got a $100 game engine and everything!

We’re setting the bar high with our ambitious first project: An MMO based on Stephen King’s cherished library of award-winning novels and short stories. Being good friends with Mr. King, I secured the rights for just $19, meaning I got a much better deal than J.J. Abrams.

While the game is obviously still in the very earliest stages of development as we look for cheap out-sourced programmers, today I will reveal the first details of this tentatively titled project, and give you an overview of some of the game’s most exciting and innovative features.

Players can choose from one of four playable classes as they pledge allegiance to The White in the ongoing war against The Red. Gunslingers dual wield deadly six shooters and command cunning hawk pets. Elderly Jedi can teleport short distances as well as control others and lift heavy objects with their minds. Impossibly Mature 12-Year-Olds use their wise-beyond-their-years maturity to outwit enemies four times their age. And finally, Popular Artists Trying to Escape Their Past walk a thin line between hating and embracing post modernism. Possible expansion classes include the Mildly Racist Magical Negro and the Gentle Retarded Mongoloid.

As players level up (wait until you hear our ding sound!), they will actually transcend to higher levels of The Dark Tower itself, gaining access to more and more of Stephen King’s “other worlds than these,” including locations as diverse as Derry, Maine; Castle Rock, Main; and Haven, Maine.

While our planned partnership with Microsoft fell through with the cancellation of their DC Universe MMO, we’re proud to announce that we’ll be partnering with Turbine to help make our Stephen King MMO the best possible game it can be. Players will be able to transfer their characters between our game and Turbine’s upcoming Harry Potter MMO, and vice versa, at no extra charge.

Our partnership with Turbine also allows us to present every aspect of our game in terms of The Lord of the Rings Online. Ka-tets (like fellowships in LotRO) will allow players to forge everlasting alliances and friendships that grow over time. Using our robust music system (similar to the music system found in The Lord of the Rings Online), players can play brief snippets of popular songs that best represent their current situation. Players will even be able to temporarily take on one of Randall Flagg’s many persona – the hard case, the walkin’ dude, the dark man, the ageless stranger – and fight against their former allies (not unlike LotRO’s monster play).

Like The Lord of the Rings Online, we also have some exciting raid content planned for our upcoming MMO. Planned raid bosses include Stephen King’s alcoholism, Stephen King’s drug addiction, and Stephen King’s head on a stick (like the last boss of Doom 2—a reference to The Lord of the Rings Online). Stephen King fans will also be excited to hear they’ll be able to face off against the Crimson King himself, standing idly by as a previously unmentioned NPC quickly and easily defeats the game’s ultimate evil. Following the final boss fight, players can enter The Dark Tower and begin the game again at level 1, but with an additional, class-based musical instrument.

I hope everyone who reads this site will be free for GM duty when the game finally ships. We can all hang out in Stephen King’s virtual house, the game’s equivalent to GM island, and ban any player unfortunate enough to find it.

[EDIT: Bango "vector_black" Skank was here<---]

An achievement system, items with dynamic stats based on talent spec, and account-bound legacy items specifically designed for twinks!

Time to start planning my deathknight’s talent spec, I guess.