Consider it retro MMO, and a bit light on the RPG.

MMO Pong, baby.

Short of an economy and crafting classes, this thing has everything an MMO needs to be successful:

1). PvP
2). Factions (Blue paddles forever!!!1)
3). Griefers

I think we need to start a guild here. Who's with me?

It's with a heavy heart that resign myself to the fact that the Transformers movie is going to sorta suck. I mean, I don't want to believe that, of course, because I fucking love the Transformers. Beast Wars was really what stole my heart. I fucking cried at the end of that series. So brilliant. So much heart.

But with Michael Bay at the helm of the movie, the last thing it'll have is heart. Come on, you know what it's going to be: a CG over-produced flashy nightmare. Explosions. Chase scenes. That's what Bay does. He tells stories in chase scenes and explosions. No real characters to speak of. In Beast Wars and, later, Beast Machines, the development of the characters was sheer genius. From Optimus Primal's ego-driven projects to Rattrap's betrayal and redemption to Cheetor's coming of age (with his mutation as a metaphor for hitting puberty) to Megatron's maniacal "I am the Alpha and the Omega" pronouncements to the Romeo/Juliet love between Black Arachnia and Silverbolt...the show completely blew my mind.

Well, but I'm a sucker for Transformers, I'll probably see it anyway. But someday I would love to see a Beast Wars movie with the entire original cast, with Paul Dini writing it, maybe.

In the meantime, I've always said that if there's one thing we've learned from science fiction, it's that robots will eventually rise up against us. So you should prepare youself.

This is pretty cool. Check out the video for a demonstration.

But that's the way it is at DICE. You literally run into Will Wright, Lorne Lanning, Sid Meier, David Jaffe, Greg Zeschuk. Ryan ran into Greg in the first twenty minutes of the conference, in the men's room. "Oh hey," says Ryan. "Hi," says Greg. "By the way," Greg adds, "Ray [Muzyka] won the celebrity poker tournament last night." ZIP!

It's enough to make you feel giddy.

We got a lot of material for the 1UP Show, great interviews with Warren Spector, with Ray and Greg, who talked about what an elegant game poker is (it was really all I could do not to go fangirl on them about KOTOR, NWN, Baldur's Gate, and so on).

We had maybe the craziest interview I've ever had with anyone...with David Jaffe. It was the last day, I think we were all low on sleep, and the interview spanned such topics as message boards, cunnilingus (blame my colleague Shane for that one), gross-out candy, and how much the technology of 1UP.com sucks. (Well, it does - we all know it's slow as shit.) By the end David had to run and I felt like I'd been hit by a bus. What the hell just happened? I don't know if we can use any of it but it was surely an experience. You'll see on the next 1UP show.

And now it's Saturday morning, almost noon; I've slept for ten hours but I still feel like I could use a nap!

We tried to get to the DICE Awards show on time. Really, we did. But Ryan and I fell in step with Frank Cifaldi from Gamasutra on our way out of David Jaffe's talk. Well, first I had to do my write-ups. Then I started chatting with the fellow sitting next to me, who was Frank, and who happened to be a Las Vegas native.

After I sent in my write-ups and ran around a bit looking for people to talk to, we saw Frank again. "Want to get out of here?" he asked us. He said he was going to a real bar, off the strip.

I've been off the strip a few times. My band played here...twice, I think?? I can't remember. Anyway, we played in a couple of shitty hole-in-the-wall bars. Also, I've stayed with two people who both lived off the strip, one guy who was attending UNLV at the time, and another guy who was a professional...player, I guess. You couldn't call him a gambler, he'd say he doesn't gamble; he plays the odds. In fact he offered me a job being his partner. I have not yet taken him up on it.

In any case, Frank took me and Ryan to a bar that was near UNLV, but not exactly a college bar since another, cheesier bar closer to the university filtered out a lot of the students.

The bar was a dive, of course, which was perfect; and, according to Frank, it was the only bar in Las Vegas that didn't have a slot machine. And it didn't. It all felt very...real.

In about an hour I'm going to hop on a flight to the DICE Summit. DICE stands for Design! Innovate! Create! Entertain!

I'm excited to go - it's like GDC concentrated, and GDC is my favorite conference. It's very small - I think about 200 hundred people go. It's at a hotel just outside Las Vegas.

We'll be shooting segments for The 1UP Show there but it's my secret chance to make out with Will Wright.

Just kidding.

...sort of.

We've all heard the rumors: Dave Chappelle loves World of Warcraft. So does Jon Stewart. Asia Carrera kills in Unreal Tournament.

But it turns out that perhaps another group of power-players are addicted to WoW - high-tech entrepreneurs, big-idea folks, internet movers and shakers. Is WoW turning into a place where they can meet and find each other? I wrote a story on it for 1UP.com: Is WoW the New Golf?

It's an interesting idea, but WoW is a long way from Friendster or mySpace or LinkedIn. For one, it's a lot harder to browse for friends; the server system is optimized for play experience, not for contact volume. And then the game itself is so involving that, unlike taking a stroll through the links, there's a lot less potential time for schmoozing while playing. At the lower levels, at least.

Still, there is something to the fact that a lot of people, including celebrities and CEOs and the like, are now choosing to relax by playing games online. With a little research you may be able to join Jon Stewart's raiding party next time you log on.

I talked with Joi Ito, a WoW player with the passion of the newly converted, about his guild, "We Know", and whether the buzz on it comes from the fact that he's attached to the project. I got the idea for the story because Eric, who's Joi's friend and fellow Guild-member, told me an amusing anecdote about going out to brunch with a big group of people and a mobile entrepreneur-type was talking about the very same guild with another bruncher.

Anyway, I took video of the chat with Joi while he also showed us around Azeroth; I'm working on editing it now and I'll post it up later. It was an experiment that turned out, I think, rather well! Thanks to Eric for his help.

Run by a charming duo calling themselves electro and plankton: tranism.com.

Videogames! Legos! Fashion! Cute haircuts!

Love!

The recent scuffle between Blizzard and a young woman who wanted to create a gay-and-lesbian-friendly guild made me almost as depressed as when San Francisco started revoking marriage licenses it had just issued to blissfully newly-wed couples.

The truth is, I would like to find a gay-lesbian friendly guild. If they would have me, although I am neither.

Let's face it, straight boys in anonymous games are annoying. If you play a female character - or if they even *think* for a moment that you're female, some gamers get all goggly-eyed. "A/S/L? Lol". Sure, it's nice to get free gold and stuff from the remnants of a chivalric instinct, but all that attention can get a little tiring. And then there are the heavy-duty role-player types who are constantly "Milady" this and "Milady" that and who are bowing and scraping and acting like proper goofballs instead of focusing on the damn raid.

I'd rather be flirted with by gay boys and lesbians, quite honestly.

Plus, gay boys and men are more likely to be supportive of you. A shoulder to cry on. Every straight girl should have a gay boyfriend, to dispense much-needed hair, fashion, and love advice without a trace of competitiveness. Lesbians are also very supportive, although I've definitely run into a few who are more aggressive than straight boys!

Raiding with your Gay-Lesbian Guild would be so much more fun. Hugs all around afterwards!

And the added bonus would be to not hear the names which so many gamers liberally sprinkle into their speech, because honestly, I'm just tired of it.

I do hope they'll accept me. I'm bi-curious, does that count?