The Penny Arcade Alliance launched a multi-guild co-ordinated raid last night that simultaneously attacked all three Horde cities on the Dark Iron server.

Kind of gives new meaning to "wow" doesn't it? Because all I can say is....wow.

More at azeroth.metroblogs.

(Thanks, Eric!)

The old gang at Gamepro are rolling out something called GameProFamily, which is aimed at educating parents about the games they might be buying for their kids. Through the framework of a fictional family - a Dad, a Mom, and a kid of indeterminate age - various games are discussed and rated with a traffic light.

I agree with Simon when he writes on GameSetWatch that the idea of helping parent around ESRB ratings and popular titles is a good one; but like him I trip up over the fictional family metaphor as clunky and peculiar.

And the kid - this is maybe the most odd. What exactly is he (and he is clearly a he - another potential problem)supposed to represent? If there is a kid at all, shouldn't there be more of a dialogue between the three? Maybe Mom and Dad should actually directly address the points the kid brings up.

Wes Nihei, who writes the "Dad" perspective, is of course a long-time gamer and game writer, as well as a father. Does it matter that the writer who writes for "Mom" apparently doesn't play games? Other than that it reinforces the stereotype that women don't play games (by the way, why can't you see her eyes in the icon that represents her? Dad and kid have open, smiley faces while mom's looks more like sullen tramp than happy mom) I don't think it's important that one of the parents doesn't play games. Lots of parents have to feel empowered to make decisions about what games their kids play without playing the games, too.

Well, the site is still in Beta; it's a good idea, maybe it just needs some refining?

The other day I was jumping around in Ashenvale (my favorite thing about World of Warcraft - why run when you can jump? It's so much more fun) and I came across a pair of characters belonging to a guild called Altoholics Anonymous. I waved and jumped at them in glee, and I thought about joining the guild right then and there - because I'm totally an altoholic.

(The term Alt, in case you don't play MMOGs, refers to your alternate character, as opposed to the main character whom you have presumably brought up to level 60 and outfitted with all kids of elite special gear).

Slamdance, an independent film festival, is adding indie games to their roster - its winners include CThe Behemoth's Castle Crashers, the student game flOw which is published now for the PS3, and Jonathan Blow's time-play game Braid.

See the full press release below.

There's cool little app that seems to have invaded office cubicles everywhere - Linerider. It's incredibly simple to use but the results can get as complicated as the limits of your imagination - and the physics of the thing is what really makes it a fun toy.

A couple of weeks ago as we were packing up for the day my colleagues asked me if I had big plans for the weekend. "Not much," I said. Then, I added quickly, "Just playing some Dungeons and Dragons."

That statement still elicits curious looks and a bit of laughter. It was even considered too nerdy for my friends at Ziff who get together to play nerd games (and that's what we called them, "nerd games." Board games like Puerto Rico and Shadows over Camelot, Carcasonne, Settlers of Catan.)

Are games trapped by math?

I just learned that all of the peach orchards between Parmer and 35 and Round Rock are gone. Which sucks. ["It’s all WalMarts now." "It's the pits." Laughter] Yeah... and why is there no game about the taste of a freshly picked peach, straight from the tree, with the smells and dust of the working orchard? How do you make a game about that?

["Because my monitor tastes like crap." "It's a human interface problem."]

It isn’t just an interface problem! It isn’t just an interface problem! There are probably poems about the taste of a fresh peach.

Raph Koster, at Project Horseshoe.

As I suspected, the market is flooded, and prices have come down considerably since yesterday. Granted, we're past 24 hours from the last post (about 34 hours), but my random very non-scientific sampling of eBay's Playstation3 auctions is very telling.

First, there's still a bunch of numbnuts out there who think that their "Buy it Now!!"s going for $20,000 are going to even garner a page-view. Good luck with that now that there's 380 pages of Playstation3 eBay auctions. There's more than 18,000 PS3 auctions today, and there were 12,200 yesterday. Some folks evidently haven't figured out the whole supply/demand market trend thing.

Top price for a system today looks to be around the $2,200 mark, less than a third of what it was yesterday. The average median price seems to be roughly $1,200 or so. I actually saw one going for $800 or so with just 20 minutes left to go on it. Not exactly record profits.

Same as yesterday, here's the profit breakdown if you sat in line since Tuesday to get rid of that PS3 on eBay:

$2200: $22.22/hr
$1200: $8.33/hr
$810: $5.53/hr (This guy only waited in line for 38 hours. Was it worth it?) Note: his auction might go for more, there was about 10 minutes left on it at time of this writing.

So, at this point, we've all heard the stories of the pre-order folks getting rid of PS3s for $9,000, and $6,000, (and I do see one or two more on the ps3 search list that have a bid on them for $8,000) but the vast majority are significantly lower than that. There's entire pages of $4900 "buy me nows" without a single bid on them. How are the folks who camped out in line since Tuesday morning faring just a few hours now after the release of the PS3s?

I'm guessing they're not going to fare as well as they'd hoped. A lot of people thought they'd have a net profit of about $2000 (selling them for $2600). However, as Kotaku is diligently reporting, it seems that the vast majority of people camped out in order to sell a PS3 on eBay. I'm guessing that this will probably lead to a flooded market.

At time of this writing, there are a bunch of the pre-orders that have been up for bid for awhile about to sell. One of them is going for $4300. Currently, the rest of them are hovering at the $2,000 to $1500 mark.

If you camped out to buy a PS3, here's the breakdown of how much you'd profit by hour if you've been camped out since Tuesday (72 hours) and you sold them at the going rates:

$4000: $47.22/hr
$2000: $19.44/hr
$1500: $12.50/hr

Will update tomorrow with more price breakdowns.

A shiny PS3 arrived in the office today, and I played a little Resistance: Fall of Man for a few minutes. I have to say I'm not terribly impressed. It doesn't look that "next-gen", it's got lame loading times (the true next-gen will come when we can destroy loading times once and for all - or at least, disguise them cleverly), and it feels very same-old, smae-old - it has the brownish, through-a-dirty-glass look of Call of Duty and plays like it, too. I wasn't really paying much attention to the exposition but even that is sloppily done - cut-scenes and voice-overs. Ho hum.

Am I just terribly, terribly jaded?

...are right here: http://www.wearoftherodent.com/.