We actually completed the comic on stage, a process Gabriel assures me is terror itself, but he's at the doctor for a kind of pain I had never heard of, so getting ahold of the strip is difficult. It does feature the Messiah, and I hear some of you are into that. At some future point, this link will connect you to the strip in question, which I have entitled "Savor The Savior." It's not about holy communion, but I can understand why you'd be confused.

It's only been this morning that I can even remember discrete events from the last three days. I've long assumed that it was the crush of humanity and my manifold neuroses that dilated my perception of time, but I'm realizing now that it's the various means of consciousness extension I employ to maintain vigor. I don't even know if I'd call it consciousness. Your brain just shivers in there, and the body moves on its tether. My mind feels like it is slowly emerging from a vat of warm honey.

It is getting harder and harder not to shape PAX attendees into an regular fighting force and take Bellevue city hall. It's right there. Plus, regular fighting forces are sweet. If we print the PAX 2006 shirts on kevlar, I think we'd basically be ready to go. Last I heard there were about 7000 people there, which seems more than sufficient to take that town - Bellevue, a place that has perfected a kind of lethargy that actually intense. You don't want to congratulate them, but at the same time you do want to recognize it.

I would really like to thank our noble Enforcers for taking on the black and enabling an unbelievable weekend. I will come and help you lift heavy things as soon as I finish this post. The OmegaTechs who ran the Omegathon ran their asses off setting up the ultimate videogame competition, and they have my respect. What's more, this year's batch of Omeganauts was amazing - we congratulate Coreside on his victory, and we welcome back LeRoy as an Omeganaut next year. More than that, the attendees catalyzed the best convention I've ever been to and very probably created a kind of social movement. Thank you so much.

(CW)TB out.

we are leaving together

For reals!

(CW)TB

Red vs Blue also showed up to PAX, as they did last year, the only thing different really is that they were soused from the word go. During their panel, they wore hats which they assured us were filled with water, as opposed to Vodka, which is odorless and colorless.

I've been reading discussions online about the recently announced Xbox Live pricing for the 360, and - provided you already have the real console and not the imposter system - the Gold Card with its thirteen months at sixty bucks actually seems pretty good. The price increase is marginal for the functionality on offer, and anyway, that's not what piqued my curiosity.

Looking at the "Premium" Gold pak, or whatever it is, they're throwing in a game and a coupon I'd imagine is useful chiefly for first-person titles. But those points - that has me intrigued.

Is that something they've talked about a lot? Because I don't remember much in the way of discussion about it. I've heard that the "Marketplace" for purchasing downloadable content, skins, and icons will support microtransactions, which is something we talk about from time to time here at the site. It looks like they've chosen a kind of intermediary system, an internal currency they can mete out and define - but I have two questions. One, will we need to purchase cards in game shops or "charge" our account with points before we can make these purchases?

And two, could the Xbox Live Marketplace be the testing ground for a larger Microsoft initiative to push micropayments online?

Because the knowledge I have about myself is near total, I sometimes believe that everything we do here is perfectly obvious, just because I know it. I don't know why I think that, it's ridiculous. In any case, I hear a lot of the same questions in panels and whatnot and setting up those answers here may well quench you.

The CW is our clan tag from before we started the site, and refers to Clan Walrus, a group of individuals united by their dedication to our arctic lord.

We make our strip using the webs.

The italicized text at the end of a post is nine-hundred and ninety-nine times out of a thousand a song quote. You may consider it the song of the day. For example, today's is MC Frontalot's "Which MC Was That," which I determined by holding the mouse pointer over the text, and also because I just typed it. This pointer hovering over text and showing words technology was revealed unto me by the scrumptious M.

I once bit a man LARPing Vampire: The Masquerade. The trachea is very chewy; I had not expected this.

(CW)TB out.

i heard him on the internet

Tensions between Penny Arcade and Player vs. Player erupted in bloodshed last night on Dark Iron. I was questing with Kara and a couple guys from Annarchy and Keepers of the Wang last night around South Shore. We ran into three Horde up near the yeti cave, two of them around our level and one level fuck. They must have put the word out because they had backup with them in no time. We called for help from the other PA guilds and within thirty minutes this is what it looked like.

Last nights battle between PA and PvP was fucking epic. It lasted almost two hours and it's honestly hard to say who won. We would push them back into Tarren Mill and then they would rally and beat us back to South Shore. Both groups did an incredible job of avoiding the NPC guards in both towns. We battle back and forth like that until almost midnight. Skull showed up and at one point we actually died right on top of each other.

If you notice in that picture I've got two rogues next to me. They are members of "Rogue Squadron". They are rogues from various PA guilds who act as my elite honor guard and their only goal is to keep my squishy ass from getting ganked. They do a hell of a job at it too. I'd like to commend everyone in the raid last night from all the different PA guilds. The teamwork I saw was absolutely incredible. The healing and rezing last night was easily the best I've ever seen, especially in that kind of situation.

By the end of the night I had 139 honor kills which is certainly a record for me. Good job to the Pandas and Djork, you guys were awesome and you gave us a hell of a fight. That was one of the best nights I've had in WOW no doubt.

There are still plenty of PA guilds recruiting on Dark Iron if you want to get in on some of this action. Check out this thread on the Knights of Arcadia web site for more info. I'll warn you that the server is pretty full and you can expect a line when logging on at peak times. In fact according to the realm census page it looks like Dark Iron is the number one most populated server. I think it's pretty cool that Penny Arcade and PvP were able to take a nearly empty server up to over 28,000 people in just a few months.

-Gabe out