When winter rolls around, Kara gets an itch to play World of Warcraft that invariably ends up dragging others in. We popped in for a little bit yesterday to make sure all the accounts had gotten hooked back up, and... the experience was absolutely bewildering.

If you are hungry for holiday deals but you don't want to die at a Walmart, might I suggest the Penny Arcade store? We have kicked things up a notch this year and I'm sure you'll find something for yourself or that special nerd in your life.

Nintendo's online offerings prior to the Wii U have been... online offerings, I guess you might say. Literal interpretations. We can tell now that they were not full attempts, and it's clear, because when they actually try to do it it looks like this.

Comics about shopping seemed appropriate.

We've got about fifty tickets left for the December 6 event, which has been consistently enjoyable. If you are considering attending, it's something you might wanna lock down soon.

Gabriel's elaborate oral history of the Wii U line caused us to reflect on whether lines are inventions or inherent in the human animal. Well, not really. But the things he was telling me were correlated with the strange cultures that form in all queues of people, no doubt everywhere in the world. They adopt their own ways. They vary in strength, but when you put people who don't know each other together and pack them tight you're fucking around with ancient magic.

It's open and going well bonkers. People have found it, and are putting Erika's exquisite Hospital Map to work. Jamie's maintaining the Official Events Calendar as well, if you're looking for other ways to get involved. Desert Bus For Hope, now a storied tradition, is currently underway. In fourteen hours they (and you, because that's how it works) raised thirty-two thousand dollars, which is also known as 128 consoles or 533 games. Since then, that number has biggened considerably.

I was able to get a Wii U this weekend after spending five hours in line at a local Fred Meyer. I had not camped out for a console since the PS2 and I have to admit even though it was cold and rainy, I had a great time. I spent most of the day yesterday playing the shit out of it with my family and we had a blast. Ben has posted a lot of great Wii U coverage over on the PAR but I wanted to give you a quick rundown of my impressions after the first day.

Today’s comic is “ripped from my inbox”. I received a note last week from the Phi Sigma Sigma sorority informing me that this thread on the PA forums contained some of their secret shit. Here is a snippet:

Hounding us to drop everything so that your sorority rituals retain their sanctity might be a toughie. It also implies a level of active forum control that I'd be hesitant to exert in cases where nothing gross was happening. Also, I don't care. Plus, it's some combination of counterproductive and impossible. Gabriel suggests above the "old" adage about the Internet, Pee, and Pools, which mostly holds, except you're literally peeing into the pool while you do it. At some point, it ceases being a pool altogether and becomes a toilet full-time.

Erika actually gives a shit about her health, which is just... incredibly novel. She actively tries to do physically difficult things on purpose, and not just, like, trying to ride your bike home even though you shouldn't because you are as drunk as you have ever been.

Jeff asked me if I wanted to advertise Fairway Solitaire, which was a ridiculous question, because the game is awesome and I've gone through two separate obsession phases with it - once on PC, a million years ago, and now again on iPad. It is the easiest recommendation ever, and now they're giving away free codes for it, because apparently they are crazy. Or, maybe they think you'll be tempted by their in-app purchases at some point. That may be more likely. Anyway, it doesn't really matter. This game is rad.

I’ve worked my share of Black Fridays both at Toys R Us and then at Circuit City. It is a horrible fucking tradition that brings out the worst in people. At Circuit City I started out working in the small electronics department. Back then we sold portable CD players, boomboxes and cameras that took something we called film. On Black Friday people would start lining up at 4 in the morning in the freezing cold. When the manager would open the door they would push and run into the store so that they could be the first one to buy a piece of shit Jensen CD player that we were selling for five bucks less than normal.

I never worked retail; I suspect it might be outside my temperament, to the extent that it would have have almost certainly culminated in a multiple murder slash suicide on Christmas Eve. I worked in restaurants, where they could I did a brief turn as a busboy that did not go well, culminating in a night where I offered guests a soup I had made from a bag of mixed vegetables, white pepper, and non-dairy creamer.

I’m still working hard on Thornwatch. We have been testing it here in the office every Monday night and it’s really getting good. Just this last week we implemented a character creation process that is working really well. As I’ve said before, each character is made up of a deck of cards. Similar to Pokemon you have a deck of skill cards as well as attacks and powers that rely on those skills. I needed a way to make players feel attached to this deck though and have some idea of how to behave in RP situations. So here’s a breakdown of how our character creation system is working right now.

"Halo Video Time" is a thing that happens, a real thing, and its importance is equal to the game itself. The more prolific "directors" - Gabriel, Kiko, and Robert - will often leave the evening early to go edit their films and get them up on the share. You can still see them on; you know what they're doing.