Level 1 Dwarven Hunter Raid

If you play World of Warcraft, this is awesome. If you don’t, hush up, Beatriz!

Pity the fool

This really defies any sort of explanation I can give.

Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator

Stumped about what to write for NaNoWriMo later this year? Have no fear, the Electro-Plasmic Hydrocephalic Genre-Fiction Generator is here!

Well, actually, it’s here — the cartoon was soon seized upon by programmers who made it reality. It can randomly produce gems like this:

Your title is: “The Revebots”

In a dystopian terraformed Mars, a young wisecracking mercenary stumbles across a dusty tome which spurs him into conflict with forces that encourage conformity, with the help of a female who inexplicably becomes attracted to the damaged protagonist for unstated reasons and her welding gear, culminating in a daring rescue preceding a giant explosion.

In theaters in the summer of 2011.

I actually intend to take a crack at NaNoWriMo this year, but won’t use this site unless I get really desperate.

Majesty 2: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim

This one completely snuck up on me. I loved the original Majesty and its expansion. It was a mix of a real time strategy and sim game, and turned the notion of an RPG inside out. You were a monarch who had to rely on disreputable adventurers who would rather spend all their time in bars, gambling dens and whorehouses than go out and save the kingdom. You were usually forced to put huge bounties on monsters’ heads and giving rewards for exploring areas or invading a dungeon.

The graphics on the new one are a huge step forward — the gameplay has better graphics than the cinematic for the original — but it apparently retains the music from the original, which is great, as it’s some of my favorite game music ever.

And yes, that’s just a cyclops smashing his way through a fantasy town in the trailer. Apparently the monarch didn’t put enough money on the creature’s head and adventurers, by their very nature, are lazy and cowardly.

It comes out this week.

Blizzcon 2009

This afternoon, after I interview inarguably one of the most interesting 100-year-old residents ever — a staple of the media, probably from the advent of anything that could be considered a medium — and knocking out two political stories (and typing up the sheriff’s department’s crime log, if there’s time), I’ll be heading down to Anaheim to get my press pass for Blizzcon.

This year, my coverage will be going into the Daily Press’ features section, the paper’s teen magazine and out to the corporate intranet for other Freedom Communications papers to use. I’ll also be firing off a barrage of pieces to the Associated Press for them to scatter on the wind like dandelion seeds.

While you wait patiently for my coverage (and possibly my byline, depending on your local paper’s feelings about AP bylines) to show up in your local paper, you can follow my live-blogging of the convention via Twitter. My Blizzcon-centric feed is the cleverly named @blizzconnews.

And of course, I want to see if I can activate the Grunty the Murloc Marine World of Warcraft in-game pet tonight. The murloc costume back in 2007 worked on Thursday night, but last year’s bear mount — with murloc copilot — didn’t work until the subsequent Tuesday server maintenance.

It’ll be even more awesome if the murloc space marine (an homage to the forthcoming StarCraft II) interacts with the zergling pet (an homage to StarCraft I) from the original World of Warcraft collector’s edition. There’s at least two other pets that interact with other pets this way now.

UPDATE: Yep, the zergling and Grunty definitely do interact. Depending on who gets the drop on whom, the loser dies messily. Very fun.