I was just telling Gabriel that this strip would be an excellent opportunity to use the word "urethra," and I was dead right. Many of the strips in the Penny Arcade canon did, in their original iterations, include some reference to this private canal which was subsequently redacted by my cohort.

Let's touch on this Jump To Lightspeed thing for a moment. Gamespy happens to have the best information I can find, so this link goes to them - you'll want to read that, and then come back.

We have deserved a sequel to X-Wing vs Tie-Fighter for some time, one which employs your "modern technology" to flex the Star Wars universe, and it would appear that it is (in fact) being produced - but in a form that you might not expect. It is being released as an expansion to Sony slash Lucasarts' Massive Role-Playing game, a product which people feel varying ways about. The things I hear about it mostly lead me to believe that investing my time in games other than Star Wars Galaxies hasn't done me wrong.

One really does get the impression that this new game experience is somewhat bolted on to the existing framework. Certainly, the ability of players to become shipwrights and produce machines which sail into deep space is utterly invigorating - but will the gameplay that occurs in those far reaches appeal to those same people? We now know that there are missions which will have flight as well as terrestrial components, but is a person into the game mostly for the space combat going to level a character strictly to ramble around on backwater worlds?

I don't know that this is the game people want - particularly where a monthly fee is concerned. On the other hand, I can see a well tuned, internally consistent product which just focuses on the regions between worlds as being an excellent setting for a completely new Massive game, one without the original Star Wars Galaxies fixed like a weight around its neck. Complete unto itself, it combines the best of Freelancer's mission-based, action oriented gameplay with Eve Online's rich fabrication, corporations, and player-built stations. I think we can both agree that skirmishes will erupt over mineral rich asteroids in zones dedicated to consensual PvP, and that the expanded universe details spacefaring races that have earned their place in the sun. Now, if they want to give a person who already plays Galaxies a leg up in this new game, you know, whatever - do it. Give them some molybdenum Ching-Chong to weld onto their chassis. But for the love of God, don't make me install that thing. I'll pay your fifteen dollars a month, but not for the game you've announced. I'd pay it for the game you're hinting at, but would never produce.

(CW)TB out.

wasted on the dead and dreaming