From: "-= Hawk =-"
To:
Sent: Friday, April 16, 2004 1:54 AM
Subject: MMORPG Question

The dialogue about World of Warcraft's new "Rest State" system is completely fascinating to me. It's one feature out of a ton in the new beta they just dropped - in case you are not an absolute news weirdo and don't know what I'm talking about, I'll give you the rundown.

Some of you asked for a larger version of the Saga of Ryzom artwork that’s in our new advertisement. So here you go:

Page eight of our sixteen page Splinter Cell:PT comic book is now online.

Though it was widely considered an April Fool's Day prank - along with playable Two-Headed Ogres - apparently the Goblin Tinker is (in fact) the real deal. He comes along with a new 1.5 patch for Warcraft III that will be going into beta shortly. People have been wanting me to mention their petitions or whatnot for a new Warcraft patch, I guess now I don't have to.

Tycho has come down with a pretty nasty cold, so I told him to take the day off and get some rest. I'll be logging into WOW occasionally just to make sure the son of a bitch isn't power leveling all day.

I promised I would deliver some tips for playing the merc side in Splinter Cell: PT multiplayer. So here you go:

I think it’s interesting that the “Gabe” wallpaper has had nearly 1000 more downloads than the “Tycho” wallpaper. What do you suppose that says about his worth as a human being? I have my own thoughts.

Resident Evil: Outbreak is a revelation for PS2 owners. That revelation is, and I'm paraphrasing a bit, "Go Buy A Hard Disk."

I picked up WarioWare for the Cube this week and it is totally awesome. Essentially it’s all the same games you remember from the GBA version, only now you compete with up to three other people to see who’s the micro-game master. I’ll give you an example of how one of the game modes works.

John Woo has optioned the rights to make a film based on Metroid, but that hardly means anything. Someone optioned it before him as you'll recall, the gaming high council met to determine the our official response, and then the option was allowed to lapse. Also, Woo's entire role in this movie still isn't clear. But I'm crossing my fingers, I want to believe that Samus Aran can survive the translation to a screen of those dimensions, so hopefully whatever intellect takes note of gestures like that is paying attention.

In the last week I have been accused of selling out to Blizzard, Ubisoft and Taco Bell. While it’s true that I would gladly sign over my rights to Penny Arcade for a life-time supply of meef and cheese churritos, that day has not yet arrived.

Okay, so there is a big Ghost Recon: Jungle Storm contest going on and we are a part of it. The way it works is you go sign up here and then you play some 3 on 3 matches online. At the end of the competition, the two teams with the highest rankings will be flown to San Francisco where they will battle it out in the Sony Metreon. There are lots of awesome prizes, like flat-screen TV's, a surround-sound home theater system, PlayStation 2 peripherals, and a Plasma TV. Tycho and I will be there and you’ll have the opportunity to play against us if that’s something your interested in.

Speaking of Splinter Cell:PT. Page seven of our sixteen page comic book is now online. This is actually one of my favorite pages of the entire book. Am I allowed to say that without sounding like an asshole?