This is why I play Kingdom of Loathing. They have a spelling and grammar test you have to take before you are allowed to chat with other players.

This week we touch on a series of MMO highlights and news stories from both GDC and PAX East. I don’t want to give too much away, but I’ve added some links and videos behind the break for those who want more information on the games we’re talking about this week!

SW:TOR Trailer:

The Secret World GDC writeup & trailer:

UFO Online: Fight for Earth:

Grimlands:

You can check out all this news and more over on Massively!

Music used:

• Opening: “Yellow Cake (Healflouride) by Ministry
• Bed: Tavern music from WoW (sampled and looped)
• Ending: “Я очень рад, ведь я, наконец, возвращаюсь домой” by Eduard Khil

Questions? Comments? Hatemail? Contact us at podcast [AT] dc [DASH] mmo [DOT] org or catch up with Krystalle & Kevin on Twitter

This week’s (sic) SnarkCast covers all sorts of fun stuff.

• SIEGE Con – Grim goes to a convention which doesn’t require him to work.  Will he survive?
• World of Darkness – Watch Krystalle nearly pass out from the Squee.
• Dragon*Con is making some changes for next year.
• Cataclysm is dropping on December 7th.  Grim expecting to get “sick” that week.
• DC*MMO is looking for a few good staffers. (Yes, we’re serious)
• and the proverbial.. “Much Much MORE!”

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw on Age of Conan

Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw on Eve Online.

Not a huge amount of time for a long post this week, but the important thing is that the time and care was spent creating a brand new Dragon*Con MMO SnarkCast for you! Are you getting excited? We certainly are as plans are building here at the virtual D*C MMO HQ for this year’s convention.

Anyway, enough of the blathering – here’s the cast for you.

• WRUP – What we’re playing!
• How not to promote your game (or, CSI D*C)
• WAR, uh-huh, good gawd y’all, what is it good for? Apparently lawyer fees.
• RTS MMO WTF gimme
• Gentlemen (and ladies), start your engines!
• Kissing babies in New Eden
• Zero-day MMO reviews by people who haven’t played the game since launch are A Bad Idea
• With Friends and Family like that, who needs (business) enemies?
• Who’s hot (this week) to Kevin?
• Kevin says something nice
• Georgia Ren faire reminder for local Dragon*Con fiends!
• And more Dragon*Con MMO silliness and guest news!
• Audience participation SnarkCast

Music used in this show:

• Opening song: Zerøspace (Q-Burns Abstract Message Mix) – Kidneythieves
• Bed music: Green Nebula – CCP: Jon Hallur (soundtrack from EVE Online)
• Closing music: none this week because we didn’t have time to toss in the normal disclaimers before mashing it together and uploading it.

As always, comments, offers of cookies, and hatemail should be directed to us in comments below, or by emailing us: podcast AT dc-mmo.org. We’ll see you next time!

This podcast is (c)2010, DC MMO. Released under a Creative Commons: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license.

A glorious evening to you all, noble warriors in the Snark army! It is time once again for your Secretary of Geek affairs to fill you in on some of the awesome news of the last week. My apologies for the lateness of the post, but I was feeling a bit under the weather today and so, unfortunately, has Mama McGreevy. Never worry, though! I did manage to gather a few tidbits to quench your thirst for geek knowledge, and you’ll find them behind the cut.

• Smiling Stan Lee has chimed in with his opinion of Marc Webb, the man who has been charged with the responsibility of taking the helm on the Spider-Man film franchise in the footsteps of Sam Raimi. Stan gave a fairly detailed summation of the meeting over on his Twitter account, and I’ve cobbled together all of them into one statement for you here. “Had a great time today. Lunched with Marc Webb who’s gonna direct Spider-Man 4. First time I’ve met him. Lemme give you my impression – After meeting Marc. I was certain Marvel had made a great choice to direct Spidey 4– and not just because of his table manners! The mighty Mr. Webb is smart and hip– and he cares about being true to Spidey as much as I do. And remember, he’s also a great director. I could tell by the dynamite ideas he proposed that Marc’s gonna bring new excitement and a new sense of wonder to ol’ Spidey! And remember–Marc wants a great Spider-Man movie that’ll bring new luster and glory to our web-swinger as much as we do! So let Marvel’s True Believers unite with my brave Brigadiers and get behind Mighty Marc, because hey, the best is yet to come! Excelsior!” I hope Stan is right. I do love Sam Raimi, but Spider-Man 3 was a complete train wreck of a film. Whether or not Sam is responsible for that really depends on who you believe, but the fact of the matter is that at this point a re-boot is probably the only thing that is going to help the franchise out. [Source]
• There have been countless revenge movies made in the relatively short history of modern cinema. The story is generally pretty much the same in all of them. You start the film and establish your happy, well-adjusted hero. You then proceed to slaughter his entire family and have him mutilated and left for dead. You then watch as he extracts bloody vengeance on all of those who wronged him. It’s a pretty tried-and-true trope, but it works. This time, however, the hero? Is a tire. A tire with the power to kill people with its mind. For reals. [Source]
• Star Wars fans rejoice! If you’re a TomTom owner you can now download the voice of Darth Vader to guide you to your destinations! My question is whether or not he’s constantly going to try and divert you to the Dark Side. If you watch the video associated with the this news release it’s pretty clear that the person voicing the Dark Lord isn’t James Earl Jones. In fact, if I had to guess, I’d say it was Chad Vader. Still, it’s a pretty awesome download option and I’m seriously thinking of grabbing it myself. [Source]
• And speaking of Star Wars (there, Grimm…I’ve fulfilled my “speaking of” quota for this post)…A couple recently cobbled together what is, in my mind, the greatest birth announcement ever using clips from A New Hope. [Source]
• Hugo Weaving is going to play Red Skull in the upcoming Captain America : The First Avenger film. The utter awesomeness of the sentence I just wrote stands on its own and needs no further elaboration. [Source]
• Remember Stephen Baldwin? No, you probably don’t because he’s pretty much the Fredo of the Baldwin family. There are some who believe that his lack of popularity in Hollywood has nothing to do with his lack of talent and everything to do with the fact that he is an outspoken Christian. These people are so convinced this is the case that they have actually set up a charity to raise money for him. Once news got out about this, though, some enterprising internet folks decided the appropriate response was to set up a site to restore someone much more worthy of our praise. Joss Whedon. [Source]
• I like Batman. I also like porn. Regardless of the fact that I enjoy both of these things I have never actively sought to combine the two for my own enjoyment (despite the fact that Rule 34 dictates I could easily find material to do so should the desire strike me). Some folks, however, clearly think there is a market for such a combination and they have thrown together a porno parody of the old Adam West Batman television series. Someone has to ask Adam about this one if he comes to Dragon*Con again (someone who isn’t me). [Source]
• In my opinion one of the best parts of the Quentin Tarantino Grindhouse film was the fake trailer for a film called Machete starring ultimate bad-ass Danny Trejo. Apparently a lot of folks agreed with me, because they have turned Machete into a feature length film. Check out the trailer and a few words from Machete himself about the recent immigration legislation that was passed in Arizona. [Source]
• Yeah, ok. I might be getting a little trailer heavy today, but I can’t not post this one. The latest Discworld novel turned television movie is Going Postal, and the trailer just looks awesome. So far all of the Discworld movies have been great, and if this trailer is any indicator Going Postal is going to continue the tradition. [Source]
• Back in my day video games were hard. You didn’t have these fancy tutorials or access to websites with lots of cheat codes. If you wanted any kind of help playing the game you had to go out and buy a book, and every time you died it put you one step closer to dumping another quarter into the machine before you could continue. Want to see proof of what I’m talking about? Check out the video in the link that follows to see what it would look like if Super Mario Brothers was made today [Source]

That’s all I’ve got this week, folks! Happy Monday to ya!

• WRUP – What we’re playing!
• Macrotransaction vs microtransaction snark
• Nexon looking to play grown-up, goes om nom nom
• Shrinkage is still a problem after the apocalypse
• It’s almost time to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentation of their women.
• JGEOMGWTF, HURRY UP
• Yarr Realms
• Brenlo deserves a beer
• New content and Bards and Uncle Voltie, oh my
• In other news, gang leaders make good models
• The two Perpetual Nerd Questions
• What do William Shatner and Patrick Stewart have in common with chipmunks?
• And more Dragon*Con MMO silliness and guest news!

Music used in this show:

• Opening song: The Swashbuckling Rum Run Of Tom Leftig – We Are They (from the Funny Music Project at TheFUmP.com)
• Bed music: The Damp Barachan Nights – from the Age of Conan soundtrack (by Knut Avenstroup Haugen)
• Closing music: Afro Samurai Fight Groove #4 from the Afro Samurai videogame

As always, comments, offers of cookies, and hatemail should be directed to us in comments below, or by emailing us: podcast AT dc-mmo.org. We’ll see you next time! (c)2010, DC MMO. Released under a Creative Commons: Attribution, Non-Commercial, No Derivative Works 3.0 Unported license.

(Opening music, courtesy of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, “Isis Unveiled”)

(Opening music, courtesy of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, “Isis Unveiled”)

(Opening music, courtesy of And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, “Isis Unveiled”)

This version of the Snarkcast is a little more “free form” than usual.  Of course we make fun of the usual suspects (World of  Warcraft, Aion, and NCSoft in general) as well as give you some recent news from Dragon*Con and the games we happen to be playing at the moment. (Both Krystalle and I are kinda hooked on Fallen Earth right now)

Anyway, I hope you all enjoy.  Now that we’re a little closer to the holidays, we should start getting more Dragon*Con related information to throw your way as well as having a little more time to actually play all of the games we love to play.

(Opening music, courtesy of And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, “Isis Unveiled”)

It also looks like the new engineering is working nicely in terms of flipping these casts over faster. We’re going to aim for once a week, but we’d love to hear from you in regards to show times. Would you prefer SnarkCast be around 30 minutes, or is the current hour-long chunk good for you? Be sure to let us know in the comments!

Note: If the above audio is choppy for you, please consider downloading it to your local machine before listening. We’ve made the file significantly smaller than before, so it should come down pretty quickly.

As always, full show notes are after the break!

Here’s what we’re talkin’ ’bout this week, Willis.

• D*C stuffs, as always!
• Is MAG an MMO?
  http://www.massively.com/2009/09/15/the-daily-grind-is-mag-an-mmo/
• Blogger sued by Evony for Defamation/Libel
  http://www.massively.com/2009/09/14/blogger-sued-by-evony-for-defamation-libel/
  Get the FULL details after you’ve caught up at: http://www.bruceongames.com/
• EVE Online council member steps down for insider trading
  http://www.massively.com/2009/09/08/eve-online-player-elected-council-rep-steps-down-in-wake-of-insi/
• DDO goes F2P
• Fallen Earth goes into pre-launch early start release
• Beatles Rock Band just came out

Music comes from the remix artists over at OverClocked Remix, with the exception of the brief snip of organ “hold” music.

The specific songs used are:

• Ghetto Lee Lewis – Ultima Online “Create your Fantasy” remix
• djpretzel, Vigilante – Short Skirts (Tifa’s Theme), Disc 2 “Dirge”, Voices of the Lifestream FFVII remix project
• Wurlitzer organ music blurb “Nola” from VirtualOrgan.com. (Get your minds out of the gutter, people.)

Comments, hate-mail, proposals, or offers for lewd and lascivious housecleaning can be sent to podcast [at] dc [dash] mmo [dot] org. That is, if you’re into that kind of thing.

As always, thanks for listening. Enjoy!

- Krys

It’s been a crazy week in the land of SnarkCast, and Krys and Grim have already been overtaken by events given that we recorded this podcast before:

1. The Dragon*Con Staff Meeting last weekend.
2. Blizzard was allowed to partially re-launch WoW in China.

Oh well, them’s the breaks.  In any event, enjoy the podcast (show notes are included after the jump).  Thanks for listening, and we’ll be recording a new podcast very soon.

• Intro
• WRUP? (Also known as “What are you playing?”)
• AOC’s “come back” promotion
  • http://community.ageofconan.com/wsp/conan/frontend.cgi?func=publish.show&template=content&func_id=2926&table=CONTENT
• WoW’s legal trouble in little China
  • http://www.jlmpacificepoch.com/newsstories?id=152539_0_5_0_M
• Global Agenda Beta starting on July 24
  • http://www.globalagendagame.com
• Professor Griefer & CoH
  • http://www.nola.com/news/index.ssf/2009/07/loyola_university_professor_be.html
• CoH: Issue 16 announced
  • http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/game_updates/issue_16/issue_16_overview.html
• Cryptic”Nemesis Online, can we start calling it “CoH 2″ now?
  • http://www.massively.com/2009/07/16/cryptic-could-make-champions-counterpart-nemesis-online
• Eurogamer does re-review of Darkfall, rates it 4/10
  • http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/darkfall-online-second-review
  • http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/darkfall-online-review
• Why MMO’s are like Men/Women
  • http://blog.weflyspitfires.com/2009/07/12/mmorpgs-are-a-lot-like-women/
  • http://divagoth.com/2009/07/12/why-mmos-are-like-men-a-reply/
• Dragon*Con News Storytelling in MMO’s panel is added
  • TERRY FREAKIN’ GILLIAM IS COMING!!!
  • DC*MMO T-shirts in da house

(Opening music, courtesy of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, “Isis Unveiled”)

In this week’s show, we snarkify (otherwise known as “show notes”):

• E3
  • Booth Babes
  • Underwear as Swag
  • A “Stripper Game”
  • News from Sony Online Entertainment
    • Free Realms
    • The Agency
    • Hong Kong Shuffle
  • Star Wars: The Old Republic
  • Global Agenda
    • Bogus “Awards” given at E3
    • DC*MMO takes a studio tour
    • “Open All Night” demo at Dragon*Con
• Sony Fan Faire
  • Star Wars Galaxies
    • Zombies
    • User-created content
    • The Gungan Gun
  • SOE’s big party at Dragon*Con
• Blizzard
  • No LAN play for Starcraft II
  • What’s Wrong With WoW?
  • Special Interview w/Dr. Tran
  • WoW Faction changes
  • WoW may be an MMO with training wheels, but it serves an important purpose.
• EVE Online
  • Yet another bank scam
  • BoB is dead
• Age of Conan
  • Huge upcoming patch
  • “Fixing” stats and itemization
  • Problems with questing in AoC
• Warhammer Online
  • How to “Kill 10 rats” correctly
  • Public quests
  • Mark Jacobs leaving Mythic
  • Mythic is now part of Bioware
  • How will Bioware change WAR?
• City of Heroes
  • Issue 15 is coming
  • The 5th Column is back!
  • New costumes and facial options
  • Is it better to look good? or have uber stats on gear?
• Dragon*Con stuff
  • Schedule is done!
  • 50 panels and events scheduled on MMO track
  • WoW trivia event being combined into Hardcore MMO Trivia contest
  • 5 different parties planned on the MMO track this year.
• Closing Music and gag reel.

(Opening music, courtesy of …And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Dead, “Isis Unveiled”)

Thus, we opted to reimagine the entire podcast, and have rebranded it SnarkCast. In this, our official first edition of SnarkCast, we discuss D*C MMO bidness, sure – but we also wander across the landscape from MMO drama to just what the heck is wrong with FreeRealms. Add in a healthy dose of Hentai, and you have the first-ever SnarkCast.

Admittedly, the engineering on this one is a bit rough, but we’re still working that out. As always feedback, suggestions, or gifts of chocolate-covered espresso beans are welcome!

EPISODE #1, VOLUME #1

**SHOW NOTES**

Topics listed here are meant as resources for further reading, but are by no means the entirety of topics covered. If you have any questions on sources, feel free to leave a comment and ask!

• Richard Garriott sues NCsoft
• Trion to reveal MMOs at E3
• Darkfall drama llama
• Free Realms!
• Stargate Worlds studio head heads for Gazillion
• Ace of Cakes Squig Herder cake

Music used in this podcast:

• Intro: “Isis Unveiled” by …And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead, courtesy of the Podsafe Music Network
• Bed music: “Suco de Melancia (Costa del Sol)” by Red Tailed Fox, courtesy of the FFVII Voices of the Lifestream OverClocked Remix project
• Featured bed snarky musical blurb – Super Mario Theme (Rock remix) by psobot
• Outro: “Lunatic Moon (Red XIII’s Theme ~ Cosmo Canyon)” by Sixto Sounds & zircon,  courtesy of the FFVII Voices of the Lifestream OverClocked Remix project

Comments? Questions? Hatemail? Email podcast [at] dc-mmo [dot] org, or ping Grim & netgoth on twitter