And there’s a “zombie wall” skill.

There are no more dreams left.

Diablo III [Awesome-saturated official site]

The DORK Club is now a games developer. If Nibris can get away with being classified as one in the eyes of the gaming “press,” than consarn it, so can we. We’ve got a $100 game engine and everything!

We’re setting the bar high with our ambitious first project: An MMO based on Stephen King’s cherished library of award-winning novels and short stories. Being good friends with Mr. King, I secured the rights for just $19, meaning I got a much better deal than J.J. Abrams.

While the game is obviously still in the very earliest stages of development as we look for cheap out-sourced programmers, today I will reveal the first details of this tentatively titled project, and give you an overview of some of the game’s most exciting and innovative features.

Players can choose from one of four playable classes as they pledge allegiance to The White in the ongoing war against The Red. Gunslingers dual wield deadly six shooters and command cunning hawk pets. Elderly Jedi can teleport short distances as well as control others and lift heavy objects with their minds. Impossibly Mature 12-Year-Olds use their wise-beyond-their-years maturity to outwit enemies four times their age. And finally, Popular Artists Trying to Escape Their Past walk a thin line between hating and embracing post modernism. Possible expansion classes include the Mildly Racist Magical Negro and the Gentle Retarded Mongoloid.

As players level up (wait until you hear our ding sound!), they will actually transcend to higher levels of The Dark Tower itself, gaining access to more and more of Stephen King’s “other worlds than these,” including locations as diverse as Derry, Maine; Castle Rock, Main; and Haven, Maine.

While our planned partnership with Microsoft fell through with the cancellation of their DC Universe MMO, we’re proud to announce that we’ll be partnering with Turbine to help make our Stephen King MMO the best possible game it can be. Players will be able to transfer their characters between our game and Turbine’s upcoming Harry Potter MMO, and vice versa, at no extra charge.

Our partnership with Turbine also allows us to present every aspect of our game in terms of The Lord of the Rings Online. Ka-tets (like fellowships in LotRO) will allow players to forge everlasting alliances and friendships that grow over time. Using our robust music system (similar to the music system found in The Lord of the Rings Online), players can play brief snippets of popular songs that best represent their current situation. Players will even be able to temporarily take on one of Randall Flagg’s many persona – the hard case, the walkin’ dude, the dark man, the ageless stranger – and fight against their former allies (not unlike LotRO’s monster play).

Like The Lord of the Rings Online, we also have some exciting raid content planned for our upcoming MMO. Planned raid bosses include Stephen King’s alcoholism, Stephen King’s drug addiction, and Stephen King’s head on a stick (like the last boss of Doom 2—a reference to The Lord of the Rings Online). Stephen King fans will also be excited to hear they’ll be able to face off against the Crimson King himself, standing idly by as a previously unmentioned NPC quickly and easily defeats the game’s ultimate evil. Following the final boss fight, players can enter The Dark Tower and begin the game again at level 1, but with an additional, class-based musical instrument.

I hope everyone who reads this site will be free for GM duty when the game finally ships. We can all hang out in Stephen King’s virtual house, the game’s equivalent to GM island, and ban any player unfortunate enough to find it.

[EDIT: Bango "vector_black" Skank was here<---]

An achievement system, items with dynamic stats based on talent spec, and account-bound legacy items specifically designed for twinks!

Time to start planning my deathknight’s talent spec, I guess.

Until YouTube educated me properly, I had no idea of the ridiculous number of emote animations in the Age of Conan.

Look at this thing:

I assume the list covers every conceivable aspect of human expression. On top of that, one can string together dance combos for MMO dance and emoting parties made of some fairly substantial win.

Emote RP and dance combos are what MMOs are made for.

And the toplessness.

I don’t really have the time to write this story right now, gaming journalists, so I’ll just lay it out for you: Today Warner Bros. announced they’re investigating the viability of a Harry Potter MMO and invested $40 million in Turbine.

Remember to end your news post by reminding everyone that Turbine also developed another MMO based on a cherished fantasy series.

Be sure to capitalize all the letters in “DORK” when you cite this site as your source.

The long rumored sequel to Michel Ancel’s last generation opus Beyond Good & Evil is real, and we’ve got the uninformative, supposedly real-time trailer to prove it. This announcement from Ubidays 08 is particularly surprising given the poor sales of the original, which was marked down to below 50% of its original MSRP just two months after it was released.

Ubisoft doesn’t have a release date to go along with the new teaser, and fans eager to experience the continuing adventures of Jade and Pey’j may yet have a long wait ahead of them. Ancel was reportedly crushed when Nintendo’s Pokémon Snap beat him to the photography-based video game punch in 1999, four years before Beyond Good & Evil would finally be completed.

The criminally overlooked original plays like a combination of The Legend of Zelda, Metal Gear Solid, and the aforementioned Pokémon Snap. It is, naturally, all kinds of awesome, thanks in part to its excellent and varied musical score that matches the schizophrenic assortment of gameplay elements perfectly. Thankfully, Christophe Heral will be returning to score Beyond Good & Evil 2 as well.

Beyond Good & Evil 2 Screens! More Importantly: TRAILER! [NeoGAF]

The Escapist’s Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw tries his best not to focus on Army of Two’s homosexual overtones and tasteless “ripped from the headlines” narrative, instead directing this hatred towards the game’s many bugs and broken gameplay. And while he does a good enough job of pointing out just how inept EA’s QA department is, it just wouldn’t be a Zero Punctuation review without wall-to-wall gay jokes.

Zero Punctuation: Army of Two [The Escapist]

I haven’t been wowed by a video game screenshot in a good long while, probably because most games these days are painted in shades of brown and gray and almost always look worse standing still than they do in motion. But when the first shots of Valkyrie of the Battlefield, whose US title may or may not be Valkyria Chronicles, showed up online, I was immediately enamored with the PS3 game, despite having no intention of ever owning a PS3 at any point in my life and no idea what sort of game it was. Based solely on the alternate universe World War II setting, albeit an adorable, watercolored alternate universe World War II setting, I assumed it was just another mediocre WWII shooter with a very pretty coat of paint.

This lovely, seven-minute HD trailer, however, makes clear that the game is actually a strategy RPG with a decidedly action-oriented bent, allowing for real time conflicts divided into more traditional turns. Of course, all the genre stables such as leveling, tech trees, and unnecessary acronyms for game systems (in this case BLiTZ – Battle of Live Tactical Zones) are still present. Plus, the game seems to have completely thrown realism out the window, allowing for ridiculous boss fights against lance-wielding super soldiers. Always a plus in my book. In fact, the game actually looks… fun. Valkyrie of the Battlefield/Valkyria Chronicles may yet turn out to be the only reason to own a PS3 other than Everyday Shooter and Metal Gear Solid 4.

After a few hours spent scavenging through The Matrix Online’s sound files, which weave a diverse and varied aural tapestry ranging from electrical humming and buzzing to electrical clicking and beeping, MxO’s ding sound effect is now online. Spending time with fifty or so different MMOs in the last couple of weeks has completely eroded whatever goodwill for the genre World of Warcraft earned. By the time I work through the next fifty, simply hearing the abbreviation “MMO” will undoubtedly send me into a frenzied rage. Still, I push on with no regard for my mental health.

Besides personal misery and lifelong trauma, my exhaustive foray into the world of virtual worlds hasn’t been a complete wash. In fact, it’s lead to at least one positive discovery. Or more accurately: A rediscovery. It turns out Guild Wars is certifiably awesome. Who knew? Well, aside from everyone, that is.

I originally bought the game when it first came out in 2004. I was between World of Warcraft addictions at the time, and only wanted a WoW stand-in to stave off my cravings. As such, I found Guild Wars rather unappealing. The instanced world felt relatively empty, the extremely focused character customization relatively limiting. What can I say? I was an idiot.

Guild Wars offers the best aspects of the MMO experience with none its major downsides. There’s no monthly fee, the levelcap is low and easy to reach, and it’s almost always just as easy to overcome difficult challenges alone as with a group. Because every area is instanced, you never need to worry about monsters respawning or having to deal with griefers, as the only players you’ll see outside of town are the ones you’ve agreed to play with. In these instanced combat zones, the game plays like a more traditional multiplayer or even single player title, but closely resembles other highly populated persistent worlds in cities and outposts. Because of this, ArenaNet pushes the possibilities of its instanced areas in ways World of Warcraft never quite manages, allowing for destructible environments and more varied mission objectives, but never sacrificing that oh-so-important sense of community.

One of the game’s strongest and most interesting aspects is its incredible depth of customization. Each character in the game has a primary and secondary profession, and can use any of the huge number of skills available to either one. You end up with access to hundreds of different abilities, but you can only equip eight a time, forcing you to narrowly specialize and define your character’s role. However, unlike in many MMOs where customization decisions are permanent or difficult to reverse, any time you’re in town you can reassign attribute points at minimal cost or swap out skills at will. Experimenting with new builds and playstyles is incredibly fun. As the game progresses and you unlock more varied abilities, your character doesn’t necessarily become more powerful, but instead gains access to more diverse options.

And while I have been enjoying my time rediscovering Guild Wars, truthfully I almost gave up on the game again early on. The game’s initial areas are disappointingly bland and boring, with very little content spread out over large, monster-infested areas. Thankfully I stuck with it, as about the time you reach level 20, the game’s level cap, Guild Wars suddenly becomes simultaneously more focused and less linear, placing an ultimate objective far outside of your grasp and opening up the world for your exploration. Sadly, there’s no World of Ruin-esque event to correspond with the sudden shift in gameplay.

For the time being at least, I plan to stick with Guild Wars a while longer. There’s still a great many missions (and three expansion) ahead of me, and I’ve barely even touched the game’s PvP content, which is supposedly its real focus. I guess all the time spent hyping myself up for Flagship Studios and Hellgate: London would have been better served appreciating ArenaNet and Guild Wars, as the best game from the best Blizzard offshoot developer was right under my nose all along. Still, a game that stands out against the backdrop of intolerable crap that is the MMO genre is hardly noteworthy in and of itself, but Guild Wars is a real rarity: It’s not just a good MMO; it’s a good game. Period.

Lately, I’ve been playing every free (and by definition terrible) MMORPG I can get my hands on. You know why. Imagine my shock and delight, then, when I stumbled across Forum Warz, an amazingly clever (and amazingly free) browser-based MMORPG. I realize the concept of a browser-based MMO that doesn’t make you retch up your own intestines seems like a statistical impossibility, but Forum Warz is the real deal, brother. Besides being fun to play, the game features some phenomenally funny writing in the same league as Barkley Shut Up and Jam: Gaiden, and demands only a miniscule time commitment. In short: Forum Warz proves being browser-based and completely free to play doesn’t need to affect a game’s quality.

After unlocking and choosing from one of three playable classes – the camwhore, emo kid, and troll, naturally – you spend most of the game completing missions for your sTalk buddies (a Google Talk/AIM equivalent) and pwning forums to earn cred. You see, Forum Warz takes place on a version of the Internet that’s not so different from our own. In fact, it’s shockingly similar. You’ll interact with 60-year-old men pretending to be 15-year-old girls, otaku with very particular fetishes, a Fatal1ty stand-in, and even Anonymous. Thankfully, the game never takes itself very seriously at all, and is overflowing with Internet memes and in-jokes. Forum Warz even includes its own functioning wiki, e-mail system, and (obviously) forums.

Forums stand in for dungeons and threads for individual monsters. You can only visit four forums per day, leaving you with plenty of time to go outside explore Forum Warz’ other features. Besides the titular forums and their warz, there are other games-within-a-game, but I’m currently too noob to have unlocked anything more interesting than the text-based adventure Trapped in the Cupboard or some simple casino games (including rock-paper-scissors!). Forum Warz also has built-in achievements and Klan support, though the Penny Arcade community is currently ruining the latter, as is their nature.

Basically, if you use the Internet, and by visiting this site you more or less confirm you do, and you’ve seen Goatse and 2 Girls 1 Cup or have ever participated in a flame war, Forum Warz is sure to make you smile. And while its strict four forums per day limitation seems incredibly limiting at first, ultimately it’ll prevent you from pissing away your entire day browsing a virtual Internet. That’s what the real Internet is for, after all.