Look, I’m updating my personal site while on the clock. For the first time ever, I’m finally making proper use of this Internet thing.

My mysterious employer has asked me to work full time for my first two weeks in order to get things rolling. So don’t expect any new content on this site in that time. Man, this week’s round-up is going to be pathetic.

On a more positive note, I now how have an hour-long BART ride each way to get caught up on my Pokemon catching.

I’ve been hired as a part-time member of the community team for a free-to-play MMO publisher. I start tomorrow, so expect this site to be mostly quiet on Monday and Tuesday.

I do, however, fully plan to continue updating this site with something resembling the breakneck pace of the last month once I’ve had a few days to settle into my new responsibilities.

Once again taking inspiration from Geoff Frazier, the name of my employer and the games they publish won’t be mentioned here. Although unlike ol’ Shlonglor, I won’t litter the site with “clever” hints as to the identity of my employer. You’re welcome.

Because most of the people posting video game news in any sort of professional capacity know about the news before they post it, waiting for embargos to lift before sharing the information with the Internet, each morning tends to begin with an explosion of gaming news. Just a few hours into the day, however, most sites go quiet, having already regurgitated the new press releases, screenshots, and videos of the day. Particularly ambitious sites post news around the clock, stretching the definition of “news worthy” by covering Super Mario Bros. quilts, StarCraft tattoos, and Portal cakes.

Because I only cover topics I’m at least marginally interested in here, I tend to run out of content for the day fairly quickly, which is why I’m rarely left with anything post-worthy after noon or so. There are, after all, only so many MMO and DLC announcements on any given day.

So, let’s celebrate another week of half-days filled with gaming news by reliving all the best stories posted on this site during the past week which, coincidentally, just happens to be every story posted on this site. Nothing but gems here.

Monday:
Wedge55’s Game Journal - April 14
Quake engine family tree
One million concurrent Chinese connections set WoW record
Scottish schools add video games to curriculum
Mortal Online announced
Nightly Update: From the pages of history

Tuesday:
Video: Oblivion by way of Crysis
MGS4 Bluetooth heaset is ugly, expensive
7 of Pirates of the Burning Sea’s 11 severs to walk the plank
Rumor: Engrish gaming blog claims Beyond Good & Evil 2 may be in development
GTA-wannabe MMO Crimecraft announced
Wii Fit priced, dated for US
Metal Arms, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory coming to Xbox Originals

Wednesday:
Wedge55’s Game Journal - April 16
Soul Calibur IV dated, premium edition detailed
Team Fortress 2 Medic’s upcoming arsenal revealed
Mod makes Unreal Tournament 3 2D
Video: Yahtzee likes half of Condemned 2

Thursday:
New classes coming to Mythos
Blizzard interviews itself, reveals new Wrath of the Lich King details
Video: GameTrailers’ Star Wars Retrospective Episode III
Age of Conan open beta coming exclusively to FilePlanet

Friday:
Wedge55’s Game Journal - April 18
New Mortal Kombat game features Batman, no blood or fatalities
Call of Duty 4 sells 9 million copies, 1 million map packs
Mass Effect DLC “Bring Down the Sky” free on PC
Namco Bandai announces PowerUp Forever
Video: Mortal Kombat vs. DC Universe trailer

Five new Warcraft 3 replays are now online at the usual place, and with them comes the first fifth of a massive new feature on Warcraft 3 strategy. Not useful strategy, mind you, just the sort of strategy we tend to employ in these wacky replays of ours.

This feature was originally intended to be little more than a brief footnote at the bottom of the replays page, a short definition of terms for everyone too busy to keep up with years worth of The DORK Club extended family’s Warcraft 3 lingo. Of course, as an obsessive-compulsive nutcase, I couldn’t leave things so unfinished. So enjoy this needlessly in-depth exploration of Battle.net stupidity that would’ve been relevant six years ago.

This new feature also serves as the testing ground for the site’s new look, which as you can see, looks almost exactly like the old one. Specifically, it looks like the site currently should. It’s been a year since I re-redesigned the site, so I figured it was finally time to correct some of those formatting quirks. The new code will migrate to the rest of the site just as soon as I’m confident my faux columns and CSS wizardry display at least marginally well on computers other than my own.

Another day, another seven hours of downtime. I honestly start the day with an idea for a relevant introduction to make these weekly round-ups slightly more worthwhile, but waking up to find the site’s been offline since 2:00 AM gets me too upset to bother writing it.

I’ve looked into other hosting solutions, and found one that gets rave reviews across the board and offers a fantastic feature set. Unfortunately, it costs more than twice what I’m paying at my current host, and I just started another billing cycle here less than a month ago. If this site goes offline just one or two more times, however, I’ll suck it up and shell out for the superior host, even though it means I’ll probably have to eat the cost of the eleven months of hosting I’ve already paid for here. And it actually looked like this site was going to pay for itself this year.

But enough talk! We have a week to review:

Monday:
Stephen King: Video games aren’t the problem
Dawn of War 2 website finally live, content sparse
Lost Odyssey DLC coming to Japan this week
Demigod exlusive to Impulse
Video: Red vs Blue seriously returns to Halo
DS needs Gauntlet badly
Rumor: Microsoft working on motion controller

Tuesday:
Free Kane & Lynch DLC coming April 17th
EA extends Unreal Engine 3 license to cover at least five more games
First details on THQ’s Warhammer 40K MMO
Mass Effect PC delayed
Games for Windows Magazine is dead; long live Games for Windows Magazine

Wednesday:
Ikaruga now available on Xbox Live Arcade
WoW addon lets RP players keep servers pure
Rock Band dev: Wii needs a bigger fridge
Video: Yahtzee reviews No More Heroes

Thursday:
Lair to finally get analog controls
Video: Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack mapmaker documentary
The Chronicles of Spellborn delayed to Fall 2008
Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People coming to WiiWare
NCsoft vows to down private servers, collect p|-|@7 L007z
Video: Warhammer Online closed beta footage
Metal Gear Solid 4 Limited Edition detailed, exclusive to GameStop

Friday
Video: Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People trailer
Hellgate: London is big in Korea
Wrath of the Lich King enters alpha
Left 4 Dead delayed. Again.
The Witcher gets patch, adventure editor
Actually, Hellgate: London isn’t big in Korea… Or anywhere

This week we suffered through International Lie Day together, reveled in the release of pent-up announcements on April 2, and desperately scrounged for anything remotely interesting to post on April 3 and 4, stretching the definition of “newsworthy” to new extremes. Now, let’s relive this completely forgettable week together.

And yes, the site was just offline for the last ten hours. Expect plenty of annoyed ranting on Monday.

Monday:
Hellgate: London to get single player, multiplayer patches
Original shows headed to Xbox Live
Portal’s ‘Still Alive’ comes to Rock Band tomorrow for free
Capcom acquires K2, MotoGP license
Free SOCOM 3, CA map pack now available
Nightly Update: The horror! The horror!

Tuesday:
April Fools: Blizzard does it right
April Fools: The Battle of Amon Hen
April Fools: Microsoft announces Xbox Live The Board Game, other peripherals
April Fools: The Legend of Zelda movie trailer
April Fools: Guild Wars endgame armor replaced with stick figures
Actual news: Ubisoft bringing over 40 new titles to Steam

Wednesday:
ESRB creates games rating search widget
Fulton: Gamers’ online behavior driving down sales
Indie game Mr. Robot now free on GameTap
No joke: Stormfront Studios closes doors after twenty years of game development
University researcher: World of Warcraft relaxes players
Dual Shock 3 coming next week
Video: Yahtzee tries to cut down on the gay jokes while reviewing Army of Two, fails
Persistent, online-only Company of Heroes in the works
Penny Arcade launches digital distribution platform

Thursday:
THQ officially announces Dawn of War II
Ubisoft announces Tom Clancy’s HAWX
Double Fusion brings in-game ads to City of Heroes
Epic and Intel offer $1 million to “Make Something Unreal”
Video: Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack ‘Darkness’ trailer
Video: Hour-long Warhammer Online presentation

Friday:
Puzzle Quest expansion gets name, becomes real game
Sony to shut down servers for PS2, PSP games
Telltale Games confirms Sam & Max for Wii
Free TrackMania Nations sequel coming April 16
Halo 3 Legendary Map Pack bringing new Forge goodies

Another week, another weekly round-up. Between World of Warcraft’s last content patch before Wrath of the Lich King, Mythos’ last major patch before the open beta, and new Halo 3, Turok, Warhawk, and Unreal Tournament 3 maps, the theme of the week was post-release content. Oh, and there were Unreal Tournament 3 PS3 mods and custom EVE Online avatars too. Extending the lifespan of a game is awesome.

Monday:
Sonic the Hedgehog fan unleashes Sonic Unleashed ahead of schedule
Play as Master Chief, Cloud, Spawn in Unreal Tournament 3 on PS3
Custom EVE Online avatars are animated, creepy
Rumor: EA purchased GTA fansite network for $3.2 million
Video: Mega Wicker Man
Nightly Update: Aimless on the Internet

Tuesday
World of Warcraft 2.4 patch is now live
Final Halo 3 Legendary map is Lockout remake
Darwinia confirmed for XBLA
Sega Master System games coming to Virtual Console

Wednesday
Morning Update: When the server’s down, update in the morning
Warhammer Online delayed, Collector’s Edition detailed
Take-Two rejects EA’s buyout offer
Yahtzee likes Zack & Wiki, is one of the good guys
Mythos beta gets major patch
Video: Bungie’s favorite things
Turok Velociraptor Map Pack coming tomorrow, March 26
Nightly Update: All quiet on the DORK Club front

Thursday:
Impressions: Mythos Zone 3 patch

Friday:
Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War 2 coming in 2009
Video: Fourth (and final) Grand Theft Auto IV trailer
Unreal Tournament 3 gets free Bonus Map Pack
Warhawk Operation: Broken Mirror priced, dated, and ready to fly
Play Prey for just $5

The site was down for a few hours again last night, meaning I had no opportunity to post a nightly update before bedtime. Frankly, I think more nights are going to go without nightly updates in the future. Rather than force myself to drone on and on about some tangentially-related, boring topic, I’ll simply reserve the right to post worthless blog posts whenever the need arises.

We’re a week into The DORK Club’s new direction and I’m still playing with style and format a bit. I’m still not entirely sure how bloggy or newsy individual posts should be, and am trying to find some sort of balance between the two extremes. I don’t exactly want to sink to Kotaku or Joystiq (or The DORK Club circa one week ago) levels of baseless speculation and personal bias, but I don’t want this site to be so painfully dry either. Again, should have totally just let this site sit dormant for a week while I worked all this stuff out.

So, expect to see nightly updates less often, and not necessarily at night. I’ll most likely only post them when the site is actually updated in some way (ding sound effects, Warcraft 3 replays). I do, however, rather like the idea of a personal game journal, but I play far fewer games than this site may lead you to believe. Still, this might be something you see in the future in place of the mindless nonsense of the past week.

Sure, The DORK Club has only been a news blog for all of three days, but oh what a three days they were. Let’s take a stroll through last week’s content together, in case you missed it. We wouldn’t want to give anyone a reason to stop by this site more than once a week, after all.

Wednesday:
Blizzard brings e-sports to World of Warcraft
Persona 4 trailer now online, mostly worthless
First details on Savage 2’s first content patch
Call of Duty 4 GoTY Edition, map pack coming on April 3
Nightly Update: Changes, they are a-comin’

Thursday:
Yahtzee reviews Turok, teaches how not to make a first person shooter
Professional level designer produces Portal map pack
EVE Online community to elect community representatives
World of Warcraft power leveler shatters own 1-70 record
Florida Supreme Court pwns sanctions Jack Thompson
Nightly Update: On second though, nightly status report posts are dreadfully dull

Friday:
Sins of a Solar Empire demo now available
GamesRadar lists 59 levels to play before you die
2008 Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational tickets now on sale
Halo 3 Heroic Map pack goes free on Tuesday, March 25
Nightly Update: Good Friday!

This morning, Massively linked to that damned ding feature, providing a lovely writeup and increasing the page’s daily traffic by nearly 5000%. As an added bonus, the page also turned up as a subject of discussion on a few guild forums I don’t have access to. Clearly, the Internet loves my stupid sound effect collections and hates everything else I produce.

Speaking of everything else I produce, I think we can consider day two of The DORK Club 2.0 a success, blatant formatting inconsistencies aside. Were I an intelligent person, I would’ve taken a few days off and hashed out all the particulars concerning style and format (and redesign?) before just jumping in and seeing where it takes me. But I’m not an intelligent person, and this is more fun anyway.

One thing I have decided on, however, is to post at least one World of Warcraft-related story a day. I never did get around to making that Blizzard fansite all those years ago, so this will just have to do.