wil-wheaton
Latest
The Guild season 3 episode 4 available for viewing
I have to admit, I was kind of waffling on the last couple episodes of The Guild. It held me tight all through seasons 1 and 2, but season 3 had a bit of a slow start. It felt like it was veering away from a quirky series about gamers to something we get enough of on television already, but this episode dragged me right back in. Everything I love about The Guild is back in spades, largely due to the Axis of Anarchy and what they represent.Vork is still my favorite character in the series, but the AoA is fantastic. In true Guild fashion, they represent very real personalities in the gaming world. You kind of want to brush them off as stereotypes, but you just know you've met people exactly like that. The guy pictured above? If you pay attention to the arena world, I'm pretty sure you can come up with at least two or three people that match up with him in an instant.You can watch it on MSN Video, or embedded beneath the cut below (it's a very tall player when embedded, yuck!)
The Guild episode 2 of season 3
Episode 2 of The Guild's season 3 is out now on MSN Video and in HD on Xbox Live (thanks, tipsters!), and it's the first new Guild footage we've seen since BlizzCon a few weeks ago (episode 1 came out last week, but there'd been a sneak peek of that before the season started). And Vork wastes no time at all mixing it up with Wil Wheaton playing the new rival guildleader -- he throws down as only Vork can, history lesson style.Unfortunately, the Axis of Anarchy turns out to be more than a match for the Knights of Good, and that leads to a shocker that The Guild will probably be dealing with for a long time to come. Or at least until next week, when the new episode (and hopefully the game's new expansion) comes out. You can see the entire episode embedded right here after the break -- enjoy! Like The Guild? We do, too! We chatted with all of the folks at BlizzCon, including Felicia Day, Sandeep Parikh, and Jeff Lewis and Michele Boyd. We also saw their panel, and the guys were nice enough to stop by our meetup as well. Stay tuned here every Tuesday for a brand new episode of season 3!
Blizzard at PAX this weekend
As we reported a little while back, Blizzard will be in attendance at the sold out Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, Washington this weekend, and Crygil has posted on the forums that they'll have everything playable that they had at BlizzCon: the new Diablo III Monk class, the Cataclysm expansion, and the Starcraft II singleplayer campaign. Somewhat strangely, they don't actually say that the Cataclysm expansion will be the same starter zones that we played at BlizzCon -- they may actually have some of old world Azeroth open and playable. But on the other hand, they'd probably announce something like that if it was happening, and given that they'll have a smaller setup than BlizzCon, we don't imagine there'll be anything really new there.In other WoW news at PAX, our friends at The Guild will be screening the entire season 2 on Friday evening -- Jeff Lewis and Sandeep Parikh will be there, along with producer Kim Evey and Wil Wheaton (Felicia is headed off to Dragon*Con this weekend). Unfortunately, the screening is during the Friday evening concert, and so you might have to miss Anamanaguchi, Metroid Metal, and MC Frontalot. My favorites Jonathan Coulton and Freezepop are playing on Saturday night, though, so you can fit in both of those if you like.
The Guild comic book, and other news from the SDCC panel
The Guild's Twitter account is tweeting up a storm from the panel about our favorite Internet series at Comic-Con, and there's a whole downpour of news already. Probably biggest is the news that Dark Horse Comics will be publishing a comic book featuring characters from Felicia Day's show, penned by none other than Ms. Day herself. Details are still hard to find (there's no mention of the book yet on DHC's site), but we presume it'll be about the real-life personas of The Guild folks, rather than a story about their characters. That'll be interesting to see.Other news from the panel is that Season 3 is coming soon, and it'll feature a special guest: Mr. Wil Wheaton, former Star Trek annoyance (sorry, I didn't like him at all), and current geek icon. Apparently they showed a sneak peek at the panel and a Jed Whedon-directed music video (featuring Vork spanking Codex and Tink dancing?), so as soon as we see either of those, we'll be posting them here.And finally, apparently Jeff Lewis (a.k.a. Vork) has announced that he'll be marrying his wife in the game, though we have no idea if that's a joke or not. With these Guild guys, you can never tell. Lots more news about season 3 to come, we're sure, and of course we'll see all of these folks at BlizzCon -- here's the interview we did with them last year. We've got at least one contact on the ground at Comic-Con this week, so stay tuned for more news from San Diego, too. Like The Guild? We do, too! We've got all the episodes of the first season: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8 and 9, as well as links to all of the season two shows, We recently talked with Michele Boyd at E3, and we'll definitely be seeing all of the cast and crew at BlizzCon again later this year.
Wil Wheaton on the death of the arcade
Wil Wheaton (yes, that kid from Star Trek) has a touching column on the slow death of the arcade over at Suicide Girls, of all places (page is safe for work, but links to NSFW content). Wheaton lays out some interesting historical analysis on what actually caused the game center's slow decline (endless fighting game clones might be as culpable as powerful home systems), but just as interesting are Wheaton's carefully laid out sensory memories from the gaming rooms of his youth. More than the games themselves, the pizza-stained, Mountain Dew-infused social atmosphere of the old arcades are what give them a special place in many an old fogey gamer's heart. These young whippersnappers don't know what they're missing with their online deathmatches and Xbox Live Arcade downloads and what-not. In my day, we played standing up at a wooden cabinet in a dimly lit room... and we liked it, dagnabbit!
