Our power hungry potentates at Joystiq managed to snag Ron Gilbert and Joel DeYoung from Hothead games for an interview concerning Penny Arcade Adventures: On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, the upcoming episodic title for XBLA. Gilbert and DeYoung discuss what it’s like to work with Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins of Penny Arcade, and also the challenges of translating a 2D comic into a 3D adventure game. The Hothead devs also discuss the reasoning behind the episodic structure for the game their plans to release new episodes every four months (woot). Hit the “read” link and soak it all in. You’ll be glad you did.
MMO Champion’s got the rest of the details on that PC Zone interview we heard about yesterday– Jeff Kaplan sat down with the French magazine and gave out some new hints about what we’ll see up in Northrend in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion.
As we heard at BlizzCon, Northrend isn’t all a snow-covered wasteland– there are forests (including one full of Furbolgs) and other terrain types to find up there.
We’ve also heard this before, but it’s worth repeating again: Arthas will play a much bigger part in the day-to-day Northrend than Illidan did– lots of people, both raiders and casuals, will have a chance to “interact” with him.
Here’s something new– there will be two entry points, and previously we’d assumed that one would be for Horde and another would be for Alliance. But that’s not the case– instead, each of the zones (the Borean Tundra and the Howling Fjord) will have an entry point for each faction. So there will actually be four ways into the expansion.
Alliance get to choose a battle in the Howling Fjord or a massive stronghold (complete with a brand new faction leader) and a giant steamship
And Horde either go into the Forsaken’s new lands (with new architecture– we saw it at BlizzCon), or into Garrosh Hellscream’s (son of Grom) Warsong Fortress.
Very exciting. Hearing about four entry points instead of two definitely makes me think that we will be able to avoid the whole Hellfire Peninsula lag problem that plagued BC’s release. Keep the WotLK info coming, Blizzard!
Lombardi expressed Valve’s desire to create an equally “revolutionary” successor to the lightning-in-a-bottle first person puzzler, rather than cash in on the franchise at the height of its popularity with a quick and dirty sequel. Oh, Lomby, can’t we have both? We’re all about instant gratification — especially gratification involving cake, and a particular silent, springheeled heroine.
It’s that time of week where we lean back in our chairs, stretch and possibly crack our back a few times, sigh with relief and look at video game screenshots. Our subject for our visual feast? Monster Hunter Portable 2nd G has a good batch of screens for us to enjoy — if you can actually make out what you’re looking at. Screenshots are kind of evil that way. Something can look great standing still but horrible in motion, or horrible standing still but great in motion. It’s one of the PSP’s mysteries!
So Growl has been having some problems since 2.4 went live. Pets refuse to cast it in the right order, which is wreaking havoc with Hunter aggro, especially on boar pets, who depend on a Charge/Growl combination to gain their fabled massive aggro. I myself have noticed that I have a lot harder time keeping aggro from my beloved boar Bonnie when I solo on my Hunter. So now on the PTR, we have some new lines in the latest update of the patch notes:
o. Boar Charge: This ability will no longer make Growl cast immediately after it generates excessive threat. o. The pet ability Growl will no longer scale with pet Attack Power.
It should also be noted that Nethaera has said that Growl will now scale with Hunter AP instead of Pet AP, so there’s no fear that it’s become a non-scaling flat skill.
Now, this all sounds somewhat ominous, but what does it actually mean?
As much as we’d love to simply enjoy these Tapezilla crank calls, we’re a little too busy being irritated we didn’t think of it ourselves. Here’s all the explanation you need: Soundboard Ryo Hazuki of Shenmuefame calls a gold store in a desperate attempt to find Terry. And just below the jump, he calls a restaurant in an attempt to find Hong Kong, but the non-English speaking owner isn’t much help.
If we have one problem with these clips, it’s that at no point in them does Ryo attempt to locate any sailors. Seriously, Tapezilla, for shame.
Saupak has done about a good a job as I’ve ever seen of breaking down exactly when patch 2.3 might actually appear. There’s a bumpy future ahead for the next two months– it’s full of holidays, vacations, and events, and so it’ll be very interesting to see when Blizzard decides to insert Zul’Aman into Azeroth. Of course, the last patch dropped right when I was meant to be playing the just-released Halo 3, so there probably are no sacred cows– Blizzard patches when they want to.
However, there are a few hits. We know the patch isn’t going live today. The 13th and the 20th are out, because Blizz wants to give us notice, and Thanksgiving is right around the corner. That leaves the last week of November, and the first three weeks of December (very unlikely that Blizzard would drop a patch on Christmas or New Year’s, because they’ve got to take a break sometime). Other than that, we’re looking at the 8th, 15th, or 22nd of January.
Saupak’s big bit of reasoning is that there were 168 days between 2.0 and 2.1, and 126 days between 2.1 and 2.2, so his guess is January 15th for the patch– 105 days between 2.2 and 2.3. But remember that 2.2 was delayed so long because of the sound engine problems, and we don’t have that with 2.3. And Zul’Aman is more or less done. So if I had to guess, I’d say we’re looking at an early December patch– either the 4th or the 11th (we’ve got to see an update sometime then anyway, for Feast of Winter’s Veil). If we don’t see it by then, then yes, my guess is that we’re looking at January. Blizzard may try to squeeze it out before Thanksgiving, but I don’t think that’s likely. I do think they want to release it before Christmas, though– and leave 2008 for the year of the Lich King.
We know you’re probably getting sick of all the arts and crafts based off this one geometric protagonist. We’ve seen it all, costumes, plushies, even cake — but we think Alice Fox has the right frame of mind when it comes to cuboid craftwork — “our friendly cube isweighted, not a stuffed and cuddly plush toy or a flimsy papercraft.”
With that in mind, we present Fox’s step by step instructions on how to create a companion cube paperweight. We won’t lie, it looks like more work than it’s worth, but we’d love to see one sitting on our desk, unassumingly holding down our important documents. It would definitely be a sweet, cost-efficient holiday gift for a gaming relative, or for your favorite Joystiq blogger.
For tomorrow’s WoW Insider Show (which you can hear live at 3:30pm EST on WoW Radio), the lunatics have taken over the asylum!
Mike Scramm is on vacation, and he has left the show in the hands of John Patricelli (the Big Bear Butt) this one time. Since one chance is likely all I’m getting for this, we’re pulling out all the stops by having the Turpster, Matt Rossi, AND Dan Whitcomb on hand to talk about all things hot in the news of WoW Insider from the last week.
And as is the tradition on the WoW Insider Show, we’ll have reader mail, which you can send to us at theshow@wowinsider.com, and we’ll be chatting in IRC as well at irc.mmoirc.com in the #wowradio channel.
It promises to be an experience, so make sure you don’t miss it.
Tune in tomorrow afternoon, Saturday, at 3:30pm EST over on WoW Radio. See you there.
Why did the International Game Developers Association need to make a Katamari-style ball of junk? We have absolutely no idea. We’d imagine the answer is, as George Mallory said of Everest, “because it is there.” … Or maybe, more accurately “because a bunch of junk was there … and glue was there … and so was free time,” even though we can admit that answer leaves one wanting in the panache department.
What did we leave on the ball? Why, our plane tickets, of course. Charity doesn’t count if it doesn’t hurt.
MMO Champion
For tomorrow’s WoW Insider Show (which you can hear live at 3:30pm EST 
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