Once in a while I get interesting links from non-gamer friends. They see something related to gaming and immediately think of me. I’m not complaining though, far from it, and this particular website called The Guild hosts a rather funny web video series about a fictitious gaming guild and its crossover into the real lives of its members.

The writer and lead actress of the series is Felicia Day, who used to be on Buffy the Vampire Slayer (she played Vi), and as she describes in an interview with WoW Insider, the whole idea for the series sprang from her own World of Warcraft addiction.

I had a REALLY bad WOW addiction for almost 2 years. The life of an actor is either very busy or VERY SLOW, and I filled every second of the slow times with WOW. I knew it was bad when I was turning down professional opportunities to run MC with my alt So I had to stop for a while, cold turkey was the only way to go to get my life under control. The problem was I missed my Guildies a lot, that was why I played so much, because I enjoyed hanging out with them. I also thought that so many interesting types of people were online gamers, and that most the world was unaware of the whole sub-culture. So I decided to write something to show the world that gamers weren’t just guys in their 20’s who lived in their mom’s basement. That cliche has become so annoying. I love doing comedy and I wanted to write something that didn’t make fun of gamers but was funny to gamers and non-gamers alike.

I first wrote “The Guild” as a sitcom pilot, but everyone said it was too “niche.” So I decided, with two other producers’ help, to make it for the web, because I knew people would appreciate it here.

The cast is now filming its tenth and final episode for the first season, funded purely by fans’ PayPal donations through their website. They also have a nifty little widget for blogs so you can watch their episodes right here!

Someone linked this announcement on the EA Land Website to me today, and I’m still in mourning so let me just quote it in part.

It is with mixed emotions that today we are announcing the EA-Land experiment will soon draw to a close. Since 2002, EA-Land / TSO has attracted a very special group of players (of which you are one) and we certainly appreciate your participation in the EA-Land community. The lifetime of the game has drawn to an end, and now we will be focusing on new ideas and other innovative concepts in the games arena. We’d like to thank everyone who has taken part in this online community as a unique experience in the virtual world.

Having been away from the Vault Network for over a month, I was trying to get caught up on VN activity this morning when I came across PallyDog’s latest blog post , PallyDog being the site manager for the WoW Vault fansite. She writes her blog from the perspective of a gamer mom having to listen to the worst “your mom” jokes on the Trade channel in World of Warcraft.

Now, if you’ve ever played World of Warcraft, you will instinctively know what the term “Barrens chat” means, whether or not you spent much time in the Barrens with your General Chat channel turned on. For those of you who have no clue what I’m talking about, the “Barrens” is a low-level Horde zone in the game and as such, the general chat channel in that area is often filled with newbies asking for game guidance - and “older” players making fun of them, their sexual preferences, and their moms. I have no clue how Chuck Norris ever came into the picture but for some reason, the pre-pubescent crowd seems to think that lines like “Chuck Norris once roundhouse kicked someone so hard that his foot broke the speed of light, went back in time, and killed Amelia Earhart while she was flying over the Pacific Ocean” are funny.. and delight in sharing similar jokes with an unwilling audience. But you get the picture. It’s so bad any sane person would immediately turn off General Chat or just blithely ignore the chatter as it scrolls by on their screen.

So what is this thing about the Trade Channel, you ask? When I reactivated my WoW account a month ago, I discovered within a few hours that Trade is the new General. The trade channel, as the name implies, is a chat channel created for gamers to sell/trade their loot with one another but of course nothing prevents you from talking about anything other than trade in there. So my guess is, having lost a vast audience on general chat after people started turning theirs off by default, the Chuck Norris crowd has decided to invade the Trade Channel with their nonsense. When I politely asked why people were talking about non-trade stuff on the trade channel, I was promptly met with a mom joke which in turn prompted me to “/leave trade”. It really made no difference to me, since I don’t normally use the Trade channel anyway. But PallyDog’s point, which I agree with, is that the channel was a good resource for crafters who are now being driven away from it.

Which brings to mind an article on Gamasutra that a friend of mine shared with me last week (WARNING: bad language). In essence, the article says that bad online behavior is driving away other online gamers and dramatically reducing sales of online games. I think the emphasized text is ultimately going to decide if game companies will ever try to do something to curb irresponsible online behavior. Policing chat channels costs them money but if the alternative results in an even bigger loss, then maybe.. just maybe, something will eventually be done about it?

If you like puzzles and a good story, you’ll love this one.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village is classified as an “adventure story” developed for the Nintendo DS by Level-5 but I think it’s really more of a puzzle game. The professor and his assistant, a young boy named Luke, are called in to help find a mysterious treasure simply known as the “Golden Apple”, left by an obviously eccentric millionaire. Even before they can enter the curious little village where the apple is said to be found, the couple are faced with a puzzle - they need to find the crank that fits cog in order to let down the drawbridge into the town. And as they talk to the villagers and search for clues to the missing treasure, you the player will need to solve puzzles in order for them to advance in their search. Some of the puzzles are directly related to the search, like the missing crank. Others puzzles are things that affect the villagers’ lives - like the cook who loses his measuring cups - which the professor needs to solve before they will answer his questions. Yet more puzzles are just “brought to mind” by various objects found in the village. All are quite entertaining, although sometimes you wonder why you have to stop and solve a silly one in the midst of a rather pressing investigation.

The story of the mysterious Golden Apple is a rather interesting one but I don’t want to spoil it for anyone so I won’t even discuss it.  Although the story reaches a resolution at the end of the game, it nevertheless ends with “To Be Continued”, since Curious Village is only the first part of a Professor Layton trilogy. The second part (Pandora’s Box) has already been released in Japan, but the third is still in development.

This one definitely belongs on my Must Play List.