I caught this image over at Lum’s this morning by way of QT3. Had to post it before I head out…

Caught this over at Lum’s shack today and had to join in the viral love. Enjoy.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfkDxF2kn1I&feature=related

edit: Video fixed after some YouTube searching. The original was blitzed by a DMCA claim. How a foreign entity (German) can file a DMCA claim in America and somehow get to avoid our fair-use laws is beyond my understanding.

In an entirely in-character and unfunny move Electronic Arts announced this week that they will be acquiring Mythic Entertainment. Uh… ok.

While I can’t say I ever, EVER want to play Dark Age of Camelot again I can say that I respect the company quite a bit. Unlike some other manufacturers Mythic was very vocal and active in fighting currency/character sales over the last few years. This, of course, is one of my hot-button issues and I applaud their stance. Mythic did a lot of things right that go largely unnoticed now that the sleeper has awakened and 250k players is barely “hahaha, nub” territory. First and foremost is the unprecedented access to back-end data outside of the game. No MMO prior to DAoC gave players screen after screen after screen of stats and data to nerd over. As far as I know only Eve has even bothered since! That’s a shame, really, as these games are achievement-oriented in nature and if there’s one thing we love it’s to nerd over stats/items. The mechanics of Blizzard trying to pump out 6 million player profiles is rather staggering, but I’d love to see it happen.

There’s a rather decent conversation going on over at Lum’s place on this issue. He, among others, are being rather mum about the whole thing for the moment, but those of us not constrained by business propriety (or any propriety really) are slinging the hurtful invectives like there’s a 2 for 1 sale on oh-snap.