Hello all.  Sometime late into our Friday gaming night, the Clan of the Gray Wolf reached an important milestone: our 1,000th subscriber on YouTube!

Honestly, we were all floored when I shared the news with the guys.  I don't know if we ever thought such a goal was attainable, and I know we never counted on any such milestone.  But thanks to all of you guys out there who have seen our videos, subbed us on YouTube, visited the website, and even posted in the forums.  Hell, thanks to you lurkers out there too (and I know you're out there - I've been a professional lurker on many message boards for the better part of a decade).  Without the support you guys have given us, the path here would have been much harder, and I wonder at times if it would have been made at all.  So sincerely, from all of us - thank you so much!!!  (Protip: The extra exclamation points convey sincerity)

In addition, I'd like to thank Enigma and all the other talent at Xtreme Network Online, for taking us on as a partner this past January (and there really is a lot of great talent over there - do yourself a favor and check it out).  Their early encouragement was very... encouraging.  Also, major thanks to Tomato at EarthBound Central, who was the first to drive major traffic to our channel due to our EarthBound retrospective.  That caused a lot of people to find us for the first time.  And a big thanks to the posters on the That Guy With The Glasses forums, who are perhaps the most amenable message board posters anywhere (except for CotGW, of course).  On this note: many people have found us through various outlets, so I've put a poll below this post to try to learn more and get a cross section of our viewership - your participation is mandatory, and recalcitrance will be punished.

Now, though I am tooting our (and your) horns a bit, this milestone doesn't actually change anything.  We'll keep on making our content, listening to you guys, and interacting to develop new ideas for the future.  So if you like our stuff: keep visiting, join the forums (or YouTube channel if you haven't yet), and spread the word to internet and real life friends alike.  We're here to geek up your lives for a long time to come!

Today I'd like to share with you one of my favorite web series, and perhaps the biggest reason I'm sad I won't be going to Gen Con this year.  The Legend of Neil is the story of a loser who (through interesting methods) gets sucked into the "Legend of Zelda", Captain N style.  It's a real treat for gamers, but really for all fans of (somewhat profane) comedy.  It's made by Sandeep Parikh, of "The Guild" fame.  The humor is similar to "The Guild", but a bit more on the nose with its game references, and raunchier to boot.  If you have a few hours to spare, I'd go through the whole series if I were you.  Oh, and if you'll be at Gen Con, be sure to check out the cast members who will be there showing off season 3.

I recommend that you start out with the first few episodes of Season 2 (especially episode 2 - my favorite), and then if you like it go back and start at season 1.  Don't worry - the episode intros catch you up to the story pretty fast.  It's not that season 1 isn't good, but the series really starts clicking by the 2nd one.  And besides, you get Felicia Day playing a nymphomaniac fairy - what's not to like?

This article recently piqued my interest.

For the tl;dr crowd, it basically says that the new executive producer of Star Trek Online is open to the idea of the game becoming essentially free to play, but with lots of little microtransactions in order to make a profit (a la Dungeons and Dragons Online or Lord of the Rings Online).  As I've stated a couple of times, I actually enjoyed this game back when it first came out.  Of course, this angered and frightened some people (especially those on YouTube... don't mess with some people's perception of Star Trek via YouTube).  The biggest problem I had with the game was that it didn't have enough content to last me past the free month, so I never resubscribed.

That was the biggest problem.  But there were others - primarily shallow ground combat and an obvious rushed feel to the game in general.  But like I said, I still enjoyed it.  I'm sure my immense Trek fandom played no small role in that, but I stand by my opinion.  I was originally thinking of waiting a few more months and then perhaps trying the game again, to see what they've added and what problems they fixed.  But I know there are many more who won't give STO a second chance.  An essentially free way to play the game is probably Atari's best hope to restore a lot of the squandered faith in both the Star Trek and MMO communities.

I'd like to share another point of view that probably puts the situation in much plainer light.  Below you'll find an excerpt from an e-mail a good friend sent me after I asked him the simple question back in March, "What did you think of STO thus far?"