Most MMOs provide you with the basics: instances, player housing, an in-game economy, and so on. What the vast majority of MMOs don’t do is provide you with elaborate systems of political intrigue (outside of the very few and the proud, likeEVEandDark Age of Camelot— where myDark Agefans at?). TERAis the newest game to throw it’s hat in the ring, as it is all set to introduce theVanarch Election system, which will allow you to actually campaign and vote for your favorite potential official....

The end of the beginning Yeehaw. If you remember back to last week you know that there’s anew sheriff in town. And by new I mean old. Now it’s time for our plucky band of losers to get promoted up into deputy status. That metaphor was fairly inaccurate. Oh well, some news happened today:Fallout 4is probably definitely coming, indies are cool, and the Ouya still isn’t dead. Want to join in on the madness?...

Any requests? We’re approaching the end of the year, but gaming news isn’t slowing down yet. Nintendo continues to hold regularly scheduledDirect presentations. We just had aparticularly eventful BlizzCon showinglast week. There’s noPlayStation Experiencethis year, but tomorrow’sX018 showcasefrom Microsoft and next month’sThe Game Awardsled by Geoff Keighley will fill the void. While the latter event is first and foremost an awards show, many of us tune in primarily for video game news (and the chance to goof off and bondover the courseof hundreds upon hundreds of comments)....

It took just over a week to down G’huun, the final blood god boss World of Warcraft: Battle for Azerothjust wrapped up its world-first race for its inaugural mythic raid, Uldir. For you non-WoWplayers out there: a titan research facility that involved experimentation with Old Gods. It was a close competition heading into last night with no less thanninegroups all at 7/8 bosses killed at the one week mark, but in the end,Method took itwith a clear time of eight days....

Listen to the Gravity Man cover Mega Man, as a whole, has one of my favorite collections of scores of all time. I still listen to a track from just about every game fromMega Man 1throughX6on a regular basis, but the first six really have a special place in my heart. That’s why thisMega Manpiano channel (which was emailed to me at 10PM last night by a friend) rocks so hard....

It’s never too late to pick up 3D modeling While it’s no secret that the most successfulTeam Fortress 2item designers are making serious money, this is one of those topics that never ceases to fascinate me. PC Gamer has given us some good weekend reading in the form ofa profile on a handful of these creatorsas well as a follow-up interview with Valve’s Robin Walker, which is what I’ll be focusing on here....

Everyone’s entitled to one good scare Feel that chill up your spine? Hear that wolf howling at the moon? See that dude in the boiler suit standing among your clean laundry? Indeed, the witching season is upon us, the calendar has… erm… struck October 31, and it’s time to do the Monster Mash, (which is a dance, not a song) for today is Halloween. Horror has always been deeply embedded in our beloved medium, from Exidy’s 1986 gorefestChiller,to grim CD-ROM adventures likeRipperandPhantasmagoria,to modern survival horror classics such asResident Evil,Silent Hill, andFatal Frame....

Worst company in America? You decide. It wasn’t much of a surprise when Electronic Arts was recently voted theWorst Company in Americaby readers of Consumerist for the second year in a row. Though the game publisher’s sins are arguably less substantial than those of their competition, nerds have soundly declared thatborkedSimCityserversare officially worse than the predatory housing loan tactics responsible for the current financial crisis. Regardless of whether you agree with EA’s win, it’s obvious that gamers really dislike this software giant....

Are there any old school gamers out there that remember how badass Working Designs was? They were one of the original “Atlus-like” localization gurus that were responsible for a string of amazing Western releases, like theLunarseries,Vanguard Bandits, and thus, a large portion of my childhood. Former Working Designers member and current Gaijinworks head Vic Irelandtook to Redditrecently, to answer fan questions and interact with the gaming community. One particularly awesome bit of information gleaned from the thread was the fact that he nearly brought over SNK’sSamurai Shodown RPG, but ended up deciding against it....

World of Warcraft Remix: Mists of Pandariais a new time-limited event. It’s running now until August 19. If you’re interested in checking it out, you can play free up to level 20. Then, all you need is to have an activeWoWsubscription. No extra expansions are required. How do I create a new Timerunning character? On the character select screen, click theWoW Remix: Mists of Pandariabutton in the upper left. you may also select “Create New Character” and select a Timerunning character....

Here’s what we know so far… The latest Xbox One Experience Preview program is experiencing a host of troubles, including errors runningDestiny: The Taken King, Borderlands: The Handsome Collection, Skylanders, Elder Scrolls OnlineandForza 6. The problems haven’t been reported on the Xbox One Status webpage, but warnings – shared by our friends atVideoGamer– have been made available on the Xbox One dash itself. Microsoft also acknowledges that problems also plague purchases made on Xbox....

[Update:Contest over! The answer was yeast infection. Prizepack goes to Canooga!] uDrawand the GameTablet were finally released last month for the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 giving every console owner a chance to draw penises in games ofPictionarywith articulate detail. Thank F*CK! We have a copy of the game and tablet for the Xbox 360 to giveaway for today’s25 Days of Givingalong withPictionary Ultimate Edition, two Pictionary Man things, a uDraw cup and shirt to one lucky winner....

A love letter to your thumbs 8BitDo, the purveyor of fine third-party controllers, has revealed the design fortheir next controller. This one is more than just a slight nod to the Neo Geo CD’s legendary mash-up between arcade stick and joypad. By “more than just a slight nod,” I mean it’s pretty much exact. In fact, the company themselves say it is “a perfect recreation of the original SNK NEOGEO controller....