...drive-bys where someone with a semiautomatic fires all-out at a kindergarten kid.

I really like AoW, I think the justice system is one of the nicest I've ever seen (including MUDs), and they've done many, many things right. The above still holds true though. ;)

Not quite the screenshots I intended to post, but this was so silly that I had to share it. ;)

Yes, AoW is full, open-world PvP. Yes, carebear nugget likes it. It feels more like a PK MUD + sandbox than any other MMO I've played, and the world feels like a ... world!

I think one of the reasons the silliness of this dialogue works so well is that (pesky players aside), in other places almost all of AoW is totally IC (in character), and even this one is subtly done.

"I was part of the WELL almost from the very beginning. The Whole Earth 'Lectronic Link was founded in the spring of 1985 - before Mark Zuckerberg's first birthday. I joined in August of that first year.

I can't remember how many WELL parties, chili cook-offs, trips to the circus, and other events - somewhat repellingy called "fleshmeets" at the time - I attended. My baby daughter and my 80-year-old mother joined me on many of those occasions. I danced at three weddings of WELLbeings, as we called ourselves, attended four funerals, brought food and companionship to the bedside of a dying WELLbeing on one occasion. WELL people babysat for my daughter, and I watched their children.

Don't tell me that "real communities" can't happen online."

What the WELL's Rise and Fall Tell Us About Online Community

A wonderful, highly illegal map of the Interwebs, and here is the full mad scientist paper, aaaand some of the awesome images generated (available via the paper too).

He's almost as sexy as my cute little boy dorf!

This is beautiful.

Earl Grey Icecream with Crystallised Ginger Bits
This is a cultured, aristocratic icecream with a touch of spicy character. It has just the right sophisticated taste you need to convince poor fools that you can actually cook. XD I was afraid I might not have ground the tea finely enough, but it turned out great! Not gritty at all. O.O

Ingredients
3 parts thickened / whipping cream
2 parts condensed milk
A tiny bit of vanilla essense
2 smallish glugs of any kind of drinkable alcohol, preferably not strong-tasting - just to keep from getting too hard in the fridge
Earl Grey tea to taste, ground fine. You can just grind any Earl Grey you like straight out of a teabag. Remove the teabag though.
Crystallised ginger, chopped into fine bits

Steps

1. Brutally slay Earl Grey teabag(s) - I used 3 - by lopping off their heads
2. Pour their innards into a mortar and pestle
3. Grind Earl Grey tea innards a lot. Until it's as fine as you can get it, or you get sick of grinding.
4. Put everything except the ginger in a bowl together
5. Whisk until soft peaks form
6. Fold in ginger bits
   
7. Transfer into an airtight container
8. Plop in freezer for 6+ hours
9. Eat while wailing that you don't know which icecream you can bear to bring to the office as an offering anymore

Baileys Irish Coffee Icecream with Crunchy Dark Chocolate Baileys Swirl
Where the Earl Grey oozes cultured, sophisticated elegance, this one oozes sex.. SEX!! Sensuous, decadent, coffee-chocolate-baileys seeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeks. That is all.

Icecream
3 parts thickened / whipping cream
2 parts condensed milk
Baileys Irish Cream to taste
Instant coffee powder/crystals, ground fine (more for more coffeefee flavour, less for less - shocking, inoes)

Swirl
4 parts dark chocolate chips
1 part butter
3 parts sugar
Moar Baileys Irish Cream

Steps

1. Plop Swirl ingredients in a bowl, melt it all in a rice cooker. If you don't have a rice cooker, you need a water bath or something scary like that and I don't want to know.
2. When it's good and melted, whisk it all together. Ideally, the sugar shouldn't be QUITE melted yet, giving it a crispy/grainy texture
3. Add Baileys Irish Cream little by little, whisking as you go along
4. Stop when the sauce looks dark and glossy, and is liquid enough to paint 'artistic' patterns on a plate with
   THEN
   
5. Consign the instant coffeefee to a grindy doom in a mortar and pestle
6. Grind till coffeefee is snortably fine. It shouldn't take long.
   
7. Put all icecream ingredients in a bowl together
   
8. Whisk until soft peaks form
   LASTLY
   
9. Glop a quarter into an airtight container, drizzle in the Bailey's dark chocolate sauce
10. Repeat 3x
11. Stir / swirl it around a bit (not too much!) with a chopstick, a knife, or some other sort of slender stabbing implement
    
12. Plop in freezer for 6+ hours
13. IT LIVES! IT LIVES!
    ...Igor, find me a brain.