Nick upgraded the “camera” computer that we use to film the show, complete with an 8800 GT. Needless to say, our characters are colorful and smooth and it definitely enhances the look of everything. I even brought some screenshots to prove it.

Pretty nice, eh? In case you guys haven’t been around, a lot went down the last two weeks. I’ve put together a list of some important posts to make it easier to navigate.

General News
Episode 12: Attack of the Noob
Get Gravatar!
Jeff’s Birthday

Character Bios
Montrose: Second Fiddle
Leeroy: A Nerd’s Path
Ahmad: A Noob’s Story

Seriously, if you haven’t signed up with Gravatar yet, go do it. It’ll really help make this place into more of a community and we love having you guys interact with what we have going on here. It’ll help us keep up with you all, for sure.

On the deck for this week: a new bio, a new Halo short and Eddy playing lots of GTA IV.

Also, today’s Daniel’s birthday. He’s old. Not really.

Like I said before, I was pleased with how everyone responded to Ahmad’s Biography last week. Hopefully, this week will be no different. Our next stop on the biography tour is Leeroy.

Name: Leeroy
Age: 21
Team: Counter-Terrorists
Position: Communications Nerd

Some of Leeroy’s earliest memories revolve around being able to hold a Sega Genesis controller in his chubby infant hands. While it was his father’s hobby, Leeroy often watched the colorful sprites zip around the television screen, fascinated by the way the little black plastic system could render the action that he was witnessing. His father, the computer programmer, an anti-social recluse himself, was eager to have something which would provide a bond between him and his offspring. He pushed the controlling apparatus for each gaming system into Leeroy’s hands one after the other, nursing a father-son pastime into something that would one day become an obsession.

The day that changed Leeroy’s life forever was the first day he experienced the joy of operating a keyboard and a mouse to kill computerized minions. With early 90’s titles like Wolfenstein 3D, Doom and Duke Nukem, Leeroy soon abandoned the consoles for more civilized gaming ventures. With the help of his father, Leeroy assembled his first gargantuan gaming rig at 10 years old in anticipation of the release of Quake II. Soon enough, he was participating in the modding community, much to his father’s delight.

Leeroy’s love for modding and manipulating his favorite PC games easily translated over into other software. He began running multiple OS’s on a number of computers, writing programs, initiating protocols and all kinds of other technical jargon. Once the internet was introduced into his life, the young boy was surfing everywhere, gaining access to whatever he could, seeking more knowledge than he ever thought possible. And more cyber roleplay than he could have ever hoped for.

Beyond playing his first PC game, the second most momentous occasion of young Leeroy’s life occurred in the summer before his freshman year of high school, where he experienced his new love: Dungeons and Dragons. By the time he was 15, Leeroy was his school’s most renowned DM. His superb imagination combined with his love for fantasy made people feel that his stories were coming alive. Plus, he wore costumes.

At 17, Leeroy graduated early from high school after selling a program to several school districts that allowed them to integrate attendance programs with their online gradebooks. Using a backdoor into this process, Leeroy sold other students a chance to look at their grades, and for a small fee, he would change them. The gifted youngster was accepted into MIT after graduation— and that’s where fate took its turn.

When Leeroy was 18, something horrible and wonderful happened. Frigid Entertainment released its momentous MMORPG, World of Battlelore. Combining the two loves of Leeroy’s life, fantasy and gaming, the computer wiz was transformed into a shell of his former self. Using his beloved Wood Elf character, Leeroy rallied guilds and legions of fans, becoming the number 1 wood elf for his entire server. Forum posts were written, internet memes created, all while Leeroy’s grades fell off due to his lack of studies. It was there that he met his girlfriend, 22 year old Glrydmersh (can we buy a vowel please) from the Proddenia server.

Leeroy soon failed out of MIT with a terrible addiction to World of Battlelore and thousands of dollars left to pay in school fees. With nowhere else to turn, Leeroy had to enter the workforce. While working as a cubicle monkey in his first job, Leeroy was caught hacking into a government agency’s network— he was given a job in their counter-terrorism unit one week later. He primarily worked on communications analysis and did the occasional stakeout, managing to stay out of all of the action. Then one day, Leeroy saw an ad for The Leet World come across his desk. Beaten down by the long hours and his tremendous school debt, this new reality show could be the chance of a lifetime— the chance to put everything back together.

Though we had our share of problems over the weekend, we are for the most part unscathed. I must say that Hammer is the bane of my existence, currently. Besides that though, Episode Twelve is still trucking along. Should have some more extras and screens up this week.

In my last post I mentioned that we would hopefully be adding some cool new content to the website over the weekend. A “virtual nerdery” were my exact words. Well, the bulk of that will be coming at a later date, but I thought I’d present a small piece of it to you right now.

Starting once a week, I’ll be posting up a character bio of one character from The Leet World, which should take us through the end of the season. This week’s character bio: Ahmad.

Name: Ahmad
Age: 19
Team: Terrorists
Position: Noob

Ahmad has led a rather quirky life. The weirdness began at an early age. He was born to a poor family and never knew his father- he left “for a quick vacation”, as Ahmad’s mother put it. Unfortunately, at the tender age of 4, Ahmad was kicked out of several day cares for biting children and exhibiting over-aggressive behavioral patterns. This forced his mother to homeschool him for the next 14 years of his life, imparting all of her wisdom to him. Oh, and pampering him.

Ahmad learned to suppress his rage by the time he entered his grade school years. He covered his anxiety and angst with phrases like “cool”, and “awesome”, even when things were neither cool nor awesome. By the time he was 10, he was diagnosed with a severe case of ADHD, one of the worst his doctor had ever seen. The heavily medicated Ahmad soon found great success in the classroom, and continued to break the curve, even though his classroom consisted only of himself and his neighbor Petrov, the Eastern European boy from across the street that always had to use crutches.

Making friends is often difficult for normal children, but for boys like Ahmad it was nigh on impossible. He frequently attempted to join the neighborhood clubhouses, but his friendships were soon broken or forsaken. Being friends with Ahmad was like being paper cut to death or having your testicles put under an iron. Over time, Ahmad taught himself to ignore any social awkwardness, forcing himself to become completely unaware of when he was ruining things like conversations, lives and other people’s happiness.

One fateful day, Ahmad was watching other boys have fun though his telescope (as he was wont to do) while they played a game of “cops and robbers”. Cautiously observing them, he noted that the “robbers” were free from rules and regulations. They seemed to be so happy. He thought that if he never followed those rules again, he could have fun, and maybe even find himself some friends.

Dumping his medication, Ahmad became a bother in the classroom and at home, trying to learn the ways of terrorists and shooting counter-terrorists. Kicked out of multiple groups for his lack of skill, the young man never gave up. Finally, at the age of 19, he saw an advertisement to audition for The Leet World and then left home for good in order to pursue his dreams.

Speaking of Halo, I forgot just how pretty the 720p capture was until we started doing it again tonight. I love the way it looks.

I think you’ll find one of the Episode Ten shots particularly interesting…

On a personal note, this news is sort of awesome.

Episode Six is already being filmed, though you’ll be sad to hear that some slight delays are in the forecast. The reason? Daniel and Nick are heading out to California to visit our music maestro, Damn Dangerous (or Jace, as he’s known on his home planet). What will Eddy do for the six days they are gone? Write Episode Seven, of course. But I’ll also be releasing some fun (depending on your point of view) content for you guys.

There was about a minute and a half or so deleted from Episode Five that I’m sure you guys will be interested to see, though it’s not super interesting per se, which is why it was cut in the first place. Also, there might be a little surprise for you guys while they are gone, too.

All that to say that Episode Six might have short delays (nothing crazy like Episode Four) just because of the nature of the next few weeks. October is hell month for me at work, plus Nick and Daniel traveling= The Leet World doesn’t get all that fun attention. But like I said, no worries, there will be lots of content for everyone, and once Nick and Daniel return, we’ll be back on our normal schedule again.

In the meantime, here are some screenshots from Episode Six: