Have you ever had an innocent thought that goes something like: “Hmm, I wonder what would happen if Master Chief went up against Dante or Kratos?” How about witnessing a Mario vs. Pacman showdown? Yeah, me too.

At times, we all wonder what would happen if some of the legendary icons of gaming decided to stop saving the world for a second and had an Mortal Kombat-style tournament. Luckily, our curiosity may at last be satisfied!

Tvigle, a Russian portal centered around animation, has been producing a series of cartoons that pits characters from various games, films and even fairy tales against each other in short, stylish matches with hilarious consequences. The cartoons certainly have their own charm, from bizarre pairings (Tetris vs. Contra, anyone?) and cutely misspelled names, to simple yet effective visuals. Check it out:

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Here is the transcript of iTZKooPA’s live blog coverage of BlizzCon 2010: Diablo III Open Q&A. Live comments from our readers are highlighted in italics.

2:54 Prepped and ready for the Diablo III Q&A session. Mordil is downstairs photographing the Warcraft Art panel, so we’ll see those later.

2:55 Hopefully we get some awesome questions, considering that this is turning out to be DiabloCon.

2:56 Perhaps they’ll be prepared with some slides for this convention.

2:59 I’ve gotta say, the set they have for the DirecTV coverage is pretty freaking awesome. Changes colors, backgrounds and lighting per topic being discussed.

3:00 Here we go. Jay Wilson rocking the mic. He’s the game director.

3:01 Joe Lawrenece, Audio engine, Kevin Martins, Content, Patrick Stone, Eviro Art, Mike Chu, Q designer, Christian Leighter, Alex Mayberry, Senior Producer. I missed two or three guys.

3:01 Here we go, no slides, right into the questions.

3:02 How are you going to manage the fact that all the players have to worry about so many choices? How will it be balanced in PvP?

3:02 Kevin Martens: On the UI side, the choices are limited to just a few choices.

3:03 So the choices don’t make it too overwhelming. Plus, we’re constantly changing the UI.

3:03 The UI does a great job of keeping the choices compartmentaliszed.

3:03 Jay Wilson: Balance, for the whole game, not just PvP, is mainly done by playing the game a lot and targeting what you’re balancing.

3:04 PvE will never be nerfed because of PvP, that’s why the PvP is in arenas.

3:04 Q: I was wondering about end game content. Will we run out of stuff to do after killing the end boss?

3:04 Jay Wilson: “We don’t have end game figured out yet.”

3:05 It’s hard to build end game before you have game, it has to come in the right order.

3:05 Not all players want to do the same thing. There a different ideas of end game. Some grind loot, other reroll. We also have PvP now, which adds an aspect of end game.

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These so-called ‘State of the Game’ addresses are a fantastic way for developers to talk about a product.  Most of them focus on the future, rather than the current incarnation, but any straight talk from a developer, be it producer or writer, is a godsend for players.  Few addresses are truly notable, but the latest from Dave “Archangel” Haydysch, a producer for Fallen Earth, is one of the few.

The first-person shooter MMOG will be receiving (at least) two bloated patches by the end of the year, according to Archangel.  The leader, which is scheduled for September, will focus on overhauling combat and factions.  It will be one of “several major patches” to roll out “major changes” to these two important areas.

We will be changing some of the formulas to create a more fast-paced, exciting combat experience. Major changes coming soon involve adjusting high levels of mitigation, tweaking the random damage spread and making armor require statistics (like Faction or Strength) and character level (rather than Armor Use skill). However, Armor Use skill will still determine how well armor performs. After these changes are in place, we will be making adjustments to Faction skills, Mutations and regular skills, and a balance pass for Items.

The second patch was more teased, rather than discussed.  All we know is that Factions and Clan Strongholds are scheduled for a December debut.

As a sidenote, the premium Mobile Application should be available in the next few weeks.  Read the full ‘State of the Game’ address here.

iTZKooPA will be covering the aforementioned content as part of the PAX Prime 2010.  Stay tuned.

The MMO genre of gaming is not a particularly young one. In fact, I’d say it’s only a few years younger than the modern RTS and FPS genres (I remember playing my very first graphical MMO in 1997). So, suffice it to say, I was a bit surprised when I found out that not one MMORPG has made it onto GameRanking.com’s top 100 list. I’ve checked the list and I’ve checked it twice (ho ho!) and I’m telling you there are no MMOs to be found which raises the question: why haven’t any MMOs made it there yet?

Believe it or not, despite the genre being over a decade old now there really aren’t that many MMOs in the market. In fact, of the actual “pay2play” model of MMO there are typically only a handful of games released each year, as opposed to the thousands of Wii, 360, PS3, PC games that are released each year. This probably has had some sort of impact as to why there are no MMOs on the list. Let’s face it, when there are so many games coming out every year the MMO is bound to slowly get pushed down the list until a new one makes it back up there. In fact, GTAIV actually pushed World of Warcraft right off the list (who now sits at #101). However, that said, this logic does seem to conflict with the “quality over quantity” saying. Despite putting out fewer games than most other genres, there are still many quality issues that exist within the games upon launch… which brings us to our next issue.

One of the most obvious reasons as to why most MMOs never make it to the top of review scores is primarily due to quality. MMOs are HUGE worlds with many aspects of gameplay all running simultaneously with thousands of gamers. The sheer scope of programmability within these games would probably dwarf about ten single player games of near any other genre. Because of this there are a number of quality issues that must be tested and, unfortunately, the best test usually occurs after the game has gone live. As many MMOGamers know many of the biggest fixes and features aren’t readily patched until a couple months after the games release, which cites the mantra of many gamers today: “An MMO on launch day will be completely different 6 months later.” Perhaps if reviewers would put up two reviews of an MMO there would be a better “leveling off” of the scores…

Anyways, take from this what you will. World of Warcraft still sits at a very respectable #101 right above Zelda: A Link to the Past (one of my favorite games) with the next “MMO” being WoW: Burning Crusade at #142. After that there is nothing until beyond the 200 mark. It’s very clear that GTAIV effectively pushed WoW out of the running, but even before then WoW was only at #99 which is just barely scraping it by. No telling what MMO will make it there next. While Age of Conan looks like it will receive fair scores, I seriously doubt it’ll reach the top 100. Anybody want to take bets on Warhammer Online?

Check out the full top 200 list HERE.