I'm afraid the humor may be lost on me (hint, hint: could somebody please explain?), but otherwise it's shiny.

I don't know this for certain, but it is alluding to World of Warcraft, and how people choose the class that is most powerful/easiest to gain power/etc over the interesting classes, like those of our BDHs.

Or I could be way the off.

I absolutely LOVE Penny Arcade, and am stoked that they've decided to discuss our BDMMORPG (Big Damn Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game). Wow, that's a lot of letters. Anyway, I believe the shaman comment has to do with rolling the dice to decide what class you are. A player will roll a (computer generated) die, and be chosed their class through chance. The comment might allude to a bug in the beta software that causes everbody to become a shaman, instead of the various wonderful classes available. If I could beta test that game; I could die happy. But I was under the impression it's still deep in the development phase.

I love also how the guy talking to the goblin (or orc, or whatever) resembles a good captain I might know.

Their news section for this comic says some amusing things along the lines of "There is no pre-pre-alpha, we're just talking about this because we heard that in a year there might actually be something to announce." Anyone who doesn't read the PA news, you're missing out; they are funny stuff.

Heheheheheehe! Funny stuff. Thanks for sharing this Riv.

For those confused:

In World of Warcraft, Shamans were long considered the most powerful class in the game (although no longer), and anyone who made one was on "EZ MODE" and just looking to win without working for it or getting into character.

Gotta say - the Kung Fu Geisha Space Hooker sounds awesome.

Ya know...call me strange, but doesn't our favourite spaceship captain look like "Clone Wars" Obi-Wan's less hirsute brother? Cuz that's some definite Tartakovsky-influenced artwork in the last panel;D

Still...I too was kinda confuzzled about the Shaman comment. Figured it was some sort of glitch or "god" character when you can smite any noobtard who pisses ya off;)

BEB

Heh, yeah, there is a Tartakovsky vibe in there.

*imagines a Clone Wars-style Firefly cartoon*