"I'm gonna name my seahorse Drowner! Wouldn't that be ironic??"

Ah the new season of The Guild...

For those of you not in the know, The Guild is a web series that originally debuted several years ago on Youtube (but now through MSN) and just yesturday premiered it's 4th season.

The series was created by actress Felicia Day (most known as Vi from Buffy as well as roles in Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog and Bring It On Again - the 2nd movie with no one famous in it) who is a former gaming addict albeit still being a big gamer. She got hooked when she had some free time between roles and eventually decided to make something productive of her time gaming and decided to write a TV pilot based on her experiences as a female gamer. Taking elements from many games, it's quite obvious MMO's like WoW are a huge influence (if you play WoW, you'll catch A LOT of references), despite the fact the game they play in the series is never mentioned to avoid legal issues. While she didn't feel it would fare too well on TV, she took her series to the web, originally hosting it on Youtube before MSN purchased the rights, releasing the latest episodes on their own channels via Xbox, Zune, Bing, and MSN.

Felicia Day also stars as the main character, a female 20-something post college gamer, living on her own and addicted to her favorite MMO, in which she plays a priest named Codex. In the first season we are introduced to her guild The Knights of Good (consisting of 6 members, which in their MMO is the perfect number for instances/raids) when the guild warlock Zaboo shows up at her apartment doorstep, throwing her in-game life into her real-life. Zaboo, who tends to be over the top and a bit socially awkward, has had a crush on Codex for awhile and wants to give a real relationship with her a shot, Codex is a little hesistant though, as she's creeped out by how he got her address. Also, his over-controlling mother is not thrilled that he up and left her either.

Other members of the guild include their guildleader Vork, who plays a fearsome warrior in game, while in reality he's a broke out of work parent-type figure who is all about business (which shows up in his guild leading); a mage named Clara, who outside the game is a wife and a mother of 3 although sadly she's too hooked to the game to pay any attention to her husband and kids (her marriage goes through a rough patch in season 3); a rogue named Bladezz, who is really just a high schooler who thinks he's badass (sounds like a lot of the kiddies that play WoW!); then there's Tinkerballa (aka Tink) who is the guild ranger/hunter, in real life she's a smart mouthed hot Asian girl, around college age and is always seen with some kind of gaming device (laptop, Nintendo DS, etc).

Ever since the first season, since they all seem to live in the same town, their out of game interactions become more frequent.

The 3rd season starts out with the release of a new expansion, where the gamers are all camped out overnight outside of Gamestop, however they soon butt heads with another guild of gamers on their server known as the Axis of Anarchy who aren't quite so nice and friendly as our Knights of Good.

If you play WoW, Guild Wars or any other type of MMO where you have to be grouped with various people regularly you'll most likely get a kick out of The Guild, as it was made for gamers, about gamers and by a gamer. It's also won several Streamy awards and has been named by Rolling Stone as one of the "Net's best serial shows."

You can check out the first 2 seasons on Netflix's Instant Watch, or find them all on YouTube via the Watch the Guild page. New episodes can be found at www.watchtheguild.com. Seasons 1 and 2 are both safe for work, however in season 3 some of the Axis of Anarchy members swear quite a bit, so you might want to wear headphones!