Original Commentary

This is one of the reasons Terrence and I never trade characters in Maple Story- although now that safety charms have been released, it makes it less of an issue... they must not have them in Final Battle Adventure On-line... or Kimberly won't let Brisbane waste his money on the game. Of course, that might change now that she's playing herself and it's more... personal now. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
Did Brisbane actually lend his character to Kimberly or is he just smart enough to not get into that argument right now? - Terrence

Original Commentary

So, I suppose this means that the apartment complex just has a few DSL lines. Or the phone and network lines are close enough by that it'll all get shut off. Either way, really - Terrence

Modern Commentary
So, why is this story called "The Universal Server"?

Final Battle Adventure Online was in both You Say it First and Namir Deiter. The game had regional servers which meant that characters from one comic generally wouldn't run into characters from the other. Joy takes extraordinary measures and might need to use a VPN.

Over in Namir Deiter we mentioned a new Universal Server, where folks from all the regions could play together.

I wish we had mentioned that in this comic too, since we were teasing a proper crossover. - Terrence

Original Commentary

In the last panel, beneath the thought bubble Brisbane is holding his weapon. I didn't realize until I started coloring that he's holding his knife upright, very close to his crotch - it looked wrong, especially with the heart slime right next to him. So I took the traditional cop-out of putting a word bubble on top of it.

Yes, those are Joy's colors on Kimberly. Note that the wizard (third panel, looking afraid) also has bunny ears too - Isabel

Modern Commentary
That was the other part of the joke. Joy's in-game character had Kimberly's colors and vice versa... - Terrence

Original Commentary

Silver_Blossom and Brisbane have been playing quite a bit... they probably became close friends in that time Kimberly and Brisbane had broken up- where I'm sure the problem lies. As I've mentioned in the past, as much as Kimberly loves Brisbane, she still has trust issues...she is making an honest effort... but if you really don't like someone- sometimes just not picking out their eyeballs IS your best effort. I'm sure Silver_Blossom is a perfectly nice person in real life and has no interest in Brisbane that way... it's hard for Kimberly to see it as just that. At least she has those slime bunnies to take her frustrations out on. -Isabel

Modern Commentary
When she says monsters are "in season", she means there are xp and gold bonuses to fight them. I'm not sure if that's the official in-game term or just something that the community calls it- Terrence

Original Commentary

Brisbane's original line was "Lola didn't say anything about the power and phone going out when I wasn't around, did she?", but it got changed because we double-checked and Brisbane was around when she mentioned the phone lines going out - Terrence

Modern Commentary
I think the reason why we didn't mention the potential crossover in this comic is because there was already a lot going on here.

That and, well, we needed to get them into the game and the FBAO admins never did the server working right... - Terrence

Original Commentary

No, it's not one of those elaborate movie things where they light hundreds of candles. They've got a few for light and heat in emergencies. It does set a nice mood, though. It's moments like this that make Brisbane glad that he doesn't have Brent anymore. Brent would knock a candle over, and Brisbane would have to stop everything so the apartment didn't catch fire - Terrence

Modern Commentary
Yep. As you can see over in that day's Namir Deiter, the Universal Server event was a bust. So Brisbane and Kimberly had a better time cuddling in the dark together than they would have had if they had just waited for the game to update - Terrence