Welcome to the 1009th Edition of Loading...

If you aren't reading this in your e-mail, you could be. Sign up. Are you looking for gaming news? Look no further for all of the headlines. General industry news are all yours as part of Ten Ton Hammer's RSS Feed . Enjoy!

The Pulse

First, you vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Hammer Pulse (What is Pulse?).

1. World of Warcraft
2. Warhammer Online
3. Lord of the Rings Online
4. Age of Conan
5. Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (UP 2 to #5)

Here are the biggest movers in the Top 20 today:

1. Mabinogi (down 6 to #18)
2. EVE Online (UP 4 to number 6)
3. Runes of Magic (down 4 to number 10)

Loading... Daily

Loading... the three-penny opera of MMO gaming news and commentary.

I'm fairly sure I witnessed human perfection last night. Those of you who read this column daily know that I arrived a few days early for New York Comic-Con and you may even know that I'm about the most unlikely opera fan you'll ever see. I clean up reasonably well, and to be honest I wasn't expecting much from the Donizetti opera we went to see last night.

Donizetti, though prolific before going mildly insane, borrowed heavily from other composers and was no Mozart or Verdi, (think of him as the SOE of early 19th century opera) and his operatic form, (Bel Canto) is more known for drawn-out vocal acrobatics than tunefulness or even a really well-developed storyline. That was what I'd thought anyway, and I'd be willing to bet big that if I asked each of you to list any five operas, Lucia di Lammermoor wouldn't make anyone's list. It wouldn't have made mine before last night.

But sometimes there's one singular moment that changes not just your perspective on the particu,ar performance but confirms - overwhelmingly confirms - your faith in the form too. If you've played for any length of time, I'm sure you've had moments in a favorite MMORPG that you'll never forget, perhaps where a relative stranger went out of his way to help you or you helped someone else.

For me, it might have been a corpse run in EQ's Lower Guk circa 1999 where a friend risked hours retrieving his own corpse to bring back my armor to me, or a long night in Lesser Faydark where guildmate sacrificed their day and evening so I could get one piece (just one piece out of four or five or so) of the Raincaller Bow. Or maybe it was just a long, deep, and ultimately hilarious conversation while spawn camping in West Karana that was so involved that you only noticed afterward that another group kill-stole the named you were hunting.

That sort of numinous moment was on my mind last night when the thrice-wronged Lucia was midway through her beautiful aria 'Il duoce suono' (which featured an ornate glass harmonica part - I didn't even know that such a thing existed before last night), she made us all forget what she'd done as we focused with lazer-intensity on the sheer beauty of her singing.

But when Lucia glidingly turned to the wedding guests, her arms-akimbo, almost a homage to The Exorcist, the wedding guests reacted with horror, and we were brought back into the present, remembering that this Lucia was in a bloodstained wedding dress fresh from killing the husband she was forced to marry. I wonder if any performance medium other than opera could have accomplished the complexity of the emotional effect, and that moment confirmed my faith in opera as a legitimate and irreplaceable form of expression just like the above moments in-game confirmed my faith in the MMORPG.

Comments? Share them in the Loading... forum, or use the power of email to beg me not to mention opera again! And thanks to everyone that helped with the gold ad hunt yesterday, our list grew to include hundreds of adseller sites.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our WoW: General Discussion Forum

"You'll never guess what they said..."

We've
all heard people say things while playing MMOGs that made us laugh,
groan, or smack our foreheads. Mikes asked the members of our World of
Warcraft community to share some of the funniest, lamest, or most
annoying comments they've heard in WoW.

"A while ago, one that
still amuses me," he says, "while playing with my druid in AB [someone
said], 'Heal me and I'll keep aggro....' Famous last words there I
think."

Add your favorite lulz or idiotic comments here.

=================================

Awesome Quote from the
Epic Thread:


"'I'm a warrior. I don't use intellect.'"

- Stormbrjnger
=================================



Do you have a favorite Epic Thread? Let
us know!

8 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 18 in February! 154 in 2009!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]

Reviews

• Darkeden
• Secret of the Solstice

Op/Eds

• The Comic Book Guy: The Lone Superhero and the MMOG

Community

• Geeked: "Self-Defense"

Guides

• World of Warcraft: Paladin Spells and Abilities, Lvl 1-40
• World of Warcraft: Priest Spells, Lvl 1-40
• EverQuest 2: Rodcet Nife Miracles and Blessings

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:

1. The Comic Book Guy: The Lone Superhero and the MMOG
2. EVE Online: "Apocrypha" Expansion Q&A with Arnar Gylfason
3. Review of Darkeden
4. Review of Secret of the Solstice
5. Geeked: "Self-Defense"
6. MMOs, The Final Frontier: The Untapped Potential of Sci-Fi IPs
7. Warhammer Online: The Implications of A Call To Arms
8. Review of Eudemons Online
9. Atlantica Online - Succeeding in the West
10. Holic Online

Real World News

• Study shows zinc supplements may prevent alcohol-related birth defects
  
  This just in, not getting drunk when pregnant may also prevent alcohol-related birth defects!
• Iran launches first satellite into orbit
  
  Tehran denies weaponizing missiles, condemns those who would cast asPersians.
• 300 lb woman in Spandex pants sought in credit card fraud
  
  Police advise the public to not approach her, as she may blow at any time.
• Florida man attacks girlfriend with urine and eggs
  
  Claims there were no nearby sandwiches or hamburgers, had to improvise
  
  

Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!

-- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer team