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is the premiere daily MMOG newsletter, only from Ten
Ton Hammer!
Welcome
to the 1,444th
edition
of Loading...
style="font-style: italic;">Is
the Web dead? Wired Magazine recently argued that it might well be,
supplanted by the phenomenon that is the Smart Phone and its
applications. There’s no doubt that the rapidly growing
popularity of the Smart Phone has impacted the MMOG marketplace, but
just how far will it (or should it) go? Karen
“Shayalyn” Hertzberg examines the topic in
today’s
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/loading/2010/oct/20">Loading…
App-volution.
The
Pulse
You vote with what you
view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the
result
is the Ten Ton Pulse (
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/thepulse/">What
is The Pulse?).
Today's
top 5 Pulse results:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow">World
of Warcraft -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eq2">EverQuest 2
(UP 1) -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/43">EVE
Online (down 1) -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/99">Lord
of the Rings Online -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1407">DC
Universe Online (UP 4)
Biggest
movers today:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2035">Rift:
Planes of Telara
- UP 9
to
#12 -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/183">Guild
Wars 2
- down 3
to
#9 style="text-decoration: underline;"> -
style="text-decoration: underline;">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/47">Guild
Wars
-
down 3
to
#14
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">9/7
- size="-1"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aion">Aion:
Assault on Balaurea (free
expansion) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">9/29
- Everquest
2 Extended
(release) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">9/30
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/ffxiv">Final
Fantasy XIV (release)
Releases
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">October
26, 2010
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/170">LEGO
Universe (release) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">October,
2010
- Champions
Online: Demonflame (expansion) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">November,
2010 - href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve">EVE Online:
Incursion (expansion)
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">December
7, 2010
- World
of Warcraft: Cataclysm
(expansion)
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">January
2011
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2539">Test
Drive Unlimited 2 -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">Early 2011
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1407">DC
Universe Online (release) size="-1">
size="-1">Upcoming
Events
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">
- Ask the Devs!
Have you got a question about style="font-style: italic;">Rift:
Planes of Telera?
Well, you have a chance to ask the devs at Trion Worlds directly. Just
submit your questions href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=53660">in
our forums.
Win a Guild Wars 2 Premium Wall Graphic
To help celebrate the redesign of the Guild Wars 2 forums, Ten Ton
Hammer is having a contest where the winner receives a Guild Wars 2
premium wall graphic from LTL Prints. All you have to do to enter is
post on our href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=721">forum.
This contest ends October 26th. For all the contest details, go href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/contests/ltl-post-a-thon">here.
alt="World of Warcraft PlayerScore"
src="http://images.tentonhammer.com/misc/PlayerScore/2010/PlayerScore_102010.jpg">
What's
your PlayerScore? World of
Warcraft players, find out at
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/playerscore">playerscore.com.
Loading... refusing to kneel
before Zod.
I don’t profess to be a techie. I like technology, but not
enough to be the first in line to have the latest and greatest, or to
scour all of the latest news about what’s new and
what’s now. I’m content to enjoy what I do have,
and to muse over how I ever managed to live my life without a Smart
Phone. All of this, plus the somewhat abbreviated length of a typical
Loading… editorial, means that I’ll only scratch
the surface of what is actually a very big topic.
Back in August, Wired Magazine ran an article entitled “
href="http://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/">The
Web Is Dead. Long Live the Internet.”
The article provided the somewhat controversial assertion that the Web
as we know it is a goner. People are still using the Internet, Wired
explained, but they’re not using the Web. The dissemination
of information is drifting rapidly away from a browser-based experience
toward a more streamlined, app-driven experience. Apps use the Internet
as a mode of retrieving and delivering content, but they
don’t necessarily put the whole of the Web at our fingertips
like a browser. At least not efficiently.
This topic has vast depth, and Wired does a good job of plumbing it.
The entire issue got me wondering about the increasingly mobile bent
our society has shown. Gone are the days of hurrying back to our desks
to read our email, or Google the lyrics to the song that sounded
curiously like “runaway turtle” (but turned out to
be “all the way turned up”), or check out what our
friends are up to, or even play a game. All of that (and a whole lot
more) can be accomplished via mobile applications on any Smart Phone.
Smart Phone sales
href="http://www.kokeytechnology.com/internet-news/record-sales-statistics-for-smartphones-174-million-units-sold-worldwide/">increased
by 15% between 2008 and 2009,
and there’s no sign that the trend is slowing.
We’re drifting away from the anchors of our desktop and even
laptop computers and heading toward handheld portability. But what does
that mean for our gaming?
I suspect we’ll be seeing more announcements like
yesterday’s from NCsoft, who served up the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/90880">Aion
Exchange app for iPhone and
iPad. (To NCsoft and its contemporaries I say a hearty,
“Boo!” for not simultaneously launching an app for
the rapidly growing Droid marketplace, but I digress.) The app allows
you access to your character’s information and stats, your
broker items and their status, market data and more. While it has its
limitations (according to Ten Ton Hammer’s Jeff
“Ethec” Woleslagle, who saw the app in action at
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/nycomiccon/2010">New
York Comic Con before it
launched, you can’t actually add an item to the broker using
the app), it’s another step toward mobility in our MMOGs. And
NCsoft isn’t the only company to create such an app; they
follow in the footsteps of other developers, such as
style="font-style: italic;">Fallen Earth,
who released their
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/85167">iPhone
and Andriod apps this summer,
followed by a
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/86328">Blackberry
app in September, and Cryptic,
who created the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/78158">Champions
Companion. And, of course,
Blizzard launched the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/71943">World
of Warcraft Mobile Armory this
summer.
I like the idea that MMOGs can keep us engaged in a variety of ways
from appearing in our Facebook and Twitter feeds, to allowing us
limited mobile in-game access, to providing us with
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/news/SOE-unveils-security-token-system">mobile
phone generated security tokens,
to delivering us full-on MMOGs we can play on our handheld devices
while we’re on the go, like Spacetime Studios’
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/pocketlegends/spacetimestudiosinterview">
style="font-style: italic;">Pocket Legends
does. Are MMOGs for handhelds the wave of the future? I don’t
know…yet. But I predict that the market can only grow, and
that we’ll see more and more sophisticated uses for handheld
devices in the MMOG arena. My own personal jury is still out as to
whether this is a good thing or not. Certainly mobility has its place,
and I wouldn’t be without my Driod, but there are still
limits to what our Smart Phones can serve up. We receive our mobile
goodies in digestible, bite-sized chunks rather than in the sprawling
context of the Web. I personally like my handheld as a supplement to
the information feed I collect on the Web every day, but I’m
not ready to dump my desktop PC in favor of…mobile
everything.
Are you a mobile gamer? Has the trend toward apps for MMOGs and even
Smart Phone-based MMOGs hooked your interest yet? Share your
experiences and thoughts in our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=54254">forums.
Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the
Day
From our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=723">Guild
Wars 2 News & Articles Discussion forum
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=54229">Win
a Guild Wars 2 Premium Wall Graphic
We're
having a post-a-thon, and you're invited! Our Guild Wars 2 community
site recently unveiled the first phase of our all new GW2
forum
redesign. (We did it for you, because we care.) To help celebrate,
we're giving our readers an exciting opportunity to win one of the
recently announced
href="http://www.ltlprints.com/guildwars2" target="_blank">Guild
Wars 2 Premium Wall Graphics
from LTL Prints. And all you've got to do to enter is post anywhere in
our GW2 forums. The more you post, the better your odds. What are you
waiting for?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=54229">Get
busy!
=====================================
Awesome
Quotes from the Epic Thread
"Nice
swag. Really looking forward to GW2. Game is going to be off the charts."
-
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showpost.php?p=444336&postcount=15">ModernDayDruid
=====================================
New
and Exclusive Content
Today at Ten Ton Hammer
1 new Ten Ton Hammer
features today! 67 original features in October! 1127
in 2010!
FEATURES
& GUIDES
Guild
Wars 2 Terminology
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/guides/basics/terminology">http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/guides/basics/terminology
There
are a lot of terms in the Guild Wars universe that may be hard for some
to pick up. A lot has changed in the last six months with all of the
reveals and new information flowing in. That's why we've made a list of
all of the popular Guild Wars 2 terms you may not know. Don't get
confused--let Ten Ton Hammer demystify the Guild Wars
2
terminology.
Today's
Top 10
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/dcuo/interviews/2010/jim-lee-and-chris-cao">DCUO's
Jim Lee and Chris Cao Talk Green Lantern, a Moon Mission, &
more! -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/seasonal/hallows-end">WoW
2010 Hallow's End Guide -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-questions-part3">The
Ascended Class Soul System - style="font-weight: bold;">Rift:
Planes of Telara
Reader Submitted Q&A #3 -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/classes/hunter">
style="font-weight: bold;">WoW
Hunter Guide 4.0.1 Patch Update -
href="http://tentonhammer/com/wow/blizzcon/2010/expectations">BlizzCon
2010 Expectations
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/patch401-resources">
style="font-weight: bold;">World of Warcraft's
Patch 4.0.1 Resources -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/main/league/intro">The
Newbie's Guide to style="font-weight: bold;">League of Legends -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/ddo/previews/update-7">
style="font-weight: bold;">Dungeons & Dragons
Online Update 7 Hands-On
Preview -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gw2/features/previews/charr-arena-event">An
Exclusive First Look at the Charr Arena Event in style="font-weight: bold;">Guild Wars 2 -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/lego/interviews/ryan-seabury-oct-2010">Brick
by Brick – A Q&A with style="font-weight: bold;">LEGO
Universe’s
Ryan Seabury style="font-weight: bold;">
Thanks
for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
- Karen “Shayalyn” Hertzberg and the Ten
Ton Hammer
team
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our World of Warcraft Game Page.
