Welcome to the 1,164th edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and
commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.

As we discussed in yesterday's newsletter, MMOs aren't always
the most watchable games. That's beginning to change with more and more
action-oriented games, but in between some comments that would make
awesome chapter titles in Satan's leadership book, Activision CEO
Bernard Kotick stated that he wants to fuse the best parts of console
gaming with PC gaming. Are we seeing hints about the future of
Battle.net unfold before us? That, plus the latest round of troubles
for the developers of Stargate Worlds, is yours to discuss in today's
Loading... We Like to Watch.

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/" target="_blank">What
is The Pulse?).

Here's today's top 5 Pulse results:

1. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/41"
   target="_blank">World of Warcraft
2. Dungeons
   & Dragons Online 
3. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/254">Aion
   (UP 2)
4. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/860">Champions
   Online 
5. EverQuest
   2 (UP 1)

Biggest movers today:

1. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/265"
   target="_blank">Dark
   Age of Camelot (UP 23 to #19)
2. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2213"
   target="_blank">Star
   Wars: The Old Republic href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/38"
   target="_blank"> (UP 5 to #12)
3. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1234">Runes
   of Magic (UP 4 to #18)

• 8/4 -
  World
  of Warcraft Update 3.2 (content patch)  size="-1">
• 8/25
  - CrimeCraft
  (release date)
• 9/1 -
  Champions
  Online 

Important
Dates

• 9/15 -
  9/18 - GDC
  Austin
• 10/1 -
  10/3 -  href="http://fanfest.eveonline.com/">EVE FanFest

• 9/9
  - Dungeons
  & Dragons Online Unlimited (release date)
• NEW - 9/22
  - href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/177">Fallen
  Earth (release date)
• 9/22
  - Aion
  (release date)
• 10/9
  - Cities
  XL (release date)
• Early 2010
  - APB
  

Loading... Daily

MMOs typically aren't the most watchable games. If we locked you in a
room with 3 sets of people playing MarioKart, Call of Duty 4, and World
of Warcraft, chances are you'd gravitate away from WoW and towards
something with LAN or console appeal. Not only are the UI elements
small and the gameplay relatively slow-apace in the typical MMO, the
more dazzling side of the game is how people cooperate to complete
objectives, and that's hard to see from a single player's perspective.

But gamers are, by nature, watchers. Half the fun of any game is
talking about the thrilling moments afterward, and the best part of my
job is sharing with you, longsuffering reader, the best moments I
experience in the MMOs I play. MMOs are usually better in the telling
than in the watching, so it's no surprise that a game like EVE Online
has an exponentially bigger armchair audience than its active
playerbase. We like to watch, perhaps more than we like to play
sometimes, and TVs are typically staged much better for an audience
than even the biggest e-peen of a computer monitor.

I guess that's why this article on how href="http://www.gamespot.com/news/6226758.html">Activision
plans to bypass consoles with "untethered Guitar Hero"
doesn't surprise me. Kotick argued for a streaming presentation of
video games that make use of a media hub rather than a licensed
console, which makes sense now that Guitar Hero and Rockband have
proven that you can (easily) sell hardware with software. That media
hubs will probably become licensed consoles in this
scenario seems to have escaped him.

What does surprise me is how open Bernard Kotick is on the subject of
streaming media (Kotick is President and CEO of Activision Blizzard,
whose subsidiaries, surprisingly enough, are Activision and Blizzard).
Kotick's sweeping statements go far beyond relaying the thought process
for Guitar Hero, but also (potentially) games like Call of Duty and
Blizzard's upcoming games. Could Diablo 3 and the ever-mysterious
"unannounced project" by piped directly into your Media PC? Is Blizzard
grooming Battle.net to take on this role after all?

Kotick went on to make more gruffly ass-hatted comments like "The goal
that I had in bringing a lot of the packaged goods folks into
Activision about 10 years ago was to take all the fun out of making
video games" and that's he's tried to instill into the company culture
"skepticism, pessimism, and fear." It's like games industry rewind to
15 years ago, it shows how impervious and godlike the executives of
these companies believe that they are, and it wholly explains why
Blizzard done more exploitation than innovation since the olden
days. You can't argue with the results in the short-term,
though, and the reality of the Blizzard situation is probably nowhere
as bleak as it sounds, as judging from our own interactions
with Blizzard developers.

I guess we'll all have to keep watching to find out what these comments
mean to Blizzard, but in the meantime, do your own bit of speculation
the Loading...
forum.

From our href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6">Articles,
News & Events Discussion

href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=46257">Major
Investor Sues Gary Whiting of CME

I'd
love to see the Stargate IP come to life as a MMOG; I really
would. But whenever I picture the hardworking folks at Cheyenne
Mountain Entertainment, developers of href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/73">Stargate
Worlds,
I see the company's founder, and alleged shady businessman, Gary
Whiting shooting down their dream of launching a game like a
player in some crazed game of href="http://www.cyberiapc.com/flashgames/duckhunt.htm">Duck
Hunt.
I have no doubt that there are a lot of good people working on Stargate
Worlds, but I have to wonder how they're dealing with the oppression of
financial
woes, scandal,
and now lawsuits.


Will CME ever get a break? Do they deserve one? Would you like to see
them pull off Stargate Worlds? href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=46257">Share
your comments.

==============================
Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread

" Just end this SGW
farce now and give the IP to someone that can actually make a good SG
game."

- AngryBeaver
==============================

Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=32559">Tell
us!

• Star
  Wars: The Old Republic VIP Interview from PAX 2009
  Public interest in all things Star Wars: The Old Republic related is at
  an all time high, as was illustrated in Ten Ton Hammer’s latest query
  to our premium members as to which upcoming MMOG they wanted to hear
  more about for our next VIP interview. With a lengthy list of
  reader-submitted questions in hand, our PAX 2009 ground crew made their
  way to the LucasArts Cantina where they had the opportunity to discuss
  the game with producer Jake Neri from LucasArts and producer Blaine
  Christine from BioWare Austin.
• href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gordon_walton/interview">Pre-AGDC
  Interview with Star Wars: The Old Republic's Gordon
  Walton
  Gordon
  Walton is a name that has been around the gaming industry for a long
  time. He has worked for several major game developers and been involved
  in the AGDC (Austin Game Developers Conference) regularly. Ten Ton
  Hammer recently caught up to Gordon Walton prior to this year's AGDC to
  get his views on online gaming, the MMOG game space, and how he feels
  the AGDC can benefit developers and the industry.
• Aion
  Asmodian Female Emotes Video
  After we posted our last Aion Emotes Video for male Elyos, many members
  of our community wanted to see what the female emotes looked like. This
  week we are giving the people what they wanted. We have put together a
  video to give you a look at the emotes for Asmodian females.
• href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aion/guides/world/altgard">Aion
  Altgard Zone Guide
  Aion's Asmodian characters, newly ascended and ready to tackled the big
  and wild world of Atreia, set out to Altgard to test their skills and
  rid the world of undesirables.  This is no easy task for the
  young Daeva and each player will need every tool available to them in
  order to succeed in their adventures.  Our Altgard Zone Guide
  is such a tool!  To ease your passage through unknown lands,
  keep this guide handy for quest help and tips that will make your early
  level days far less painful.
• Torchlight
  Vanquisher Teaser Video
  Torchlight is gearing up for a launch in October, and the teaser
  trailers are in. As much as we'd like to horde the videos for
  ourselves, we just couldn't do that to you. In this video you'll see
  the Vanquisher in action as she wrecks her enemies. She's the
  sharp-shooting class of the game, but she ain't no William Tell. Forget
  the apple, she aims for the face.
• World
  of Warcraft Editorial - Are PTRs a Good Thing?
  Public Test Realms (PTR) have become Blizzard’s primary method to test
  new content before its release to ensure that everything is ready for
  public consumption.  Players swarm to the PTR to look at every
  aspect of the game that is changing and very rapidly analyze, digest
  and then regurgitate the changes back to other players in easy to
  handle chunks of information.  Is this a good thing for most
  players though?  Should content be available before
  release?  Byron “Messiah” Mudry asks the question “Are PTRs a
  good thing?”

Hottest Content:

1. Star
   Wars: The Old Republic VIP Interview from PAX 2009
2. Global
   Agenda - Two New Maps & Female Character Models Video
3. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/gordon_walton/interview">Pre-AGDC
   Interview with Star Wars: The Old Republic's Gordon
   Walton
4. An
   In-Game Tour of Jumpgate Evolution with NetDevil's
   Scott Brown (video)
5. First
   Ever Look at PvP in The Secret World
6. Aion
   Asmodian Female Emotes Video
7. The
   Thrill of Success – An Interview with Perfect World
   Developers
8. Aion's
   Lani Blazier on 1.5, Pre-Launch Improvements, and More
9. EVE
   Online - Sins of a Solar Spymaster #26 – The Doomsday Epitaph
10. Fallen
    Earth: Exclusive Interview on Factions, Beta and Beyond

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