Welcome to the 1,155th edition of Loading...
Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and
commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.
What's the biggest mistake today's MMOs make at launch? Is it
letting players get burnt out on beta? Not putting enough work into the
endgame? Too many servers? I tend to think it's something much
easier to fix or prevent than any other content related issue. It's
something I've seen before and I continue to see it with the first two
top tier MMOs we've seen roll off this line in the past month. What is
it? Check out Loading... Worst Foot Forward to see!
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:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/41"
target="_blank">World of Warcraft -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/860">Champions
Online -
EverQuest
2 -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/115">Age of
Conan (UP 1) -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/254">Aion
(down 1)
Biggest Movers today :
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/175"
target="_blank">Lineage
2 (UP 1 to #15) -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/47">Guild
Wars (UP 1 to #16) -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/38"
target="_blank">EverQuest href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/38"
target="_blank"> (UP 1 to #17)
MMO Releases
- 7/21-
FFXI
"Moogle Kupo d'Etat" Addon (release date) -
8/4 -
World
of Warcraft Update 3.2 (content patch) size="-1"> - 8/25
- CrimeCraft
(release date)
Important
Dates
- 9/4 - 9/6
- Penny Arcade Expo
(PAX) - 9/15 -
9/18 - GDC
Austin - 10/1 -
10/3 - href="http://fanfest.eveonline.com/">EVE FanFest
Releases
- 9/1 -
Champions
Online (release date) - 9/9
- Dungeons
& Dragons Online Unlimited (release date) - 9/15
- 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
A lot of people say that graphics don't matter as much as good
gameplay, and that's true to an extent. But good graphics do matter,
largely because it's one of those rare criteria that you, your
girlfriend, and your grandma can summarily judge in just a few minutes
of watching someone play the game.
And whether you like your graphics stylized or photorealistic, many
games have made huge strides with graphics in the past few years. Case
in point, I actually tricked a visiting family member into thinking
there
was a football game on television last weekend with Madden 10
demo reel last week. WoW's graphics, once thought immune to
the constant pressure for more polygons due to clever and extremely
efficient art direction, is going back to the drawing board with
Cataclysm. In addition to subtle improvements to the water and
landscape, According
to J. Allen Brack, Lead Producer, the four new races (Blood
Elves and Draenei with Burning Crusade, Worgen and Goblin with
Cataclym) simply put (or will put) the vanilla WoW human character
model to shame. Blizzard's currently looking at a way to up the
character model graphics without disappointing those that feel a
certain attachment to the old model set.
Some MMOs (LotRO,
DDO,
and Vanguard
for three) have made marketing hay over DirectX 10 support, and DDO,
for example, does look noticeably better with how shadows flow over
moving characters, for example. But
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/41708">Age of Conan,
ever the whipping boy for DX10 promises gone temporarily bad, made the
Vista-born feature something of a blue-baller among gamers. No one can
slight Aion's
visuals, for example, even though the game's entirely done in the much
more widely adopted and relatively bug-free DX9.
But, regardless of DX9 or DX10 (or DX11 for that matter, with Windows 7
coming out on
href="http://windows7news.com/tag/windows-7-release-date/">October
22nd), graphics in most of today's MMOs leave at least one
thing to be desired. With hundreds of thousands of man
hours invested in art and animation for today's top-tier MMOs,
you'd think game developers would want to put their best foot forward
on that special moment of moments, that very first time you login and
see this completely new game world for the very first time. Not so.
When I logged into the last release and pre-release (
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1012">CrimeCraft
and Champions
Online), I was greeted with high-performing yet painfully
fuzzed-out 1024x768 resolution, made ever more crappy by my 30"
monitor. No wonder people think these games look hopelessly out of date
at launch. It's easily remedied by a quick trip to the options
-> graphics settings screen (and glorious über-HD 2048x1536),
but first impressions are everything nowadays.
I seem to recall that EverQuest
2, to SOE's immense credit, promptly implemented a feature
that checked your framerate and punched up the graphics a bit if you
had power to spare. Correct me if I'm wrong, active EQ2 players, but if
you were in a raid environment where tons of spell effects were
painfully slowing down out your machine, it automatically tamed down
the graphics settings to get you to a playable framerate. Best of all,
you can turn it off if you just plain want to slog through poor
framerates to see the shinies. Good thinking, SOE.
Like developers need one more thing to do in the launch crunch, but I
can't help but think that some kind of conservative graphics matching
for available hardware is a necessity for today's MMOs. More adept
users will continue to tweak the settings, but please, please establish
a good looking baseline. Everyone wants the most out of the hardware
they paid good money for, and in my opinion it's a pretty extreme
disservice to your game if you're rendering it on the bottomfeeder
1024w resolution out of the box. (With all apologies to the min-spec
folks and laptop gaming crowd - I'm sure 1024x768 looks mindblowingly
awesome on your netbook.)
What say you? Has changing up the graphics settings in an MMO out of
the box been like getting a much needed pair of new glasses? Has
increased resolution ever significantly improved your first impressions
of a game? Share your thoughts
and ideas in our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45887">Loading...
forum.
Shayalyn's Epic Thread of
the Day
From our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=139">WoW:
General Discussion Forum
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45846">You're
a bad person, no really think about it.
Our
World of Warcraft community manager, Xerin, says you're a bad person.
Really really really. "Let's look at the bad things you've done," he
says. "You tortured a poor servant of Malygos for having a different
opinion
about magic. You caused him severe pain to get information out of him."
He may have a point there.
"You've got more blood on your weapons than most. By the time you reach
level sixty you'll have killed thousands of different sentient beings."
And again.
Things aren't looking good for you. Head over to our WoW forum to
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=45846">redeem
your soul before it's too late.
==============================
Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread
"I think someone needs a
hug...."
- Raxter54
==============================
Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=32559">Tell
us!
4 new MMOG home-grown articles today, many from
BlizzCon! 82 in August!
942 in
2009!
New Coverage and Guides At Ten Ton Hammer Today
Features:
-
Exclusive
Champions Online Launch Interview with Bill Roper
The
last few days leading up to a major MMOG launch is an exciting time for
the developers and fans alike, and Champions Online is no exception.
Ten Ton Hammer recently had the opportunity to sit down with Bill Roper
to discuss the end of the open beta, the importance of player feedback
and what kind of content updates players can look forward to once the
game officially launches on September 1st, including a sneak peak at
the Blood Moon event coming this October. -
WoW:
Cataclysm Q&A with Lead Producer J. Allen Brack
Ten Ton Hammer and a number of fansites and community representatives
were invited to a Blizzard press conference with J. Allen Brack, Lead
Producer on World of Warcraft. We had a chance to voice a few questions
from our WoW community as Brack touched on a number of hotbutton and
general interest topics for WoW players. In addition to the standard
questions about lore, raid difficulty, the Warcraft movie, of
particular interest were Brack's responses regarding the mood inside
the studio after news of Cataclysm leaked out weeks before BlizzCon,
level 80 accounts sold and "laundered" by a Battle.net merge, and why
levels 1-5 weren't playable for Worgen and Goblin characters at
BlizzCon. -
Final
Fantasy XI: Moogle Kupo d'Etat Walkthrough Tour
With Final Fantasy XIV on the way, many gamers have turned their
attention back to Square Enix and their previous MMO offering Final
Fantasy XI. Luckily, the folks at Square Enix have just released their
latest major content addition to FFXI in the form of a Moogle Kupo
d'Etat: Evil in Small Doses. The Ten Ton Hammer staff recently had the
opportunity to check out the content included in this mini-expansion
and were intrigued by what they found. -
Aion
Class Preview - The Cleric
We continue our look at the specific classes of Aion this week with the
second of the Priest archetype choices - The Cleric. Choosing which
path to follow when you come to that fork in the road will shape your
game experience like few others. Make sure you have all the knowledge
to make the choice that fits your play style best. -
DC
Universe Online Reveals the Green Lantern
New screenshots from Sony Online Entertainment's superhero-based MMOG,
DC Universe Online has been released showing the Green Lantern in
action. The new screenshots show some of the Green Lantern's powers as
he displays them against several enemies within the created world of DC
Universe Online.
Giveaways:
-
Fallen
Earth Beta Key Giveaway
Just a few days remain for the Fallen Earth open beta, so seize
your chance to test out the game prior to launch with a key from Ten
Ton Hammer! - Two more Ten Ton Hammer beta key giveaways begin
tomorrow!
Hottest Content:
-
Exclusive
Champions Online Launch Interview with Bill Roper -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/blizzcon09">BlizzCon
2009 href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/blizzcon09">
Coverage Portal - Final
Fantasy XI: Moogle Kupo d'Etat Walkthrough Tour - World
of Warcraft Cataclysm Q&A with J. Allen Brack - Aion
Class Preview - The Cleric - StarCraft
2 Preview from BlizzCon 2009 - Heroes
and Monsters in Diablo 3 - DC
Universe Online Reveals the Green Lantern - EVE
Online Sins of a Solar Spymaster #25 - Unholy Dust - Video:
Fan Impressions from style="font-weight: bold;">BlizzCon 2009
Real World News
(courtesy of Phil Comeau. Have some real world news Phil can mangle
into something funny? Send
it to him!)
-
href="http://news.yahoo.com/s/space/20090827/sc_space/deathraysfromspacehowbadarethey">Death
Rays from Space, and how they can kill you!
Death Ray insurance premiums skyrocket on the news. -
Cornhole
players prepare for big weekend
Tournament to be played on brand new Astroglideturf surface. -
href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/6098870/American-Pie-actor-Jason-Biggs-attacked-by-Gibraltar-ape.html">American
Pie actor Jason Biggs attacked by ape
I know its been ten years, but Stifflers Mom has really let herself
go.
Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
-Karen "Shayalyn" Herzberg and the Ten Ton Hammer team
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Champions Online Game Page.
