Welcome
to the 1,323rd
edition
of Loading...
Loading... is the premier daily
MMOG news and commentary
newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.
Much like the changing
of the seasons in the northern hemisphere, the MMOG industry undergoes
an interesting cycle of sorts each year. Whether by coincidence or
design, it seems that just as temperatures finally start to rise beyond
the unpleasantness of late winter / early spring, things on the news
front begin heating up as well. The proof is certainly in the pudding
this week, and you can find all the details on what's hot today in
Loading... Spring Fervor
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
are today's top 5 Pulse results:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow">World
of Warcraft -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eq2">EverQuest
II -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/43">EVE
Online -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aoc">Age
of Conan -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/ddo">Dungeons
and
Dragons Online
Biggest
movers today:
-
size="-1">2/1
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/926">Global
Agenda (release date) -
size="-1">2/2
size="-1">
- Star
Trek Online (release date) -
size="-1">2/16
- href="http://everquest2.station.sony.com/expansions/sentinelsfate/index.vm">EverQuest
2: Sentinel's Fate (expansion) -
size="-1">2/16
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/81479"> LotRO:
Oath of the
Rangers (content update) -
size="-1">4/5
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83086">Pocket
Legends (iMMOG - release date)
Releases
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1004">
-
size="-1">April
2010 - href="http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/game_updates/issue_17/issue_17_overview.html?utm_source=COHemail&utm_medium=US&utm_campaign=banner">City
of Heroes - Issue 17: Dark Mirror -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">Spring 2010
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1801">Mytheon -
size="-1">Summer
2010 - href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/998">APB -
size="-1">TBA
2010 - href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2079">Final
Fantasy XIV size="-1">
size="-1">Upcoming
Events
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">6/15 -
6/17 - href="http://www.e3expo.com/">E3
Expo -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">6/25 -
6/27 - href="http://www.lfgexpo.com/">Looking
for Group
Expo -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">7/22 -
7/25 - href="http://www.comic-con.org/">Comic-Con
International -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">8/5 -
8/8 - href="http://events.station.sony.com/fanfaire/">SOE
Fan Faire 2010 -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">9/3 -
9/6 - href="http://www.dragoncon.org/">DragonCon -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">10/22 -
10/23 - href="http://us.blizzard.com/blizzcon/?rhtml=y">BlizzCon -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">2011: 3/24
-
3/26 - href="http://fanfest.eveonline.com/">CCP
FanFest
Hot
Announcements
color="#cc0000">HOT!
EverQuest
Underfoot All-In-One Giveaway - 20 Copies Available!
Ten
Ton Hammer is partnering with Sony Online Entertainment to offer you a
chance to win one of twenty EverQuest® Underfoot All-In-One
Compilation
Packs. For details and your free chance to win, follow the instructions
on the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/giveaways/eq_underfoot=">EverQuest
Underfoot Giveaway page. Good
luck!
color="#cc0000">HOT!
Guild Wars, Guild Wars 2 and City of Heroes This Weekend on Ten Ton
Hammer Live!
We have three guests booked for this Saturday's Ten Ton Hammer Live
podcast and they're all coming from NCsoft. Joining us will be Linsey
Murdock, lead of the Guild
Wars LIVE team, Eric
Flannum,
lead for Guild Wars 2,
and Melissa Bianco,
lead
developer of City of Heroes.
This is one episode you won't want to miss. href="http://media.omfg.fm:8000/stream.mp3.m3u">Tune
in live Saturday night
at 7pm EDT or catch it in the href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/podcasts/live">Ten
Ton Hammer Live archives when it
becomes available Sunday.
Loading... Daily
An interesting coincidence this year is that
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/sto">Star
Trek Online
launched on February
2nd - a date that any
self-respecting Pennsylvania native like yours truly knows as Groundhog
Day. If the MMOG industry had its own version of Punxsutawney Phil
emerging from Gobbler's Knob, it must have been insanely sunny on
STO's launch day, as it's taken a bit longer than
the traditional 6 weeks for our MMOG spring to swing into full gear
this year. Now that it's finally here though, man have things
suddenly gotten a whole lot more interesting.
Heading into this week I was already pretty hyped for the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/47">Guild
Wars
5
year anniversary. But to add fuel to the fire, on Monday ArenaNet
teased followers of
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/183">Guild
Wars
2
on Facebook with an
interesting update
stating, "Many of you know that the anniversary of the
original Guild Wars
is coming up. We have a few things up our
collective sleeves that we're going to talk about this
week." ArenaNet must have some pretty massive sleeves, as it
turns out they contained not only an excellent
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83838">design
manifesto, but
also the first major
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83864">gameplay
details and an Elementalist class reveal
for GW2.
While I'm on the subject of GW, be sure to tune in
this weekend for a very special episode of Ten Ton Hammer Live! This
week's guests include an all star lineup from NCsoft, so if
you're a fan of Guild Wars,
Guild Wars 2
or
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/140">City
of Heroes,
be sure to
href="http://media.omfg.fm:8000/stream.mp3.m3u" target="_blank">tune
in live at 7pm EDT. Or if your
weekend is already
booked solid, keep your eyes on the
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/podcasts/live">Ten
Ton Hammer Live archives for
the episode to become available this Sunday.
Not only do Guild Wars
fans have a lot to be excited about this week,
as Trion Worlds also opened the proverbial flood gates to reveal a ton
of new details on upcoming titles
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2035">Rift:
Planes of Telara
and
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2503">End
of
Nations.
Both games have
certainly grabbed my attention, tucked it
under their virtual arms, and are currently holding it captive which
I
really don't mind one bit. If you're curious to
understand why and haven't already had the chance to, be sure
to check out these hot features and exclusives fresh from the oven this
week:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/first_look">A
First Look at Rift: Planes
of Telara -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/end_of_nations/reveal">Massively
Military MMORTS
End of Nations Revealed -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/video/devdiary1">Rift:
Planes of Telara Dev
Diary Video #1: Telara - Nexus of
the Planes -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/end_of_nations/video/devdiary1">End
of Nations Dev Diary
Video #1: What is an MMORTS?
As you can see, the MMOG spring is finally in full swing this year.
Between Guild Wars 2,
Rift: Planes of Telara
and End of Nations,
gamers
have plenty to be excited about. Even the most jaded among us has to
admit that each of these three titles has the potential to finally
bring us out of the frigid temperatures of the post-WoW era.
Are you as excited to get your hands on these three titles as I am? Are
we finally witnessing the dawn of the next great era for MMOGs? Grab
your virtual pogo stick and hop on over to the Loading...
forums and let us know!
Shayalyn's Epic Thread of
the Day
From our href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=4">/OOC
(Off-topic) forum
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=40068">All
things bacon go here!
This
Epic Thread has been featured before, but it's still growing. Plus, I
was in the mood for a hearty breakfast this morning and all I could
really afford was the Frosted Mini Wheats we already had in the
cupboard. So, to those of you who have recently nommed this food of the
gods, and to those of you who crave it, I give you...bacon! From bacon
bandages to bacon booty to bacon bras, we've got it all.
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=40068">Sorry,
vegetarians.
==============================
Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread
"Food and women are two
pleasures I never mix. Especially bacon. What the hell is wrong with
you people? "
- unholyblackdeath
==============================
Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=32559">Tell
us!
New
and Exclusive Content
Today at Ten Ton Hammer
4 new Ten Ton Hammer
articles! 111 Ten Ton Hammer
features
in April! 470
in 2010!
FEATURED
COLUMN
D-Mail #2: Knee Jerk Reactions
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/features/dmail/2">http://www.tentonhammer.com/features/dmail/2
In
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/features/dmail">D-Mail
#1,
The Syndicate Guildmaster and CEO Sean "Dragons" Stalzer explained his
passion for building strong online communities and reasoned that these
communities and the "business brains" behind online games have many of
the same interests at heart. This week, in
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/features/dmail/2">D-Mail
#2: Knee Jerk Reactions,
Sean looks at how game developers can slow down ragequit-prone
guildmates before they do something rash, and do it through, of all
things, clever marketing gimmicks.
REVIEW
Cash Rules Everything Around Me
- A Look at Planet Calypso
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83891">http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83891
The
prevailing theme of 2010 has been one of free-to-play gaming and
microtransactions, and while we’ve focused much of our energy
on new
titles, one title has been making and breaking its own records since
late 2004. Planet Calypso is a subscriptionless MMOG that focuses on a
player driven gameplay experience and allows players to not only spend
limitless amounts of money in game, but to make money as well. Join Ten
Ton Hammers Jason “Medawky” Bolton as he explores
this war torn virtual
space and seeks to unlock the secrets of its economy.
EDITORIAL
Loremaster's Corner - Gnomes
and their Technologically Superior Role in Cataclysm
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/lore/gnomes_in_cataclysm">http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/lore/gnomes_in_cataclysm
Everyone loves the Gnome race in World of Warcraft. They're strong
allies of the Dwarves and the Alliance and provide the Alliance with
its much needed technological backing. Where did they come from and
what is their role in Cataclysm? Check out this week's Loremaster's
Corner to find out.
MEDIA
Star Trek Deep Space Nine Fleet
Action Video
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83876">http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83876
Deep
Space Nine (DS9) is one of the most iconic locations in the Star Trek
universe. Luckily, DS9 was included with the launch of Star Trek Online
and fleet action combat is available for the popular area. Cryptic
recently released a new video of the fleet action for DS9 that shows
how players will get to help defend the iconic location in both space
and from the inner station against some of the game's popular villains.
Today's
Hottest Articles, Guides, and Features
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/giveaways/eq_underfoot">EverQuest
Underfoot All-In-One Giveaway - 20 Copies Available! -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/syfy/interviews/rob_hill_on_action_mmo">The
Syfy Marriage of TV and Video Games - A Q&A with Trion
Worlds' Rob Hill -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83781">Microcosms:
Reinventing The Wheel – An
Alganon Re-Launch Sneak
Peak -
href="http://tentonhammer.com/rift/first_look">A
First Look at Rift:
Planes of Telara -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/end_of_nations/video/devdiary1">End
of Nations Dev Diary Video #1:
What is an MMORTS? -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/video/devdiary1">Rift:
Planes of Telara Dev Diary
Video #1: Telara - Nexus of the
Planes -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/end_of_nations/reveal">Command
& Conquer Creators Unveil Massively Military MMORTS: End
of Nations -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/podcasts/live/4">Ten
Ton Hammer Live Ep. 4 - Funcom's Erling Ellingsen Talks The
Secret World -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/starcraft2/reviews/heavens_devils_audiobook">StarCraft
II: Heaven's Devils Audiobook Review -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83664">Final
Fantasy XIV href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/83664">
Playable
Races Overview
Thanks
for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
- Reuben "Sardu" Waters
and
the Ten Ton Hammer team
To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Guild Wars Game Page.
