EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

TheMittani.com is not the first news site to attempt to dethrone EveNews24. EveSwarm, Eve Tribune and others have tried and failed. In each such case, manpower or lack thereof was to blame; the game is simply too complex for only a handful of people to cover without burning out inside of a week. EN24 got around this by RSS'ing a number of existing bloggers without regard for quality control; I've solved the problem by creating a massive staff. Where EN24 has three core writers and a number of blogs, TheMittani.com has a stable of more than 25 contributors and four coders ensuring that the site functions as if it was on an enterprise level.

As it happens, it wasn't my idea to name the site after myself. I'd gone through and discarded ideas such as 'Eve News Network' and 'Internet Spaceship News', but my editor-in-chief noted that we could leverage my infamy and social networking to get a jump on our competition. While a few people did rail against my supposed hubris for the name, the impact has been astounding - since launching on August 14th, we find ourselves already on track to breach one million pageviews in the first month, a level of engagement from the playerbase that we didn't expect to earn until after months of steady reportage. The comments section is particularly impressive; many of our articles have more than fifty comments each, and since stale memes, crapflooding, and LOLOLOL results in an instant blacklisting, the level of discourse is unlike anything available elsewhere.

Things are not all sunshine and roses, however. At launch we believed we would have a substantial amount of time to slowly grow our userbase and develop our editorial process; the sheer scale of the launch and the enthusiasm of the community has left the editorial team running around with their hair on fire trying ensure that the content which gets published gets out at the right time, with the right editing, and that we don't insult the intelligence of our users with pablum or a crapflood. Meanwhile, there is always the risk of bankrupting ourselves with hosting fees before we learn the basics of the business side of the site; while it would be reassuring the slap ourselves on the backs and say that this project has already passed its first test, such a declaration would be laughably premature.

If we do succeed, credit must be given where it's due: I am heavily indebted to my editor here at Ten Ton Hammer, Jeff Woleslagle, who has offered invaluable counsel and assistance as we've begun navigating the dangerous waters of the media. Wish us luck!