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Daily Column

Loading... the reason the Mars rover mission was such a success.

First, the Ten Ton Pulse, your finger on the beating heart of the MMOG industry.

If the Top 10 isn't enough, we now show the Top 20 and Top 50 lists as well, available to everyone on our homepage. (What is Pulse?)

1. Age of Conan - 200 BPM
2. World of Warcraft - 50 BPM
3. Lord of the Rings Online - 20 BPM
4. EverQuest 2 - 16 BPM
5. Lineage 2 - 16 BPM
6. Warhammer Online - 12 BPM
7. EVE Online - 10 BPM
8. Guild Wars - 10 BPM
9. Vanguard - 10 BPM
10. Tabula Rasa - 9 BPM

City of Heroes celebrated four years in service yesterday by having the staff wear nothing but capes to the office. Congratulations to NCSoft and the CoH team. Matt "Positron" Miller posted his thoughts regarding the four-year ride. Here is a snippet.

"I can’t tell you how excited I am for our game’s future, and although we have some major announcements yet to be made, one of the things I can talk about is a feature that we are planning. Similar in concept to our character creator, it allows you, the players, to create missions and story arcs for your characters and others to participate in. You’ll be able to pick the map, villain group, and objectives, as well as write the dialog and any clues needed for the missions. When you are satisfied with it, you can upload it and have other players across all servers play it and rate it. Fame will come to the players whose stories rate the best overall. It is features like these that we never dreamed of including when we first shipped, but are excited to be able to offer players very soon.

In the end I just want to send out a thanks to all of the players of City of Heroes and City of Villains. Everyone, from the veterans who have been with this game since it launched (and even earlier for some beta testers!) to the users who just subscribed last week, have made this the most fun game to work on in my seventeen years in the industry. I look forward to reviewing our accomplishments this time next year when we celebrate our 5th anniversary!" -- A Message From Positron [Full Version]

With the Age of Conan early start only 18 days away the speculation about what the game is truly like has reached hype-level 10 on a scale of one to five. The message forums, filled with their anonymous experts are bubbling over like cauldrons of molten lead, spilling into the Internet where hundreds of ill-conceived ideas are fired off randomly like so much buckshot from the barrel of a shotgun held by a drunken monkey.

Keen has attempted to distill the angst into something legible. I'll take a look at three of his points, offer my own and accept the apologies of everyone in the AoC community who disagrees. Let's get started, shall we?

1. PvE Raiding Gear That Influences PvP
   Shouldn't excelling in one channel of a game give you benefits in others? Players never cease their bellyaching about being forced to start over each time they formulate a decision to try a new advancement channel in a game, yet they also object each and every time that something gained from one channel affects another. If I am a hardcore PvE raider and I reap the rewards of shiny gear then why shouldn't it benefit me in PvP? I trudged 15 hours through the swamp of saliva to stand toe-to-claw with the Dragon Burninator and bested him. I now proudly wear his scales as my own armor. But, ....wait just a minute there pozey, you better check that armour at the door to the PvP area. The bouncers will hang it in the coat check. That's it, nice and naked. In you go. "Good luck in there", they proclaim.
   Likewise the PvP player who spends countless hours decapitating his foes is duly informed that his investment in the game will be no boon to him if he decides to group up with his guild to play PvE? Are you people thinking this through? Do you really believe this is the way that it should be? If so, then what you really want are linear games. You want Unreal Tournament in a fantasy setting, with levels, except you can't use the levels when you fight another player because that wouldn't be fair. Everyone has to, get this, start over. Games aren't fair. The entire point of a MMOG is to progress so that you get better. Players scream that they don't want a treadmill and then perfectly describe one as the thing that they really want. "We want to progress and be unique on a level playing field where everyone is the same." Huh?

   Shouldn't gear just be gear? If you don't want to PvP to get good gear for PvE or vice-versa then you don't have to. The bottom line is that nobody told any of you that when you paid your $15 a month you would get the best gear no matter how you chose to play the game. If you want that type of game then hop on over to a title with an item mall and buy what you want. If you all get the best loot in the game then it cheapens the experience for everyone.

2. Raiding Progression
   Naysayers call it a "treadmill", because they feel that they are playing without moving forward, or at least not at a speed that they believe is appropriate. Ironically, this is exactly what they have been asking for. Progression is one of the best carrots in MMOG design. I think of raiding progression much like a level in a side-scroller game. You don't get to try the next level until you complete this one. This is in essence where the sense of accomplishment comes from. Even the terminology of gamers points to this. "I beat that level". How many times have you heard or said that? Do you remember how you felt when you beat that tough level? I bet that you do. Do you remember those levels that you used cheat codes to bypass because you couldn't be bothered to play them out? Where did you get more joy? Case closed. What's that? You quit the game because you were frustrated that you couldn't progress? You may consider taking up bowling. Wait, that won't work, you'll never bowl 300. What about golf? Nope, you'll never go pro. It's going to be a long, tough life.
3. Only Hardcore Players Will Get The Best Gear
   Hooray! I'll never see the best gear, nor should I. See above. What happened to accomplishment? What happened to striving to excel in order to grasp the best that there is to offer? Games have truly become a window on society.
   

To those of you who don't agree with me, remember this, I accept your apology safe in the knowledge that I know you cannot build a game better than the AoC development team. If you could, you wouldn't be trolling message forums moaning about design decisions, you'd be doing something about them.

If you didn't click and read Keen's article, do it now. It's a good read.

Can't read? Your guide dog stumbled you into the right place. Our Age of Conan video with Jason Stone is posted. Maybe you'll even see yourself on camera if you were one of the lucky few who asked Jason a question at Comic Con.

I rambled, now it's your turn. The The Loading... forums await you. Do you feel the need to contact me personally with naughty pictures or derogatory comments? Here's my E-mail.

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10 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 253 in April! 1005 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today

Images/Video

• Age of Conan: Game Designer Jason Stone
• Warhammer Online: New Screenshots

Reviews

• Mabinogi Complete Review

Free to Play

• Bounty Bay Online Client @ Ten Ton Hammer

Developer Diary

• Lineage II: Hellbound Transformation

Podcasts

• Game Over: Episode 17 - Geektopia

Guides

• EverQuest 2: FAQ Update
• Tabula Rasa: Patch 1.7
• Vanguard: Necromancer Spell List Update
• World of Warcraft: Paladin Equipment Update

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to

1. Age of Conan: Game Designer Jason Stone
2. Game Over: Episode 17 - Geektopia
3. Bounty Bay Online Client @ Ten Ton Hammer
4. 38 Studios Presentation
5. World of Warcraft: Is the Arena PvP Tournament Worth Your Money?
6. Age of Conan: Joe 'Adus' Hegarty, AI Designer
7. Warhammer Online: Presentation Video (Extended for Premium Members)

Real World News

• 'Free Tibet' flags made in China
  
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  Game finally now has proven link to creating crime
• Wanted: 150 women to eat chocolate for a year
  
  Expected to fill equally fast, the 'Wanted: 150 men to watch free porn for a year' study
  
  
  

Thanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com. Thanks to Phil Comeau for doing the heavy lifting with the links, headlines and taglines!

- John "Boomjack" Hoskin and the Ten Ton Hammer Team