Loading... E3, The9 and Other Short Forms

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Daily Column

Loading... It's like a Champion's League shootout, every day.

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?)

Age of Conan - 200 BPM
World of Warcraft - 24 BPM
Lord of the Rings Online - 7 BPM
EverQuest 2 - 6 BPM
Warhammer Online - 5 BPM
EVE Online - 5 BPM
Guild Wars - 5 BPM
Lineage 2 - 4 BPM
Vanguard - 4 BPM
Dungeons and Dragons Online - 3 BPM

E3 was a monster of a show. It was loud, obnoxious and extravagant. The E3 of 2005 was perhaps the closest thing the game industry will ever see to the movie industry shenanigans that took place when that trade was enjoying years of explosive growth. The new E3 is a shell, a husk as it were. It's like knowing that you could be dancing with Jennifer Aniston, but all you can see is Rosie O'Donnell. Jennifer doesn't come around here no more.

Likewise, Vivendi and several other publishers have pulled out of E3 for 2008, some going as far as to remove themselves from the ESA. Rich Taylor, the Senior Vice President of Communications and Research for the ESA was kind enough to contact me with a comment from the ESA.

"While the Entertainment Software Association remains the preeminent voice for U.S. computer and video game publishers, we can confirm that Activision and Vivendi Games opted to discontinue their membership. The ESA remains dedicated to advancing our industry’s objectives such as protecting intellectual property, preserving First Amendment rights, and fostering a beneficial environment for the entire industry. Our high level of service and value to members and the larger industry remains unchanged."

The earthquake that hit China is a tragedy. There is no question of this. In typical heavy-handed fashion however, the Chinese government has made a decree that there be three days of mourning. Guess what? You can't make people mourn. Then again, maybe you can if you close down anything that they might be doing to distract themselves.

The9, the Chinese company responsible for operating World of Warcraft, Soul of The Ultimate Nation, Granado Espada, Joyful Journey West, and MU suspended operations of those games for three days. Are you kidding me? I bet the munitions plants are taking three days off. Oh, and why is SUN released in China and not in North America? It's been showing at E3 for so many years that the Webzen booth has a permanent Soul of The Ultimate Nation logo stickered to it. Meh. Imagine if Spartans lived in China. Would they take three days off? I think not.

My experience in Age of Conan thus far has been excellent. It's the first game that has kept me up past bedtime in a very long while. I'm still struggling to find out which class is right for me. I can't seem to get a good feel for their differences in the 1-15 levels, but other than that. It's been a blast. Ironically, I wasn't able to be added to the Ten Ton Hammer guild because I was always deemed to be 'offline' even when I was in-game and grouped with other guildies. I had to delete my character, restart it as a different class and then all was well. That was the only true game-stopping glitch that I have run into and I haven't heard of anyone else with that problem.

My interview, or rather the group interview with Andreas Öjerfors, the Quest Coordinator at Funcom is posted. It went all over the place, but it's a good read nonetheless. Cody and Tony attended the ION Conference where Scott Jennings of NCSoft and Joe Ybarra of FireSky / Cheyenne Mountain also stepped up to the plate and spilled the beans. Last, but certainly not least, Jeffrey Steefel of Turbine spent some time with us.

I don't like to toot our own horn, but cripes, despite my best efforts to turn this into a traveling clown rodeo, no other site anywhere, not GameSpot or IGN or any of the mega-sites comes close to the MMOG coverage that we provide. So far in 2008 we have produced 1,214 exclusive MMOG articles. Well done Ten Ton Hammer staff!

Until tomorrow. 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.

--
[A big thanks to Phil Comeau for putting together the links, headlines and taglines today. ]

11 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 195 in May! 1214 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today

Age of Conan Launch Event

Interviews

Previews

Requiem: Turan Race Preview

Community

Free-to-Play

Top 10 Free-to-Play Games - Week 5

Guides

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to

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Attendant in a Second Life peep show facility strangely absent

Thanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com. Thanks to Karen Hertzberg for doing the heavy lifting with the links.

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

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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