Welcome to the 839th Edition of Loading...

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Daily Column

Loading... it's like a bug free MMOG.

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 - 52 BPM
  3. Lord of the Rings Online - 20 BPM
  4. EverQuest 2 - 17 BPM
  5. Warhammer Online - 15 BPM
  6. EVE Online - 13 BPM
  7. Vanguard - 11 BPM
  8. Guild Wars - 10 BPM
  9. Lineage 2 - 9 BPM
  10. Dungeons and Dragons Online - 9 BPM

Developers are people too. Today we get personal with April Burba, Associate Producer on Tabula Rasa.

1. What brand of computer do you use? At work? Dell. At home? Homebrew.
2. If you could live anywhere, where would you live? I like it here in Austin just fine.
3. What is your favorite food? I don't know, I haven't tried everything yet. I do have an awful lot of Indian and sushi it seems.
4. What brand/model of vehicle do you drive? PT Cruiser [Ed: now a mustang?]
5. Who is your favorite industry personality? Jack Thompson. Laughter is good for the soul.
6. When was the last time that you cried? Watching Saving Private Ryan this weekend. I'm a movie crier.
7. Do you have pets? If so, what are they? Names? Yup - Cats. Davey and Bosco.
8. The time you remember most when a teacher yelled at you. I don't ever recall a teacher yelling at me, but I find it educational that the TTH staff is asking this question.
9. Favorite candy bar? - Again - I haven't tried them all so I am not sure yet. Kinder eggs are cool though.
10. What games did you play in the last week? Tabula Rasa, WoW, some web based flash games and some really bad sim/tycoon games that will remain unnamed. Why are most of these sim games so freakin bad?
11. Favorite Cereal - Steel cut oats.
12. What are your hobbies? Running, crossfit, metafilter, movies.
13. Where did you grow up? Austin.
14. What is the last YouTube video that you watched? That Chocolate Rain video. I have since sworn off YouTube.
15. What is your favorite TV show? The Closer.
16. Oprah or Springer? Oprah.
17. Dogs or cats? Cats.
18. What is the first MMOG or MUD that you ever played? UO.
19. You have been chosen to represent the human race, aliens pick you up and bring you to their leader, your first sentence is? Depends on if they brought me to their leader willingly or not.
20. Benny Hill...genius or idiot? *shrugs*
21. Favorite Looney Tunes line.... What a maroon.
22. What is the first game that you ever worked on? *duh dah duh duh, duh duh da da!* /Paragon theme song
23. Coffee or Tea? *looks at you* Srsly. It's in my name.
24. Cake or Pie or Pi? Pie!
25. What is your favorite sport to watch? Live? Hockey. TV? Football.
26. What is your favorite sport to play? Four Square.

And Finally….

27. The Universe decides you hold all the cards....what's your first move? Hold on- I am still organizing my cards....

Thanks April!

And thanks to Jørgen Tharaldsen, Product Director at Funcom for also answering some questions. The questions fired at him were a little more serious, revolving around the release of Age of Conan.

"We won’t be as hard on the circuit as last year as we don’t have new stuff to show quite yet, but we will be at E3 for sure, and perhaps Comic-Con to some degree. Then we gear up towards Leipzig and DX10 stuff, and then Dragon*con in September with our yearly community gathering. We do have some stuff a LAN parties here and there. Hmm, adding it up, I guess we ARE doing a full round, at least compared to most gaming companies. "

While Garrett was shining a light in Jørgen's eyes and extracting the truth, Tony Jones was waterboarding Alan Crosby, Senior Director of Global Communications and Craig Dalrymple, Senior Community Manager of SOE.

"Craig was responsible for creating the panel on Managing Community Emergencies at ION Game Conference 2008 bringing his experience along with Alan and a few other seasoned community managers. It seemed appropriate to first define what a community emergency was. "Community is in an uproar; They are unhappy with the company for something they did," Alan begins, "It's very rare a community emergency is caused by the community itself. You either have to make changes, or be honest and forthright about why that situation happened." With events like Star Wars Galaxies NGE, very few companies can say they've handled such epic community uproars as SOE has."

We also interrogated Ali Aslanbaigi, Games Master at Hello Kitty Online (Coyote's favourite game).

"A player can own up to 3 pets, but only one of them can be active. Pets come from using pet cards. Pet cards are found on the respective monsters, so if you want a scorpion pet you would go around clobbering scorpions until the pet card drops. If you already have three pets and you get a new pet card, you will have to release one of your other pets if you want to use the new one. At this time once a pet is released it is gone forever. We are considering ideas to allow players to own more than 3 pets, such as pet nurseries where you can drop off pets for storage, or the possibility of leaving one of your pets to look after your farm while you're out questing."

I couldn't mention Coyote without pointing you to his recent article, 'Free to Play MMOGs: Can You Afford Them?'

"Like the stripper with glitter lipstick that seems to be truly into you, they're there for one reason only; to get your money. The MMOG doesn't love you, and it isn't connecting to you on a "real" level. What you have isn't magic or special, it is a business arrangement. Proclaiming anything that tries to counter this obvious truth will just get you laughed at by your buddies and teased mercilessly. "

There you have it, Loading... for Friday. Enjoy your weekend!

That's it for today! 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. ]

17 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 277 in May! 1296 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today

Interviews

Previews

Forums

Op/Eds

Community

Guides

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to

  1. Age of Conan: Post-Launch Exclusive with Jørgen Tharaldsen
  2. Age of Conan: Clan Soup with Veritas Aequitas
  3. ION Game Conference: SOE's Alan Crosby and Craig Dalrymple
  4. Free to Play MMOGs: Can you afford them?
  5. The Top 20 Influencers of the MMOG Industry
  6. Warhammer Online: Collector's Editions - Hot or Not?
  7. Age of Conan: Post-Launch with Erling Ellingsen
  8. Champions Online: Associate Producer Dennis Adams

Real World News

Thanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com. Thanks to Phil Comeau for doing the heavy lifting with the links.

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

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

About The Author

Dissecting and distilling the game industry since 1994. Lover of family time, youth hockey, eSports, and the game industry in general.

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