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Posted October 16th, 2008 by Ethec

Welcome to the 936th Edition of Loading...

If you aren't reading this in your e-mail, you could be. Sign up. Are you looking for gaming news? Look no further for all of the headlines. General industry news, right down to game specific and forum thread feeds are all yours as part of Ten Ton Hammer's RSS Feed . Enjoy!

The Pulse

First, you vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse.

World of Warcraft- 200 BPM
Warhammer Online - 92 BPM
Stargate Worlds - 42 BPM
Age of Conan - 25 BPM
EVE Online - 8 BPM
Lord of the Rings Online - 8 BPM
Tabula Rasa - 8 BPM
EverQuest 2 - 5 BPM
Atlantica Online - 4 BPM
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes - 4 BPM

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

Daily Column - Pirates of Space and Sea

Loading... unloading the best in MMOG news and entertainment since 2005.

Rounding out our BlizzCon coverage today, we have a number of BlizzCon impression and opinion pieces as well as a quick video interview with 38 Studios' Curt Schilling about Azeroth Advisor, a freebie newsletter that delivers custom advice for leveling your WoW characters. Ten Ton Hammer's Medeor found the service somewhat useful in its former $5 a month incarnation, so I might see if Azeroth Advisor can't toss a line to my shipwreck of late level 30 characters if I can tear myself away from WAR sometime soon. I'll let you know what I find out.

So we've shaken off our BlizzCon haze and, at long last, we have some news that doesn't involve Blizzard. EVE Online announced the "Quantum Rise" expansion yesterday, a free expansion that will showcase a number of improvements that corporations and industrial players have been anticipating for some time. Unfortunately, unlike the last major expansion, there's not a lot for new players.

Looking over the "Quantum Rise" expansion features list, the most surprising feature is the corp designed storefronts improvement, which goes along with CCP's plans to humanize EVE Online with the Ambulation Project, or the ability to walk around the stations you dock in. Unless the storefront changes go beyond the cosmetic (i.e. offer discounts to frequent ore customers and that sort of thing), I'm not sure this particular feature will be a big seller.

Not to be outdone, Pirates of the Burning Sea announced sweeping changes to avatar combat in a lengthy and lovingly crafted devlog. The animation problems that were the black mark on most of Burning Sea's reviews are long gone, and soon combat will work as intended. Would things have been better if melee combat was working perfectly at launch? Of course, but I don't think it hurts Burning Sea's chances of becoming a slowly, steadily growing fan favorite in the vein of EVE Online, notone bit.

Finally, site of the week! You might have noticed that I'm fighting an addition to SAT words, and now we have a site that may destroy me by feeding the hungry as you increase your vocabulary: FreeRice.com . If every Loading... subscriber answered 50 questions correctly (it takes about 5 minutes) we'd feed about 52 people for a week or one person for an entire year.

When you're done solving the world's problems, post your thoughts in the Loading... forum, or email me directly if you like.

Ten Ton Hammer Epic Thread of the Day

Sometimes they're funny; sometimes they're foolish; sometimes they're flaming; sometimes they're cool. Whatever this one happens to be, it's our Epic Thread of the Day.

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From our WAR: General Discussion Forum

Cross-server Scenarios (Poll)

Mikes wants to know if Warhammer Online players would like to see cross-server scenarios similar to the WoW "Drums of War" patch that introduced cross-server battlegrounds. Are cross-server scenarios the answer to long queues, or do they suck the personality out of a server community by making the virtual gene pool a little too large?

Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"It means you lose that sense of 'realm pride' that Mythic has been trying to promote (facing people whom you begin to recognize on the battlefield, etc.)"
- xenrik
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Do you have a favorite Epic Thread? Let us know!

22 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 180 in October! 2680 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]

BlizzCon 2008