Loading... A Christmas Carol

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The Pulse

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

Here's today's Pulse results:

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 this week :

Stargate Worlds (down 8 to no. 19)
Tabula Rasa (UP 7 to no. 6)
Lord of the Rings Online (UP 6 to no. 16)

Loading... Daily

Loading... ringing your bell this holiday season.

2009 promises to be a good year at the movies. Along with a new Terminator movie, we can look forward to The Watchmen and Dragonball flicks as well. One movie near and dear to our hearts will soon enter production, and I'm not necessarily talking about the Warcraft movie (which we haven't heard anything about in years).

Garrett scored an interview with Fredrik Malmberg, President and CEO of Paradox Entertainment, whose studios are gearing up to produce the first of a series of Conan movies. There are too many great quotes here to give you an idea of the scope of the article, but here's some nice props to Funcom:

"Funcom did a fantastic job in Age of Conan. I am doing everything in my power to involve their art director, Didrik Tollefsen, into the film project because I think the six years of thought he and his team put into the visuals really pop on the screen. In fact, I talked with the WETA Workshop guys and showed his stuff and they said it was on par with what they do."

Read the entire Conan movie Q&A to get more of a glimpse into the upcoming movie, it's a must-read for any Conan fan or anyone that likes a little depth in their action flick.

Christmas is almost upon us, and any number of seasonal flicks are already filling the airwaves. Among them are several adaptations of the 1843 Charles Dickens classic, A Christmas Carol. I was thinking last night that if the games and concepts swirling around the MMORPG industry could somehow be personified into characters in this tale, what would it look like? Here's what I came up with, you can probably do better:

Bob Cratchit - A no-brainer. Though I wouldn't liken the upper management at CME to Scrooge, working long hours without compensation and hoping for a miracle certainly sounds like the CME staff to me.
Tiny Tim - So if the CME employees are Bob Cratchit, the part of the goodhearted young cripple with plenty of life and potential ahead of him belongs to Stargate Worlds, or is that harsh?
Jacob Marley - Scrooge's long-passed business colleague could be any number of MMO masterminds in search of relevance to the post-WoW age, either offering their hard-won wisdom and hoping to spare new games the unnecessary trouble of their own bad ideas and failures, then quietly disappearing into other endeavors. Among them: Richard Bartle, Jessica Mulligan, and a newcomer to the gray shades, Richard Garriott.
Ebenezer Scrooge - The part of the greedy ne'er-do-well will be played by any number of vaporware MMO developers, who have squandered hundreds of millions of venture capital and have nothing to show for it. Unlike in the original tale, this central figure won't experience a dramatic change of heart, but fortunately for us the problem has largely taken care of itself. Unfortunately, not before the money dried up for some quality projects desperately in need of cash.
The Ghost of Christmas Past - Two MMORPGs influenced the development of today's MMOs to such a sweeping extent that its hard to find anything genuinely new about the MMOs that followed them. Ultima Online's hardcore open PvP bent and EverQuest's faithful adaptation of traditional RPG principles (not to mention the concept of epic loot, raids, and widespread adoption of Anarchy Online's approach to instancing) continues to haunt us. EVE Online will likely belong to the realm of heady influencers someday (for evidence, play Sins of a Solar Empire), but as EVE hasn't yet peaked, we'll hold off for now.
The Ghost of Christmas Present - Love it or hate it, no game does a better job of describing the MMORPG category as it stands today than World of Warcraft. WoW took every innovation that the industry ever produced and made it accessible to the mainstream gamer.
The Ghost of Christmas Future - The spectre of free-to-play games is upon us, and it remains to be seen whether they'll continue to raise the bar (Atlantica Online is extremely promising) or hover like carrion birds over subscription games, cashing in on their past successes but adding very little.

Where's the denoument where money finds quality, we bust the mold of the cliquish MMO and re-discover the richness of the community around us? This story won't have an ending and shouldn't have an ending for us lifelong gamers.

A wise person once told me that the true MMO gamer has two favorite games - the first MMO they played and the next MMO they want to play. While we're waiting for the next big thing, the category has grown to become diverse enough for us to have plenty of fun in the meantime.

The Loading... forum, or my inbox is always open for comments.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of
the Day

From our Tavern of the Ten Ton Hammer Forum

I want a better community!

Poor
Ottis; he came to Ten Ton Hammer seeking free advertising for his
little forum, and instead he had his post removed because our guidelines
say that blatant advertising is a no no. Honestly, we just don't want
to subject our forum community to advertising posted by every Tom,
Dick, and Harry (with emphasis on the Dick, perhaps), so we banish it
all with no exceptions.

Our pal Ottis the e-thug decided to
lodge a complaint. Determined to seek his fortune at Ten Ton Hammer, he
posted his plea for a better community while wearing some advertising
in his sig (which, incidentally, we do
allow, as long as the linked site doesn't contain anything illegal,
immoral, or "for sale"). Find out why Ottis is now our fanboy, and why
deer are vicious thug gangstas, in this enlightening...well, okay, it's
not enlightening, but this thread is entertaining.

Oh, and I do realize that I just gave Ottis's little site some free advertising. I ain't skeered.

=================================

Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread:

"i would like to say i am enjoying TTH more than i would have expected..."

- Ottis

=================================

Do you have a favorite Epic Thread? Let
us know!

6 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 152 in December! 3126 in 2008!

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

Interview

Exclusive Conan Movie Interview with Fredrik Malmberg

Community

Ten Ton Turnip Issue #3 - Happy Holidays!

Op/Eds

Gaming's Struggle for Survival in a Tough Economy

Guides

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:

Real World News

Man Pays $21K Property Taxes in Coins

Claims that he's established a new paradime for tax submissions
Airport Security Strip-Search Clown

Checkpoint staff claim he was acting funny
Woman buried in snow for 3 days found alive

Disappearance caused flurry of search activity, finding her alive hailed as miracle

Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!

-Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer team

To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our Anarchy Online Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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