Loading... 2008 in review: PotBS and AoC

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Loading... 2008 in review: PotBS and AoC

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Posted January 2nd, 2009 by Ethec

#986 - A look back at two of 2008's biggest releases.

Welcome to the 986th 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 and Ten Ton Hammer excusives 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 (What is Pulse?).

We've begun importing EQ2 and LotRO articles from our aging community sites to the new CMS, so you'll see some of our community site supported articles finally getting their due with new, more accurate counts.

Here's today's top 5 Pulse results:

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 this month :

EverQuest (UP 22 to no. 9)
Requiem: Bloodymare (down 8 to no. 14)
EVE Online (UP 7 to no. 8)

Loading... Daily

Loading... the chase-away for the holiday hangover.

I hope you've all recovered adequately from your New Year's celebrations. I can't tell if I'm getting older or if it's just the spirit of the age, but ours was even more subdued than in previous years. It was Dick Clark's Painfully Botoxified New Year show (yes I know he had a stroke, so did my dad, but my dad both the wrinkles on his face after the stroke and can still smile), one glass of champagne, and bedtime this year. Most people I know didn't go out either. Scary.

It's interesting how the past is coming back to haunt us as we enter the new year. First, Pirates of the Burning Sea's patch 1.11 came out on Tuesday, addressing many of the holdover avatar combat problems that have plagued the nearly one-year old game (on January 22nd) since launch. Now player-run ports (hinted at in a GenCon interview with Rusty Williams last summer) seem to be the final piece of the puzzle remaining before FLS can look toward a major content expansion and start building some well-deserved expansion excitement around the game.

I'll admit that I have a soft spot for Pirates of the Burning Sea. Grown organically by a small team with a comparatively small budget over a long stretch of time, I view games like it and EVE Online as a bellwether to determine whether or not niche MMOs have a prayer against big money developers and publishers trying to cash in on mass appeal and / or major licenses.

For another blast from the past, Funcom released a handful of Age of Conan DirectX 10 screenshots. DX10 is now on test, scheduled to go live soon to (at long last) fulfill a box promise. Unlike many, I'm not sure that mid-game hurt AoC as much as everyone let on - I mean, to those who've played both, can you honestly say that AoC's 20-40 was worse than WoW's 35-67 pre-RAF and accelerated leveling? To my mind, the problem was that the carrot on the stick - endgame PvP - wasn't fleshed out early on and never captured players' imaginations enough to make the mid-game doldrums worthwhile. The real proving ground will come with the next expansion, which we've seen only the barest glimpse of (no pun intended) at Leipzig.

Comments, thoughts, questions? Share them in the Loading... forum, or email me directly if you're shy.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our /OOC (Off Topic) Forum

Romanian Rise of Power

What do vampires, zombies, and caped porn stars named Vlad have to do with the Romanian Rise of Power? Nothing. Well, except for the vampire angle--there's an obvious connection there. And maybe the Vlad thing, too. But otherwise, this is just how the denizens of the Ten Ton Hammer community derail weird and mostly pointless threads by pseudo-spammers in our forum.

Read this thread carefully so that you're thoroughly prepared for the impending Vampire/Zombie Apocalypse. It's coming, I assure you, and only those who have made ready will survive.

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Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"I dig the whole scene over there. It's always been my life long dream to become a porn star, and in my dream my back story has always been that I'm a mysterious caped man from Romania named Vlad."

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

6 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 6 in January! 6 in 2009! Creepy!

Special props to the Ten Ton Hammer writers, who produced a staggering 3,158 articles (8.5 a day, enough to fill a small hometown newspaper) .

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