Loading... Holy Hell We Hit 1,000!

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Posted January 22nd, 2009 by Ethec

#1000 - The inevitable flashback edition of Loading...

Welcome to the 1,000th Edition of Loading...

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The Pulse

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 top 5 Pulse results:

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today :

Champions Online (down 13 to #18)
Aion (UP 7 to # 13)
Vanguard: Saga of Heroes (UP 4 to #9)

Loading... Daily

Loading... 1,000 Loadings. We are Legion.

Welcome to our very special millenial flashback edition of Loading... ::dreamlike shimmer, doodleoodleooo Wayne's World homage::

In the beginning (May 29th, 2005), there was a man, and no ordinary man. A man with a razor-sharp wit, a daily blog, and a crazy story about rampant power outages at E3 2005 and unplugging an ATM machine to power up two very expensive paperweights doubling as Alienware machines. Judging by our E3 2005 awards, the power outages that year must have scrambled more than our hulking laptops., but on the bright side, three of the four award-winners launched and two actually lived to see their second birthday.

When Loading... began, only 6 of the MMO titles in today's Pulse top 20 had been launched (WoW, EQ2, Guild Wars, Ultima Online, EVE Online, and Lineage 2) and another 13 hadn't even been announced. Guild Wars was a fan favorite in its second month of existence, but questions swirled as to whether Arena.net's revenue model was sustainable - turns out it was. Microtransaction gaming was still solely Asian territory, with games like MapleStory not yet published in North America and Europe. But in some ways the state of MMO gaming is much as it is today. The biggest evidence of this was World of Warcraft clear win in its short battle with EQ2, quintupling the old guard favorite and rising to a paltry two million subscribers. Loading... on the other hand, had 250 newslist subscribers and now has about 4,000, with about a half million unique views each month on the site. Clearly we're winning the percentage battle.

In any case, the aforementioned man of mystery wasn't me - I didn't write my first fill-in Loading... until the following September and didn't start to ruin the concept full-time until three years later. Almost every one of the previous 924 were done by John "Boomjack" Hoskin. Boomjack stopped by to share a few of his most memorable moments from the first three years of Loading...

Links or it didn't happen.

Most hate-mail ever - the first "Easter" Loading where I claimed that Easter was more violent than video games.
The first dev comment in Loading... was from.... drumroll please.... Brad McQuaid. Imagine that.

And the two most memorable Loading... moments?

Loading... readers hammering Rosie O'Donnell's blog until it closed down for the day.
Loading... readers changing hundreds of instances of "Hammer" to Ten Ton Hammer in Wikipedia.

Sadly, very little on the Internet lives forever, and owing to three site software changes and two different newsletter packages our archives only stretch back as far as May 3rd, 2006. If you can stomach the occasional busted formatting, you'll find plenty of nifty little time capsules as you browser through (Vanguarded, various E3 and Second Life rants, and the Top Ten Untapped MMOG Properties to name a few). Some nuggets, like MMOG Nascar Sponsorship, may prove to be portentous. And, of course, Boom's sense of humor is as fresh today as it ever was.

Have a favorite Loading...? Post the link in Loading... forum, or spam Boomjack's inbox with thanks and congratulations and notes of the "we want you back or else" variety.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our /OOC (Off Topic) Forum

Let's play! Xbox Live tags, Steam IDs, etc etc...

Maybe for you the excitement over Age of Conan and Warhammer Online has died down. WoW's still fun, but perhaps you're no longer obsessed and playing yourself into a coma. Other games, like Tabula Rasa, are on their way out...permanently. Let's face it, there's a fair chance that no MMOG's really floating your boat right now, and there aren't any major launches pending for a while. What to do?

It's okay, bunky--there are other ways to game socially when you're sans MMOG, and Mikes has come up with a great thread to help some of our community members connect. Head on over and post your Xbox Live, Steam, or other live gaming ID and hang out with some of the coolest people ever to clutch a controller.

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Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

No quote; it's all about the info.

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

6 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 92 in January! 92 in 2009!

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

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