EVE Online at Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMOG Gamers to the Next Level!

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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:

1. World of Warcraft
2. Warhammer Online
3. Lord of the Rings Online (UP 1)
4. Age of Conan (down 1)
5. EverQuest 2 (UP 5)

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today :

1. Mabinogi (UP 9 to #18)
2. Aion (down 4 to #14)
3. Darkfall (UP 4 to #16)

Loading... Daily

Loading... a one sided nerdfight delivered your inbox daily.

At a friend's place this weekend, my most recent nerdy battle of wits was brought to you by by my limited knowledge of Star Wars, quantities of good beer that can only be described as Canadian in proportion and distribution, and the age old debate over whether the body of fiction surrounding George Lucas's masterpiece better fits sci-fi or fantasy. Things quickly devolved into an exercise in slurred semantics: does space travel automatically categorize a story as sci-fi? Does magic do the same for fantasy? Does it matter, or as most devs suggest, is a good story just a good story no matter how we attempt to shoebox it?

A good story is a good story is a good story, but there has to be a good reason that sci-fi outdoes high fantasy at the box office nine times out of ten at the box office, yet fantasy reverse the stat when we look at how many MMO gamers are playing one or the other. The conincidence is, I believe, too much to chalk up to successes and failings of individual movies and games.

British scientist and science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke might be able to help us out here. (You've probably experienced his work even if the name doesn't ring a bell - his short story "The Sentinal" became was adapted as a screenplay for Stanley Kubrick's capstone film "2001: A Space Odyssey".) He was asked to define what exactly makes a work science fiction as opposed to fantasy. He subscribed to an "operational definition," saying that "fantasy is something that can't happen but you probably want it to, science-fiction is something that can happen, but you probably don't want it to."

Sci-fi makes for great Hollywood because the typical sci-fi movie is full of interesting conflicts that you wouldn't want to happen to you or yours - look no further than the typical zombie or survival horror in space flick. Fantasy typically makes for such crappy movies in anything with over a PG rating that we can easily pick out the notable exceptions, like the Lord of the Rings movies, .5 of two Conan movies, and The Princess Bride. Yet fantasy makes for a comfortable setting to live in - the central conflicts are typically looming and largely impersonal instead of in-your-face like a homicidal, mind-controlling computer or ravening horde of zombies.

I'll suggest that a sci-fi MMORPG has to go fantasy-ish (SW:TOR), go highly accessible yet group- and guild-able (Jumpgate Evolution, I hope), or go long-term (EVE Online) to draw a crowd, but what really got me started on this line of thought was RadarX's retrospective on EverQuest. A friend introduced me to EQ not by describing game mechanics, number of classes, the depth of character customization, graphics, gameplay, lasting appeal, or any of the benchmarks we use nowadays to review a game, but by describing his desire to climb a mountain and check out the sunset over the ocean from a particular vantage point after a long, hard game day of what we would call grinding today.

There were plenty of "explorer highs" in my years of EQ that followed and I bet if WoW was your first MMO you might be able to say the same, but I don't think I could have that kind of with a sci-fi MMO. Worldyness (or maybe "Earthyness," despite magic, archaic weapons, orcs and elves) was important to me back then and I don't think that's changed. I'll still play as many sci-fi games as I can, but it's hard for me to live in that world, or those planets, or that universe and that space.

Have your say in the Loading... forum, or have your way with my newly cleaned out inbox.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

...will return tomorrow!

7 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 103 in January! 103 in 2009!

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

Previews

• Holic Online

Features

• Top Ten Free-To-Play Games: Car Shopping
• EverQuest: A Return to Norrath

Community

• Geeked: "Jimmy's Plea"

Guides

• World of Warcraft: Gearing up the Warrior
• World of Warcraft: Selecting Talents for the Death Knight
• World of Warcraft: Selecting Talents for the Druid

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

1. Geeked: "Jimmy's Plea"
2. Top Ten Free-To-Play Games: Car Shopping
3. EverQuest: A Return to Norrath
4. Preview of Holic Online
5. In the Trenches: The Draw of the World of Warcraft Arena
6. Loading... Live Episode #3: "In the year 2009..."
7. Goob & Begud: "Out of the Bag"
8. Age of Conan: Server Merges - Is the sky falling?
9. Forever Fantasy: Replaying the Older Games
10. Review of FusionFall

Real World News

• Gold tooth missing after crutch attack
  Case is being handled by the Canine unit.
• Racooon mangles Russian man's penis when he attempts rape
  Friends say the damage is fitting, since he's always been full of half-cocked ideas.
• Man sought in bus stop heists
  Police are still unclear as to why someone would steal bus stops.
  
  

Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!

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