Loading... The Great Equalizer

Welcome to the 1,027th 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 for today:

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 for today :

Star Trek Online (UP 21 to #11)
Jumpgate Evolution (UP 11 to #13)
Runes of Magic (down 5 to #12)

Loading... Daily

Loading... has never been a victim of its own celebrity.

An entire media industry is devoted to celebrity gossip, but why? What drives people to fall over themselves for the ins and outs of the Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt saga? Psychologists have a couple theories: people want to live vicariously through the people they idolize, they want to displace their very real problems with those of a troubled celebrity and somehow add significance to their lives. Or they just want to absorb some of the style and flair through a kind of gossip rag osmosis.

I'd like to think we're better intentioned when we read about celebrities that play MMOs. There's always going to be the product endorsement effect: someone well known thinks my hobby is cool and that helps me validate I'm putting into this character. But I think the predominant effect is more "everyman" in nature - it's interesting to think that people with busy high-profile lives make time for gaming. Except for the obvious difference in income (and female attention), maybe we're not so different after all.

MMOs, unlike Michael Jordan Nikes or Tiger Woods Titleists, are something that's open to any age or walk of life. MMOs are the great equalizer, where it doesn't matter what social caste you belong to as long as you can hold your own in a group or guildchat. You can be as anonymous or extroverted about it as you want to be, and we've talked to (and even gamed alongside) a few celebs that prefer to keep their hobby to themselves. Who can blame them? This is their escape from instant recognition and swarms of fans any time they try to grab a slice or go to a movie. We can sarcastically say, "Man, they have it rough," but I know that I would absolutely hate that kind of notoreity after a very short time.

NFL punter Chris Kluwe and Oscar-winning special effects man Steve Preeg may not be household names, but both have outed themselves as WoW players to the media, and we swept in for a quick interview. Cody did a great job in bringing out their personalities in this interviews; Kluwe as more of a scrappy competitive type and Preeg as more of the mild-mannered expert with plenty of geek cred.

Kluwe, in a move maybe inspired by the Lifelock commercial (where the protagonist and owner announced his social security number and defies anyone to steal his identity), went as far as offering up his character name and guild, and PC Gamer made his armory character page the centerpiece of their interview with him this month. Preeg, on the other hand, played some City of Heroes before becoming disenchanted with the endgame, and you can read more about his gaming history and why he's enjoying WoW in our latest WoW celebs article.

In other MMO news today, WAR patch 1.2 is out today with some major city siege improvements designed to get you into the endgame frey faster, the Bitter Rivals live event, and early access to the game's two new careers (does the term "careers" bother anyone else? "Classes" is dated, but sounds much less like work). Tabula Rasa posted a final transmission - the show's over, nothing to see folks. And with a week to EVE Online's biggest expansion ever, we have a new Chronicle that just goes to show why we think EVE Online has some of the best writing in any game, despite being known as a sandbox PvP blasterpiece. And, just in time for the movie, a Watchmen iPhone MMO? We must investigate.

Have a comment? Drop it off in the Loading... forum and come back for it later, or feel free to email me.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of
the Day

From our Star Trek Online Forum

No ship interiors at launch...

You
can hardly call yourself a gamer if it's escaped your notice that one
of the biggest sci-fi intellectual properties of all time has a MMOG in
the works: Star Trek Online. But since this game is being built by
Cryptic Studios, and not in a gigantic bay at Utopia Planitia (who
knows her Trek, huh? Huh?!), recapturing the authentic Star Trek
experience is something open to developer interpretation.

Interpretation isn't for everybody, it would seem. Some fans over at the STO forums
are troubled...not so much by tribbles, but by the knowledge that ship
interiors won't be part of the game at launch except during instanced
missions. With so much of the Star Trek action taking place in
shipboard locations like the bridge, the transporter room, and even ten
forward, fans are expressing frustrations that while they may be able
to do a lot of wandering around space in STO, wandering around the
decks of a starship doesn't seem like much of an option.

Will
your life feel incomplete if you can't stop by engineering or the
holodeck? Or are you satisfied with the idea of watching your ship
mostly from the outside? Vaebn has started a thread in our STO forum
for discussing this very topic, so tap your communicator and get yourself heard.

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

Awesome Quote from the
Epic Thread:

"While
I will still play the game, I think its a critical misjudgment of the
importance of the bridge on Star Trek. It's way too iconic to pass
over, and should have been launch content."

- loyaltrekie

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