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Posted March 6th, 2009 by Ethec

#1,030 - While you're not watching the watchmen, catch up on MMO news!

Welcome to the 1,030th Edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier MMORPG news and commentary daily newsletter from Ten Ton Hammer. Play World of Warcraft? Jay "Medeor" Johnson's weekly WoW newsletter "The Overpull" keeps you entertained and informed on all the latest developments in WoW. Sign up!

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 :

Global Agenda (UP 37 to #15)
Atlantica Online (UP 2 to #11)
City of Villains (down 2 to #13)

Loading... Daily

Loading... like Watchmen, is completely unfilmable.

We had a great Loading... Live chat with CCP's Arend Stührmann last night regarding the EVE Online Apocrypha expansion coming next Tuesday. I was surprised to learn that Arend, in addition to being project owner for EVE China, the CCP side of EVE Voice, and the Cider / Cedega projects that make EVE playable on Mac and Linux platforms, he's also heading up the wormhole concept. So naturally we discussed exploration in detail.

Most surprising to me was how wormholes can be used for PvP strategery, as a sort of temporary back door into enemy territory. That's if your scanning skills are strong enough to locate that wormhole in the first place, and every wormhole has a mass limit (in addition to its time limit) so leaders will have to decide what kind of force consist to send through - hundreds of frigates or just a few capital ships? A tip as revealed by Arend: fighters in hanger bays and drones don't count towards the wormhole mass total, so be sure to load up before you go in. As many MMOs grow stale in no time, EVE continues to get more and more interesting. But when you start with spreadsheets and core mechanics like mining, maybe there's no way to go but up. We'll have the transcript and audio up in time for expansion day, so watch for it.

WAR is now offering a free ten day trial. Is ten days enough to get you into the core of RvR? It all depends on what the 1-10 scene is like these days. It's sad to me that WAR has been historically so anti-mentoring / sidekicking; a game who's bread and butter is getting players involved with PvP as early as possible could do for some experienced help and leadership at the lowest levels. It wasn't until someone showed me the RvR ropes that I really saw the beauty of BO capturing and scenarios for what they were. That first quest that put me squarely in (the aptly named) Khaine's Embrace without a clue accomplished the opposite of what it was supposed to, I realized how much of a noob I was and avoided RvR until that theoretical day when I would feel "powerful enough." And that's just no way to play WAR, you just need to PvP with Paul Barnett-like abandon.

Pirates of the Burning Sea is inviting players to participate in a special test of the 1.13 skirmish system, a four team battle with a max of 48 ships, 12 per team - complete details and time here. Burning Sea already has a 14-day free trial (that's a bonus of four days over the WAR trial... call now!), so if you're looking for a new experience or want to check out the recent avatar combat changes, maybe this weekend is your chance. Age of sail sea combat in Empire: Total War has me wanting to check out how it compares to Pirates of the Burning Sea, how's that for a little genre cross-pollination? PC gamers are just one big happy family, no doubt.

A LotRO Book 7 dev diary from Sr. Desiginer Allan Maki reads a little deeper into Lord of the Rings Online's Book 7. One change I'm looking forward to is the ability to skip the tutorial and go straight to level 5. The opening sequence of a game should both set the tone for what sort of play experience I can expect and provide something to build off of. My problem with the tutorial of LotRO and Star Wars Galaxies is that Gimli, Legolas, and Han Solo are giving me quests and inflating my character's self-importance.

But when the tutorial ends, it's back to the same mundane lowbie quests, not quite "kill ten rats" but almost. It's the AoC Tortuga effect in miniature. Skipping the tutorial means I can finally play the game as what I am, a lowbie grunt that might have otherwise been splattered all over the parapet at Helm's Deep. I'm enitrely ok with working my way up to hero status, really I am.

Also in the news, Vanguard brings back "Ask a Dev", CCP's North American President sounds off on why retention rather than big numbers are key for games today, and Attack of the Show spoofs Dr. Manhattan (NSFW, unless you work someplace cool). I'd love to comment on those but I'm out of time. That shouldn't stop you: share your opinions on this week's news in the Loading... forum or feel free to email me.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our WoW: Rant Forum

Anti-rants

It's a lovely Friday here where I live. The sun is warm, the grass is...okay, well, the grass isn't green and the melting piles of snow are covered in black dirt, but other than that it's pretty damn skippy. So, today seems like a good day for a little peace, love, and anti-rants.

Stormbrjnger is the brjnger of anti-rants in this thread in our World of Warcraft forum. His intention? To "point out the good stuff as exuberantly as [we] do the bad." So bring your exuberance and your peaceful, Zen-like aura and tell us your fondest WoW memories. (And remember not to feed any passing trolls. There's always a damn troll, right?)

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Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"I was in the Borean Tundra trying to find some Cobalt ore to level my mining and to help out my DK who was leveling engineering. I saw a vein but had to fight off a few mobs to get to it, as you can imagine by the time I got there someone had flown in and was mining it. The guy saw me and realized what had just happened and asked if I was indeed a miner. I told him the story and he actually gave me the ore from the node. I was impressed."

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

9 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 151 in February! 287 in 2009!

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

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