Loading... Competitive by Nature, Casual by Necessity

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Updated Tue, Oct 13, 2009 by Shayalyn

Welcome to the 1,186th edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.

Greetings, Loading... fans! Karen "Shayalyn" Hertzberg here. I'll be handling Loading... for the next three days and holding down the Ten Ton Hammer fort while Ethec and the boys frolic...er, attend meetings...in Las Vegas. I wonder what trouble I can get into while they're gone. Send your Editor Gone Wild ideas to me at shayalyn@tentonhammer.com. And now, on to the business of MMOG commentary....

There's certainly a subset of MMO gamers who are ultra-competitive. These power gamers race to the level cap, duke it out endlessly in PvP to stay near the top of the leaderboards, and aren't satisfied with anything less than the best gear. But staying on top takes a great deal of time and commitment that the average MMO player, the one with a career and family life, just doesn't have. It's to those gamers, the ones who have competitive spirits yet lack the ability or willingness to let MMO gaming consume their lives, that I dedicate this issue of Loading... Competitive by Nature, Casual by Necessity.

The Pulse

You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is The Pulse?).

Here's today's top 5 Pulse results:

Biggest movers today:

City of Heroes (UP 9 to #19)
Star Trek Online (UP 2 to #17)
Lord of the Rings Online (UP 1 to #6)

Recent MMO Releases

8/25 - CrimeCraft (release date)
9/1 - Champions Online (release date)
9/9 - Dungeons & Dragons Online Unlimited (release date)
9/15 - Runes of Magic "The Elven Prophecy" (expansion)
9/22 - Fallen Earth (release date)
9/22 - Aion (release date)
10/8 - Cities XL (release date)

Upcoming Releases

11/3 - Dragon Age: Origins (release date)
12/1 - LotRO: Siege of Mirkwood (release date)
12/2 - DOFUS 2.0 (release date)
Early 2010 - APB

Important Dates

10/23 - 10/24 - Hero-Con

Loading... Daily

It’s about six or seven years ago. My family is gathered around our Xbox, playing the first game we ever bought for that console: Gauntlet Dark Legacy. My husband, son and I each have a controller in our hands and we’re slogging through yet another brutal dungeon, laying waste to our enemies. It’s great family entertainment.

I’m the Green Archer and, despite my son’s tanking talent as the Blue Warrior, I’m out in front cutting through everything in my path. My husband, the Red Wizard (read: Innately Squishy) is hanging back, scrambling around while the booming narrator’s voice declares, “Red Wizard needs food badly!”

“Take the fruit…” I say, rolling my eyes.

As we reach the end of this dungeon, the game racks up our kill counts and ranks us. This is the moment I wait for each and every round. “Who’s got the most kills?” I cry. “It’s the Green Archer! Booyah, baby! Boo-yah!”

“You’re so competitive,” my husband says, and now it’s his turn to roll his eyes.

What can I say? I have a competitive nature. Perhaps it’s because I was the first born in my family and I enjoy the position. Or maybe it’s that I was the only girl amongst male siblings and cousins and I felt the need to prove myself. Whatever the case may be, since childhood I’ve felt the need to be at the top of the ranks, whether those ranks were achieved by defeating everyone else at Scrabble, winning first place in the all-school writing competition, or scoring the highest kill count as the deadly Green Archer.

In my early days playing EverQuest, I felt the need to be at the top of my game, too. There was no ranking system in EQ, but it was important to me to be one of the top players in my guild--the one who was level-capped and wore the best gear. I liked that I my guild would call on me to organize raids. My little casual guild was by no means uber, but among my guildmates, I was a leader.

But then one day I went to the open house at my daughter’s school. Outside her first grade room a collection of the kids’ drawings hung on the wall, each picture labeled with careful first grader printing: MY FAMILY. I scanned the wall for my daughter’s art. She’d depicted her dad hunched over a crudely drawn PC. “My dad works on computers,” she’d written. I smiled, and then looked at her drawing of me, holding a sword and shield. “My mommy plays EverQuest.”

But, I run my own business! I thought. Why didn’t she say, “My mommy owns a business?” or “My mommy is a writer?” I cringed and slinked away, wondering what the other parents, not to mention my daughter’s teacher, must think. Instead of seeing me as a businesswoman, or even just a hardworking mom, my daughter identified me as an EQ player. That was my wakeup call, letting me know that my urge to be uber had led me to do too much gaming and, just maybe, not enough living.

Don’t get me wrong--I love gaming. And I still dearly love being the leader of the pack whenever I can be. But as the years progressed I learned that working, raising a family, and living a full life conflicted with being a power gamer. I learned to make my peace with the idea that I would never top any leaderboards, or score any server firsts, or rank among the first to reach the level cap in my MMOG of choice.

It’s actually taken me a while to find a game that could satisfy my need to feel uber while allowing me to remain the casual player that I know I must be. Right now, Aion is that game. Among my legion I’m certainly not at the top of the food chain--I’m a few levels behind the legion’s leaders, my gear is decent but not top-of-the-line, and my gathering skills are pitiful. And although this makes me twitch occasionally, struggling against the urge to throw family and career aside for a while so that I can blast my way to the top, I’m mostly okay with it. My character looks cool, her skills are epic, she fights like a well-oiled killing machine, and even if she’s not the best, she’s enough.

As I wander the forum community at Ten Ton Hammer I discover more and more that our readers and the people who frequent our community are much like me--they game for fun, and while they may have competitive urges, they’ve learned to temper them with responsibility. They are, for the most part, grownups, even though they might not want to be. They have families and careers. For them, MMO gaming provides some much-needed leisure time, but they’ve moved past the point where they use it to feed their competitive spirit. Like me, they’ve learned that an MMO can be enjoyable for the journey when you’re not among the elite who's willing or able to race to the destination.

And yet, if they’re anything like me, when it comes to a weekend game of Scrabble or Monopoly, or even a run through some multiplayer console game…all bets are off.

Booyah, baby! Boo-yah!

Are you a casual gamer in a competitive person’s body? Or have you always been laid back? Hit the Loading… forum to talk about it.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our Tavern of the Ten Ton Hammer forum

Dragon Age:Origins new game trailer sacred-ashes

Psyched about BioWare's Dragon Age? Yeah, so am I. OneEyeRed linked up the latest trailer from GameTrailers.com and it left our community members tingling with anticipation and, well...eh, just watch the trailer, be careful to keep your pants intact, and then head to the thread to comment.

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Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread

"Dangnammit One-eye! Thats another new set of pants you owe me. Yes, it was good for me."

-Anacche
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Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!

7 new Ten Ton Hammer MMOG features today! 62 in October! 2,010 in 2009!

Today's New Features & Guides

WoW Weekly Report - The Overpull "Battle.net Requirements and Cleave"
The Overpull, your World of Warcraft newsletter by Ten Ton Hammer, is once again bringing you all of the latest WoW news. This week we go into battle.net accounts, The Guild, in game tower defense addons, and a lot more.
The Rift Between Us - A Guide to Rifting in Aion
Using rifts, also known as "rifting" or "rift hopping," is becoming more and more popular as people are reaching higher levels in Aion. For people who love to PvP, it's a thrill being in enemy territory. Check out Ten Ton Hammer's guide to rifting and soon you'll be landing on your enemy's doorstep.
Runes of Magic – The Mage: A Beginner’s Guide
Free-to-Play games are a dime a dozen these days, but there are a few that rise above the pack. Runes of Magic is one of the few to make the grade. Accessibility, smooth graphics, and fun gameplay combine to make this one F2P game worth checking out. If you like playing classes of the finger-wiggling variety, Dalmarus has created this handy guide for Mages just stepping into RoM.
Champions Online - Celestial Powers Overview
Coming October 27th to Champions Online, the new Celestial power set offers players a wide variety of healing and support powers. William “JoBildo” Murphy takes a look at what’s been revealed of the set so far and offers his opinions on what it means for the game.
WoW: Knights of the Ebon Blade Reputation Guide
One of the many factions that you can earn reputation with in World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King, is the order called the Knights of the Ebon Blade. This group is made up of Death Knights who have made their home at the Ebon Hold in the Eastern Plaguelands. They also have bases at the Ebon Watch in Zul'Drak and the Shadow Vault in Icecrown. Byron "Messiah" Mudry tells WoW players how to gain reputation in this handy guide.
Halls of Stone / Halls of Lightning Achievement Guide
With the Wrath of the Lich king cycle for World of Warcraft almost complete, it is time for everyone to finish up all of their achievement goals. For many players that means finishing collecting all of the Heroic mode achievements. This guide walks you through getting all of the achievements in the two 5-player heroic instances located in Ulduar. Join Byron “Messiah” Mudry as he walks you through getting the eight achievements located in these two instances
DDO: Unlimited Sorrowdusk Isle Video
What do you get when you put undead, trolls, ogres, and other nasty creatures together on an island with an ancient evil? You get Sorrowdusk Isle, an adventure pack for Turbine's DDO: Unlimited. Check out this video of the Sorrowdusk Isle Adventure Pack that illustrates what this new content has to offer for the gamer on a budget.