MMO news, guides, reviews, features, interviews and more at Ten Ton Hammer

Ganked! Saturday edition.
Ethec here with a weekend lowdown segment that my hazy Saturday morning brain has decided to temporarily label "Ganked!" Ganked in MMOG circles means, generically, to get ripped off. If someone comes along and in one round obliterates the feeble blightrat you've been struggling to kill without mana for the last 3 hours, thus taking all the experience and loot, you've been ganked.
Just like you've been ganked if you came here hoping to see some fresh insights from our mutual friend, Boomjack. To that end, no worries. Boomjack will be back on Monday with the "Loading..." segment that makes us laugh, cry, and want to curdle into our MMOG news turtleshell with the sheer ridiculousness of it all.
For now your forced to see what I consider funny. I've received word that what I consider funny is currently being printed out, wadded up, and used in conjunction with duct tape to plug small holes in Scandanavian oil tankers. This is a happy development; I'm glad to be doing my part to help the environment.
Without any further ado, on to the real news you can't really use. You can't make this stuff up.

• Lemonade Stand Dispute Enters Arbitrage
  
  I'm beginning to think people like to make things complicated.
• Noise-Making CD Published for "Revenge on Your Neighbors" .
  
  Why not just pick up a couple "Kid Bop" CDs at Walmart instead?
• Dirty Names of Actual Cities.
  
  No, there is no actual "BFE". However, I actually mapquested the North American ones, and... yup.
• Women Sets Record for Most Chess Games (1,100) Played in 17 Hours.
  
  Man, with enough caffeine I could do that. After 3 moves the computer declares victory and makes nasty comments about my parentage.
• Kenyan Man Offers 20 Cows, 40 Goats to Bill Clinton to Wed Daughter Chelsea
  
  I was going to say something about a trade-in-kind, but that's just mean and hateful.
• Woman Mistakes Biscuit Dough for Own Brains, Believes She's Been Shot.
  
  Scientists testing cognitive powers of Pillsbury dough, comparison to woman's brain underway.
• Massachusetts Highway Signs Show Outline of Alabama
  
  It's not like they're next to each other!
• Felines Can't Taste Sweets
  
  The research was funded by Mars, Inc., maker of pet foods and candy, and therein, friends, lies the joke.

Dwarves and Giants... Fair Fight or Dev Megalomania?

The latest in a series detailing the various mobs you'll run into in DDO has hit the official site, this time recounting a duel between a few good-guy dwarves and a bad-guy Fire Giant. The only other story we could find about a dwarf and a giant involved Bridget the Midget, and parents will want to prevent their kids from google-ing that one!

Note that you'll need to register for full official forums access to get the full article (it's free!), but here's a teaser:

Watching a dwarf fight a giant is an interesting sight - the dwarves are trained to combat larger foes and dodge about the blows of their larger cousins with surprising ease. Zarn brought his greataxe down, sundering the giant's armor, giving Khovis the opportunity to deal a grievous blow to his opponent with his holy warhammer.

Meet a Fire Giant here!

The Space Shuttle isn't the only thing getting a bird's eye view of Irth...

Magic Hat Software's "Irth Online" gets an honest look from MMORPG.com. With the planned release less than 10 days away, it looks like Magic Hat might need to pull some magic out of their... hat (sorry).

"Combat procedure is pretty standard for an MMO, with a few good original tweaks — and a few bad ones. For instance, whenever the player is hit their screen flashes red. This effect is pretty cool as long as you are not hit very often, but if you have two or three monsters attacking you it becomes a real eyesore. One solution to this (and to the loss of hit points in general) is to use spells such as Nuke or Divine Touch to kite monsters. Cast a spell on your target, turn around and run a bit, then turn and cast another spell. Most of the monsters in the game are your speed or a tiny bit slower."

Find out what else this alternate-reality MMOG (set roughly in medieval times) has to offer you here!

More fun than a Mongolian cluster... nevermind.

This week's edition of the DAoC Herald focuses on a flurry of questions regarding the upcoming server reclustering announced this week:

Q: (Insert question on clustering and timers here)

A: I deliberately skipped the most popular set of questions this week, because there are a number of things still under discussion in terms of limits, timers (as you saw from the poll), accessing your characters in different realms on the same cluster, grandfather clauses, and creating new characters on the clusters. I also don't have a new implementation schedule for the proposed new clusters yet. The information I have on the Herald from earlier this year is outdated and incorrect.

Have a DAoC question you'd like answered in the most minimal, roundabout way possible? Details on how to get your submission its negative two seconds of fame, as well as the rest of this article, here!