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

Hondas with Heat-Seekers
MMORPGDot doesn't dispute Auto Assault lives up to its mantra: "The Fastest, Most Destructive MMO Ever," but they do ponder whether or not it has the wheels to keep gamers playing month after month. I tend to think that as long as there's a southern California commute, there will be a market for vehicular destruction MMOs.

"Overall the game delivers what it promises: long hours of blowing-up-crap bliss. The question is what sort of gamer will it appeal to? Will the action-craving gamer pay a monthly fee for what feels like a late nineties post-apocalyptic arcade with character advancement, crafting and multiplayer options thrown in? Will the MMORPG player identify enough with a little vehicle zooming around the screen as his character to want to put time, money and effort into developing the vehicle slash quasi-character? Will those good old Car Wars fans find what they are looking for in this aspiring MMOG version of the golden oldie?
I doubt that all those sceptical of an integration of MMORPG with a fast paced action car warring post apocalyptic game will have their scepticism dispelled by Auto Assault. On the fun, blowing-things-up side of things the game works well enough, but on a lot of other fronts - at least in its current Beta stage - the overall concept and what the game does with it are both problematic. It simply seems difficult for the game to succeed on all the fronts it wishes to succeed, both because of the overall conceptual structure of the game and the way the various elements of that structure have been married. But I will definitely give the release version a spin to see if these doubts have been eased by the final product. "

Read more of the Auto Assault preview at MMORPGDot, if you so desire.
Other links you might enjoy:

• The TTH Auto Assault Community Site - All the "blowing-up-crap bliss" you need, outside of beta.
• Possibly the Coolest Car Commercial Ever Made - From Honda. And if you live in North America, you've probably never seen it.
• Past Auto Assault News.

The Ultimate in PvP
A lot of folks were reporting compromised WoW accounts over the weekend, with the source traced to a trojan horse that broadcasts account names and passwords. In at least one case, the account was reportedly sold to an Asisan "gold farmer." While there's no indication from Blizzard of what the root of the problem is (outside of offering some common sense advice), independent sources trace the "syssmss.exe" trojan to a rogue ad displayed on a fansite which infiltrates unsuspecting computers when viewed in IE.
The good news? TTH is, was, and always will be virus-free, leaving you to enjoy your MMOs in peace.

" With the recent rise in reports of compromised accounts, we felt that it would be in the best interest of the community to bring this topic into the spotlight. This is an effort to educate our customers about what can be done to should your account become compromised and most importantly, what you can do to prevent it from becoming compromised. "

As Blizzard appears to be treating this as a client-side issue, WoW gamers should take immediate steps to protect their accounts. Are you secure? Check out the password security update for World of Warcraft at the official site.
Other links you might enjoy:

• More commentary on the WoW security problem - From people personally affected.
• The TTH WoW Community Site - As always, your first stop for WoW news and info.
• Another WoW humor video - No, it's not about sheep sex or Leeroy Jenkins. Relatively clean and somewhat funny.

Loading.... October 7, 2005
Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle wrapping up the workweek here at the TTH newsdesk; yes, I hear your groans. You'll be ecstatic to learn that your friend and mine, John "Boomjack" Hoskin, returns next Tuesday after concluding a visit with the in-laws, hopefully without violence.

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Friday Vin Diesel Fact:

Vin Diesel can fight city hall, and he'll kick their ass.
What's new on the network.

• EQ2: Is the new gambling system fair to players? - I even use math and stuff :)
• EQ2: Win a copy of EQ2 with Haiku - Boom thinks I'm making this up, but I've received a lot of submissions! Keep 'em coming.
• EQ2: Community Summit Wrap-up - EQ2.1 discussed
• Guild Wars: GVG Build Hints - Don't mess with the Angry Businessmen.
• Vanguard: Sygil's Advanced Encounter System - Instancing be (slightly) damned!

What was recently recent, or what we still want you to see...you decide.

• EQ2 - Of Monkeys and Magic Bottles - Thanks Okooo
• WoW - "Brick and Mortar" Stores and the Digital Age - Thanks Messiah
• Vanguard - To Download or Not - Thanks Lady Sirse
• Guild Wars - Brick and Mortar VS Digital Delivery - Thanks Maya
• Your Shopping Cart, Pixel or Plastic - Thanks Ethec

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And on to today's strange-but-true news. You can't make this stuff up...

• Chinese Cabbie Orders Pregnant Woman Out When She Goes Into Labor
  
  C'mon China, that's another potential extreme hardcore MMO player there.
• Gas Station Mistakenly Sells Premium Gasoline for a Few Hours at US$.32 / Gallon
  
  Wouldn't the demo-derby in the parking lot have tipped them off?
• Gun Stolen from Australian Security Guard Conference
  
  And, of course, no one saw a thing.
• Korean MMO Market Share Ganked by Chinese MMOs
  
  We could see World War III looming here, folks.
• 6 Year Olds Fistfight Over Pacifier, Mother Calls Police
  
  Ethec calls the police over a WoW PvP incident, they hang up.
• Carjacking Foiled by Manual Transmission
  
  Forget car theft, knocking down liquor stores is probably more this guy's thing.

I just want to know if we'll see the insidious death devices with long timers that the hero invariably escapes from!
PvP zones in City of Villains, the stand-alone sequel to the comic bookish City of Heroes, will be handled in much the same way as in Dark Age of Camelot; you must be of a certain level to enter one of the 3 PvP zones. This and more goodies from "Zeb" Cook, producer of this very much anticipated year-ender.

"Q: What will prohibit an upper-level hero from going into one of these zones and just beating up on the lower-level villains? 
Zeb: 'We were very worried about that. One of the things we do is in all of the zones, they each have a bottom level, first off, so you can’t enter the zone until you are a certain level. So you will have at least a certain base-level in powers. And then what we do, once people are in the level, and it’s partially to deal with the high level versus the low level but it is also to deal with the broad range of characters versus the mobs that are in there, is that we sidekick and exemplar people all to the same level.

So if you go into Siren’s Call, you are going to be level 30, you are going to be functioning as a level 30 character. If you are below level 30, you will be brought up to that level; you are obviously not going to have all the powers. There are still going to be obvious advantages for the higher-level guy, but it’s going to be a much more even thing. And the other thing people really have to understand about PvP, and in a game like City of Heroes and City of Villains, is you want to find yourself a good team to go with.'"

What else will we see in City of Villains? It's time to click!