Loading... A Fine Line

by Jeff Woleslagle on Dec 22, 2008

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The Pulse

First, 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 Pulse results:

World of Warcraft Warhammer Online Age of Conan Atlantica Online Tabula Rasa Runes of Magic Dungeon Runners EVE Online (UP 3) Lineage 2 (UP 7) Magic World Online (UP 3)

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today:

Lineage 2 (UP 7 to no. 9) Wizard 101 (down 5 to no. 14) EverQuest 2 (UP 3 to no. 8)

Loading... Daily

Loading... this is the kind of present you'd get if Santa used orcs instead of elves.

This weekend 2K Games announced that it was no longer the publisher of Champions Online. Something tells me that Atari knows its way around publishing a console game, though, and my almost completely baseless assumption is that a developer's traditional way to celebrate a change in publisher - a lengthy delay - won't be the case this time.

Nonetheless, it's a loss for us, as we'll miss chatting with the ever-lovely 2K PR Director April Jones. Now we don't know who to talk to at Atari - calling the corporate line only gave us a series of 8-bit beeps and blips, with a crunchy bwrrr sound when we pushed 0 for operator.

At Ten Ton Hammer, we walk a fine line. We know you want the information that developers aren't necessarily ready to make public, but since we want to build long-term relationships with these developers (especially important in MMO media) we try to avoid pissing off whenever possible. We're excited about these games in the same way a regional sportscaster is about your local teams, but recognize that you want objectivity and solid insight more than the semi-blind praise and criticism you'll read everywhere else.

We've tried to draw that distinction between our more news and opinion-oriented Ten Ton Hammer main site and our community sites (like WoW Ten Ton Hammer, WAR Ten Ton Hammer, and AOC Ten Ton Hammer). Our community sites are the regional hockey and baseball commentators, shamelessly biased but plenty knowledgable, while Ten Ton Hammer main is the national sportscaster, telling it like we see it but perhaps lacking a deep understanding of the minutae affecting a particular game. Fortunately, you do a good job of filling us in when we make a mistake.

And sometimes we go too far on too little evidence in our rush to bring you the latest news as quickly as possible, so that brings me to a retraction. Fierywater pointed out that Ankama is teaming up with Microsoft for an XBLA one-player or two-player game called Islands of Wakfu, not an MMORPG as was discussed in early reports. My apologies for jumping the gun.

The Loading... forum, or my inbox is always open for comments.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of
the Day

From our Voon at Ten Ton Hammer Forum

Initial feedback

Last
week, Vivox rolled out the open beta of Voon, a new voice and events
app for gamers, with Ten Ton Hammer as a partner. If you were under a
rock and missed the announcement, it's time you downloaded Voon
and joined Ten Ton Hammer for scheduled chat events, podcasts and more.
Want to know the difference between Voon and other voice applications
like Ventrillo and TeamSpeak? This post explains everything.

Got it? Good.

So, now that you've got Voon, we'd like your help beta testing. That's where this feedback thread
comes in. The folks from Vivox will keep a close eye on the thread
and respond to your feedback, suggestions, and questions. Come on over
and play your part in making a great application even better.

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

Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread:

"Just to let you know that all feedback up to this point has been collected, as well as the bugs reported. Thank you!"

- AutumnKiss, Vivox Voon Community Manager

"Great to see the feed back is considered like that! A++ service."

- Winget

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

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