by Jeff Woleslagle on Feb 05, 2009
Welcome to the 1010th Edition of Loading...
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The Pulse
First, you vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Hammer Pulse (What is Pulse?).
World of Warcraft Warhammer Online Lord of the Rings Online Age of Conan EVE Online (UP 1 to #5)Here are the biggest movers in the Top 20 today:
Champions Online (UP 8 to #13) Tabula Rasa (UP 2 to #9) Requiem: Bloodymare (down 2 to #17)Loading... Daily
Loading... if MMO news is an NY comic book event, Loading... is Lou Feriggno.
With all kinds of big MMO news in the pipeline this morning, let's get out the bullet points even though they make for crappy focused forum dialogue:
Band of Brothers disbands - One of EVE Online's largest corporations disbanded yesterday, with speculation on the cause ranging from a director-level spy infiltration by GoonFleet to the BoB leader, one Haargoth Agamar, quitting in a rage, to outright account stealing. If the true reason is anything but the last, don't expect this one to be reversed.Whatever the cause, this opens a huge amount of black space on the current alliance map and should make for a very interesting weekend and few weeks for EVE gaming as the more powerful corps rush to fill the sizable vacuum BoB left behind. It's hard to understate what's going on in EVE to a non-EVE player - in historical terms, EVE is seeing the fall of its Roman empire, and only time will tell if players' faith in the game's alliance system will be shaken enough to bring on the dark ages or whether a more split-apart power structure will bring back the excitement to what was something of a PvP stalemate.
In other EVE news: Bowing to what had become a pet request of EVE players, CCP will soon introduce short-term skill queuing to the game. This isn't much of a concern for EVE's most hardcore, though. Given today's news, I don't think that a certain element will be logging out for several weeks.
Mythic Entertainment Downsizes Staff - After announcing Warhammer Online's Call to Arms live expansion just last week, rumors got out that an unspecified number of full-time employees were being let go. Mark Jacobs quickly chimed in to assure players that the Call to Arms rollout schedule wouldn't be impacted and that the "resizing" would take the WAR team from pre-launch to post-launch numbers. With echoes of the December Funcom announcement, Jacobs intimated that the cuts were limited to "customer service, quality assurance, and play testing."In other Warhammer news: WAR finally arrives in Russia. Rumored localizations include swapping out a T-34 for the Black Orc and the White Lion for a dancing bear, the Chaos man-cannon will be given a whole new historical significance, and several top tier RVR areas being named after former communist states.
Warhammer 40k MMO Still in Development - Cody found a nugget of info (and we do mean a nugget) showing that THQ is still hard at work on a 40k MMO. Given that the 40k Dawn of War and the eagerly anticipated Dawn of War II arriving later this month show that THQ seems to have the formula for quality RTSs down, its interesting to note that THQ is wittingly or unwittingly following in the Blizzard's footsteps. Who knows whether that will help, but it certainly can't hurt.In not strictly MMO news but odd news indeed, Bill Gates "playfully" unleashed a swarm of mosquitos in a press conference on malaria awareness. Good one, Bill Gates! We'll make Paul Barnett agree not to use biting insects in his and Jeff Hickman's press conference at New York Comic-Con this Saturday.
Don't have tickets for New York Comic-Con? Can't make the trip? Become a Ten Ton Hammer premium member and you'll get streaming audio courtesy of Vivox and Voon live from the Saturday panels and first access to the video recordings next week! The Voon NYCC '09 broadcast schedule is now posted.
Your thoughts are always mostly welcome in the Loading... forum, or email me !
Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day4 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 22 in February! 158 in 2009!
New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]
Reviews
DofusOp/Eds
Forever Fantasy: Race Speculation in WARGuides
World of Warcraft: Rogue Abilities, Lvl 1-40 World of Warcraft: Shaman Abilities, Lvl 1-40Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:
Review of Dofus Forever Fantasy: Race Speculation in WAR The Comic Book Guy: The Lone Superhero and the MMOG EVE Online: "Apocrypha" Expansion Q&A with Arnar Gylfason Review of Darkeden Review of Secret of the Solstice Geeked: "Self-Defense" MMOs, The Final Frontier: The Untapped Potential of Sci-Fi IPs Warhammer Online: The Implications of A Call To Arms Review of Eudemons OnlineReal World News
Car-eating rats discovered in Washington, D.C.Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
-- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer team