Loading... Booth Babes, Chilton and Drescher

Welcome to the 903rd Edition of Loading...

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Daily Column

Loading... putting the 'Mo' in MMOG.

First, the Ten Ton Pulse, your finger on the beating heart of the MMOG industry.

If the Top 10 isn't enough, we also show the Top 20 and Top 50 lists as well, available to everyone on our homepage. (What is Pulse?)

Warhammer Online - 200 BPM
World of Warcraft - 87 BPM
Age of Conan - 60 BPM
EVE Online - 17 BPM
Tabula Rasa - 7 BPM
Lord of the Rings Online - 6 BPM
Star Trek Online - 6 BPM
Everquest II - 5 BPM
Stargate Worlds - 4 BPM
Vanguard - 4 BPM

Game credits are a hot topic. Yesterday I received nasty emails from a few developers, upset about my column. Two of them even put their real name on the message. The rest ranted anonymously. Three thumbs up to the devs who can voice their opinion without hiding in a cave, and no, I won't be naming them. They have good reasons for wanting their names in the credits of various titles. To the rest of you, I post the column with my name on it. The least you can do is sign your email to me.

A small reminder to those of you who are kind enough to send me email. I never, ever, even on a slow day, receive less than 200 pieces of mail from readers, developers, publishers, PR firms, etc. It is impossible to respond to everything. If I took even five minutes to respond to each email it would consume nearly 17 hours of my day. I do my best to reply when I can. Rest assured or rest annoyed in the fact that I do read every piece of email, even the ones cut from virtual newspapers that call me names. To those of you who IM me incessantly asking to be my friend or my contact or apparently my nemesis, I'm away from my keyboard. Please leave a message and my people will talk to your people.

On to happier endings, congratulations to Turbine Entertainment on the 100th content update to Asheron's Call. Good times! I remember way back in 1998 when I was taken on a virtual guided tour of the game by the devs. At the time I owned an Internet Service Provider with as fast a connection to the Net from my desk as anyone anywhere. The rest of the tour group were using modem connections. It was an interesting experience as everyone tried to determine why I was able to do so much so quickly, while they could not. The game was built for modem connections. My connection messed things up a bit.

The demonstration/tour was the first one that I had ever been given of a MMOG. I often mention 'moments', and for me this was one of the watershed moments in my gaming life. I was hooked. Because of Asheron's Call I ended up building what was at the time the largest game community site on the planet. We delivered so much traffic in 1999 that even by today's standards we would be one of the largest game community websites in the world. In a way, I owe my career choice to the gang at Turbine. So you see, those of you who send me nasty email, Turbine is to blame. Please email them.

Since I'm directing blame, I'll point at Josh Drescher and blame him for the monumental traffic coming into our Warhammer Online site. Josh's sunny personality heats the rocks that our lizard-like readers sun themselves upon, or something like that. Perhaps that wasn't the best mental picture to paint. Regardless, pull up a rock and enjoy our Exclusive Video Interview with WAR's Josh Drescher conducted by none other than Tony "RadarX" Jones and starring the in-game character 'TenTonHammer'.

You would think that interviewing Josh Drescher would be enough for Tony, but noooo, he had to talk to more of the cool kids at GCDC this year. World of Warcraft fans have bellyached and moaned that their favourite title wasn't getting enough exposure here on TenTonHammer.com. Your wish has been answered. Nobody gets in to talk to Blizzard, and fortunately we're nobody. From the top of the Blizzard food chain to the top dogs of the MMOG community, we proudly present our Exclusive Video Q&A with WoW Lead Game Designer Tom Chilton.

Some games are considered 'kid' games, when in reality they are played by young and old alike. During our recent GCDC tour we were fortunate enough to take a closer look at two such titles. Even more fortunately we decided to pass the information on to you. We're funny that way. For those of you who have wondered what Runescape is all about we give you our Runescape HD Video direct from the show. Those of you that prefer games with silly little names that you can throw around at the dinner table might enjoy our Wakfu Preview.

Now that the kiddie stuff is out of the way, let's get on to the spectacle and pageantry of GCDC, The Booth Babes of Leipzig 2008! Many thanks to Phil and Pat for their astute picture choices. Well played gentlemen. Well played.

WAR or WoW? Runescape or Wakfu? Tight outfits or body paint? Do tell in the forums.

The Loading Forums await you. Do you feel the need to contact me personally with naughty pictures or derogatory comments? Here's my E-mail.

17 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 185 in August! 2168 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today

Leipzig GCDC 2008