Loading... Capt. Kirk Online

Welcome to the 1,077th Edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news and commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.

What can Star Trek Online take away from the ongoing box office triumph of the Star Trek movie? Humor and personality, plus some of that original series swagger? Or, since STO advances the Star Trek timeline, are we stuck with action sequences and politics that are more TNG than Kirk era? That, and a quick look at the just-announced expansion to City of Heroes: Going Rogue, are on tap in today's Loading... Capt. Kirk Online

Coyote is back in a big way at Ten Ton Hammer, and his daily column explores all things geek with Coyote's trademark wit in It's All Geek to Me. Fresh daily at Ten Ton Hammer. Today's topic: Beam me up Scotty (...and now send down my pants) - How real are teleporters? More real than you might imagine.

Recent MMO Releases

4/28 - Free Realms (release date) 5/11 - Chronicles of Spellborn 1.0.4 - "Scrolls of Keys and Courage" (content patch)

Upcoming Releases

5/22 - Dragonica (CBT key giveaway) 6/23 - Jumpgate Evolution (release date) 7/14- Champions Online (release date)

Important Dates

5/16 - BlizzCon 2009 tickets on sale 6/2 - 6/4 - E3 2009

The Pulse

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 top 5 Pulse results for today:

World of Warcraft Warhammer Online EverQuest 2 Aion: The Tower of Eternity (UP 4) Age of Conan

 

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today :

City of Villains (down 4 to #19) Free Realms (UP 3 to #13) City of Heroes (down 2 to #15)

Loading... Daily

Yesterday's epic thread convinced me to check out the Star Trek movie. Just about anyone I discuss the movie with points me to The Onion segment: Trekkies Bash New Star Trek Film as 'Fun, Watchable' and the now classic line: "If I wanted to see young, attractive people doing cool, exciting things, I'd go watch sports." The Onion and countless other forum posters make an excellent point: the Star Trek movie is win not in spite of its campy cheesy side, but because of it. Star Trek succeeds not only as a sci-fi action movie, a comedy, and a homage to a distinctly American classic.

Looking ahead to Star Trek Online, I think Cryptic can learn some lessons from the cross-demographic appeal of the movie. First up, the new Prime Directive is to have some personality and a sense of humor. I don't think I went five minutes without a chuckle while watching the movie. Humor and personality are hard in an MMO - NPCs are hopelessly wooden and humor, aside from quick one-off lines in quest titles and dialogue and the occasional sight gag in the course of a quest, depends largely on creating personable characters. But to not draw on the familiar characters and lines of the original Star Trek in some lighthearted way would be a sad mistake.

Second, on a cosmic stage, only events on a cosmic scale can make an impact. While most MMOs are set off by a catasrophe of some sort, tt takes homeworlds destroyed by stars or imploding into a black hole to create a movie-worthy blip on the Star Trek radar. Since STO is set in Star Trek's future, any number of extremely huge events could propel us into the storyline. In other words, we shouldn't need a degree in federation or Klingon history to understand the impact, though.

Finally, original series content is still fun and fresh. That said, one of Craig Zinkievich's most familiar laments is that their canvas is so much more wide open than any other MMO ever made. Not only do they have the endless reaches of space, there's the holodeck and a shared history with earth as we know it today, plus the possibility to time travel or travel to other dimensions. The upshot is that there's so much good stuff that Cryptic could do, it makes it that much harder to figure out what good stuff they should do in the time they have to develop this game. Nonetheless, I really hope Cryptic let's us revisit Star Trek's past in perhaps a caverns of time kind of way.

Breaking news: City of Heroes officially announced its Going Rogue expansion. NCSoft's quarterly report released yesterday showed that CoH / CoV was outselling Guild Wars, and that (coupled with the fact that NCSoft now has to compete with City of... originators Cryptic and Champions Online) makes another City of Heroes expansion probably a wise move. But the hackneyed nature of the Going Rogue FAQ indicates that NCSoft wasn't quite ready for Kotaku to be Kotaku and publish the leaked news yesterday. Hopefully we'll get more info on the expansion soon.

How else can Star Trek Online benefit from the movie? Comments welcome in the Loading... forum. Also, we're trying out an MMO release calendar, so if you have anything to add or if you see breaking MMO news, feel free to email me!

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day


From our EverQuest 2 Forum

Returning to EQ2 for at least 2 weeks

Refugee09
is a self-professed MMOG addict returning to EverQuest II. Are you a
current or recent EQ2 player who can answer some questions about
soloing and raiding classes, RP servers, PvP, fun and challenge, and
game mechanics? (Yeah, that's a lot of questions, but I trust you guys
to provide brilliant answers.)

Stroll on over to this thread to share your knowledge of EQ2 and keep a MMOG refugee happily gaming.

==============================
Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread

"Best
PvE game on the market in my opinion. Well polished with an absolutely
amazing amount of content. But if you go in comparing it to WoW then
you won't like it. Just like if I tried WoW and compared it to EQ2 I
wouldn't like it."

- Bansaw
==============================

4 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 36 in May! 563 in 2009!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]

Warhammer Online: Games Day - The Future of Classes and Careers

Are you tired of playing a melee class in Warhammer and getting killed
by casters? At Baltimore Games Day we had a chance to sit down with
Nate Levy to talk about careers, RvR, and class balance, which is a
very touchy subject in Warhammer Online. Players have been crying 'foul!' on Bright Wizard and Sorcerer area of
effect attacks and the lack of survivability for tanks and DPS classes
in the game. Loading... Live #16 - Aion Dev Chat Podcast

Aion's Lani "Liv" Blazier and Producer Brian Knox and a number of fans joined us for Loading... Live Episode 16 dev chat. We'll review the week in MMO news and jump straight into our dev Q&A. Through the successful launch in Korea, NCSoft has proven that it has a hit on its hands, and Lani and Brian will update us on NCSoft NA's progress on Aion.Crafting, lore, PvPvE attributes, and many more questions and answers await you in this entertaining 39 minute podcast! Torchlight: Exclusive Q&A with the Dev Team

Ten Ton Hammer's Danny "Ralsu" Gourley was a big fan of Mythos, and no one was sadder than he when Flagship Studios failed and Mythos disappeared while in development. Now that a lot of the former Flagship staff has teamed up with other industry professionals to form Runic Games, Ralsu has been keeping a close eye on their project, which is called Torchlight.
Ralsu immediately set out to run some questions by the minds responsible for the game. He caught up with Travis Baldree, Jason Beck, and John Dunbar. These gentlemen we kind enough to field queries about design decisions, the choice of Perfect World as a publisher, future goals, and more Final Fantasy XI: Crystalline Prophecy Hands-On Tour

Already sporting oodles of content spanning four full expansions, Final Fantasy XI doesn't have a lack of quests, items, or objectives for players to enjoy. So when the development team sat down to come up with their next major update to their game, they decided that, rather than create another full-blown expansion, the team should do its best to tie off some loose ends and introduce small spurts of targeted content. Broken up into three installments, the first of these smaller downloadable episodes is called A Crystalline Prophecy: Ode to Life Bestowing and Ten Ton Hammer got a up-close look at what it has to offer.



Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to: Warhammer Online: Games Day - The Future of Classes and Careers Aion: Class Interview #2 - The Templar Warhammer Online: Land of the Dead Trailer Warhammer Online: Baltimore Games Day Image Gallery Warrior Epic: Closed Beta Giveaway geeked: Pass the Torch, George Loading... Live #14 Podcast - LotRO Book 8 Dev Chat with Jeffrey Steefel geeked - Wrong Thing To Say Champions Online: Zone Preview Perfect World Dev Diary #2: The Genie System

Real World News

Woman charged with stealing $1,000 in razors

A known petty thief, police were astounded to hear she wasn’t stopped immediately upon entering the store.  “Why’d Gilette her in the door in the first place?,” they asked the manager. Snake hidden in toilet bites man's penis

Doctors fear he may develop Aspbergers-like symptoms. Girl in cupboard finds peace in motherhood

Australian Prime Minister said to be considering her for a currently vacant cabinet post.

Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!

-Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer team