Loading... Getting Creepy With It

Welcome to the 837th 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 now show the Top 20 and Top 50 lists as well, available to everyone on our homepage. (What is Pulse?)

Age of Conan - 200 BPM World of Warcraft - 35 BPM Lord of the Rings Online - 12 BPM EverQuest 2 - 11 BPM Warhammer Online - 7 BPM EVE Online - 7 BPM Vanguard - 7 BPM Guild Wars - 6 BPM Lineage 2 - 5 BPM Tabula Rasa - 5 BPM

As I waded through the hundreds (literally hundreds) of e-mails about the industry that Google so reverently sends me each day I came across some words that struck me "Tabula Rasa's new Lead Designer, Tom Potter". Does this mean that the 'Terrific Trio' of Garriott, Sage and Long are no longer part of the team? Paul Sage, an exceptional Lead Designer and all-around nice guy was the Lead Designer at launch. I assume Paul is still a Lead Designer at NCSoft. He has been part of the Garriott team since Ultima Online I believe.

A part of subscription gaming that has annoyed some players is the necessity for a credit card. Age of Conan went for a 'M' rating, which one would assume would also mean that customers had access to credit cards. Apparently this is not the case and Funcom has signed a deal with Pay By Cash to offer those of you without credit cards methods to pay your dues. I have always just hit the credit card option when I signed up for a game, so I never researched PayByCash or even noticed that it existed. It's available for dozens of games, mostly the micro-transaction types like Runescape, but also for Everquest 2, Lord of the Rings Online, Vanguard and Ultima Online. Do any of you use this service? If so, what is your take on it?

One of our Age of Conan guild members filmed the raising of the Ten Ton Hammer city keep. Feel free to view the video evidence. Yes, they do build that fast once you collect everything that you need.

While the rest of the guild was working to build a keep, Cody got giggity with virtual courtesans to produce The Women of AoC. If that isn't creepy enough for you, Padma posted some new Hello Kitty Online screenshots.

Will took a step back from creepy, inserted funny and posted another 'Lost in Hyboria' comic titled, Beauty and the Geeks.

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Beauty and the Geeks

Wihle the AoC brothels were down for server maintenance Cody had time to interview Gavin Longhurst and Simon Hayes of BigWorld, discussing the meat and potatoes of what makes a game engine hum.

"Originally, BigWorld was created to go after the MMO and the online space. In the beginning it was construct to simply serve as the server component, which is where we’ve had the most success so far. There was no server component middleware out there, and we were seeing a lot of second generation server components. When we established ourselves there, a lot of our discussions with licensees were “Well, you’ve got this great server side technology, but I’ve still gotta write this DirectX client.”

We started working on that and trying to create a system that could build seamlessly large worlds where you could go in and out of doorways, long vistas, lots of geometry, building the idea of streaming information to the player, and other things." - Gavin Longhurst

Tony Jones took some time and chatted with Alex St. John, CEO of WildTangent and the man who helped design DirectX. Alex has some interesting commentary on why micro-transactions are more accepted in the Asian market than in North America.

"A lot of people think that online web business currency was invented in Asia, which isn't true. It was invented in the US and failed here but succeeded there for interesting reasons. The first is, in this market we have very good anti-piracy and copyright laws which sustains a market for single player games that aren't easily stolen. People are generally honest in the US and respect the copyright laws so you are able to sell content. In Asia this isn't quite the case, so there is no competition for any other business model.

The second thing is, people in Asian companies don't have credit cards. The principle payment vehicle is through internet cafe's and people buying currency cards like you'd see in retail stores. So in order to sell a game in China or Korea, you consume an internet cafe or you buy virtual currency for cash through physical retail. That's a new idea in the United States as most transactions are carried out through credit cards which kids don't have." - Alex St. John

That's it for today! 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.

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[A big thanks to Phil Comeau for putting together the links, headlines and taglines today. ]

13 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 248 in May! 1267 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today

Images/Videos

Age of Conan: Exclusive Keep Building Video Age of Conan: The Women of Hyboria Video Hello Kitty Online: New Screenshots @ Ten Ton Hamster NeoSteam: Gameplay Video

Interviews

ION Game Conference: BigWorld's Gavin Longhurst and Simon Hayes ION Game Conference: WildTangent's Alex St.John Vanguard: Blood Mage Class Lead 'Luper'

Previews

NeoSteam: Beta Preview

Reviews

Dungeons & Dragons Online: Module 7

Op/Eds

Warhammer Online: The Rules of Launch-gagement

Comics

Age of Conan: Lost in Hyboria - Beauty and the Geeks

Guides

World of Warcraft: Grizzly Hills Overview Age of Conan: Priest of Mitra Class Portal

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to

ION Game Conference: BigWorld's Gavin Longhurst and Simon Hayes ION Game Conference: WildTangent's Alex St.John Warhammer Online: The Rules of Launch-gagement Age of Conan: Exclusive Keep Building Video Age of Conan: Rated M for... What? Age of Conan: Reshaping MMOG Combat? Wonderland $100 Giveaway - Final Week! Torque Me Giveaway - Final Week! Hello Kitty Online: Games Master Manager Ali Aslanbaigi

Real World News

Man arrested for stuffing pants with 'hot sausage'

Is that jerky in your pocket or are you just glad to see me?

Space Station toilet busted

'Urine trouble now,' truckers astronauts are told. 7-yr old shoots Mom

Obviously, the blame lies squarely with violent video games

Thanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com. Thanks to Karen Hertzberg for doing the heavy lifting with the links.

- John "Boomjack" Hoskin and the Ten Ton Hammer Team