Loading... Indiana Jones MMOG?

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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?)

World of Warcraft - 200 BPM
Warhammer Online - 173 BPM
Age of Conan - 84 BPM
Tabula Rasa - 21 BPM
EVE Online - 14 BPM
Lord of the Rings Online - 14 BPM
EverQuest II - 12 BPM
Stargate Worlds - 10 BPM
Vanguard - 9 BPM
Atlantica - 8 BPM

World of Warcraft retains the #1 spot, with Warhammer Online closing the gap by 23 BPM in one day. Atlantica, the turn based MMOG rejoins the Top 10 once again.

Outspark is giving one lucky Ten Ton Hammer reader a PSP! There have been very few entries so far. Get your name in and claim your chance to win! The contest closes on August 10th. I like my PSP, perhaps more than my DS. We don't have contests with prizes like this very often. Make the most of it.

We don't get trips to San Francisco very often either. Jeff recently visited Cryptic Studios where he was given hands-on time with Champions Online.

"Starting at the outside ticket booth area, I began to get a feel for my character's build - one of the six Cryptic had put together for the event. Though character development is largely freeform in Champions Online - players buy abilities with points as they level up and are limited only by their imagination in terms of the variety of skills - the characters we played each had a themed look, with superpower skills to match. My character, "Electricity" (the name could use some work, I realize), could pump out small bolts of lightning as fast as I could hit the X button on the X360 controller (almost everyone opted for the controller over the keyboard) or if I built up enough charge with lesser abilities, my character could emit one long sustained stream of harmful voltage that passes from enemy to enemy as I hold down the A button. Both characters I played made use of this charge / discharge mechanic made familiar by the Warrior class in WoW, albeit with different sets of powers (later you'll see that I played a character in Stronghold named "Darkness" that shot bolts and streams of... well, darkness)."

I haven't had a chance to personally try Champions Online, but having two superhero MMOGs coming out, both with console / PC playability has to be a good thing.

In other news, Warhammer's Tome of Knowledge has turned up in World of Warcraft, or is it the other way around? Warcraft Achievements will ship with Wrath of the Lich King and will eventually be available in Starcraft II and Diablo III.

"For now the points are just a WoW character score. As we graduate to that Blizzard Account system, which is right on the horizon, it will switch over to a Blizzard Level. Your WoW score would be just one factor that will go into your Blizzard Level. And rather than call it a "score," we just wanted it to be like you're leveling up on Blizzard games. You'll have this Blizzard identity, and you'll be able to see things like, 'Oh, this guy was great at Diablo III, but he never played StarCraft and he was mediocre in WoW.' That sort of thing." -- Jeff Kaplan

Lucas Arts has a recruitment ad for a QA Online Tester up on their recruiting site. The position is based in San Francisco which is strange if Bioware is producing KOTOR the MMOG. Bioware is located in Austin Texas. The ad also has this little tidbit, "To test MMO games for bugs by playing and running functionality tests. " The games, note the plural part might just be a look ahead to other games based on Lucas properties or it might mean that another MMOG is already in the works. Indiana Jones and the Temple of MMOG anyone?

Lucas Arts may have MMOGs in the works, but id Software does not. John Carmack, president of id recently participated in a Q&A with Shacknews where he described the companies current projects.

I await the Pokemon MMOG. Is there a better IP for a massively multiplayer game than that?

I know you're thinking something. Share! 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.

[A big thanks to Phil Comeau for putting together the links and Real World News.]

10 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 24 in August! 1941 in 2008!

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

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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