Loading... Long in the Tooth

Welcome to the 1,080th Edition of Loading...

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

In today's Loading, we have an interesting Star Trek Online Easter egg that will probably be gone by the time you read this (but is still cool), plus thoughts on the increasing average age of top tier MMORPGs. Can five to twelve year old MMORPGs continue to reinvent themselves, or are we sorely in need of new blood? We wind down the week with some closing thoughts from Baltimore Games Day 2009 and a few more articles you won't want to miss in Loading... Long in the Tooth!

Coyote is back in a big way at Ten Ton Hammer, and his daily column explores all things geek with Coyote's trademark wit and humor in It's All Geek to Me, fresh daily at Ten Ton Hammer. Today's topic: Taking it apart... for KNOWLEDGE! (Mischief is kinda like knowledge, right?)

Recent MMO Releases

4/28 - Free Realms (launch date) 5/11 - Chronicles of Spellborn 1.0.4 - "Scrolls of Keys and Courage" (patch) 5/15 - EVE Online Apocrypha 1.2 (patch)

Upcoming Releases

5/19 - Warrior Epic (launch date) 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 EVE Online (UP 6 - read why) EverQuest 2 Aion: The Tower of Eternity (down 2)

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today :

Perfect World Intl. (UP 19 to #10) Tabula Rasa (UP 5 to #14) Lineage 2 (UP 3 to #17)

Loading... Daily

Today's interesting find comes from one of our community members, Metal, who discovered that renaming the Champions Online launcher exe to "StarTrek Online.exe" reskins the launcher to an STO theme. The launcher still loads the currently unavailable Champions Online test server, so Starfleet is safe for the moment. In any case, we've reported the error to Cryptic, so consider it a nice Easter Egg. Screenshot or it didn't happen.

Star Trek Online is still a long ways away, however much we might want to get our hands on STO after seeing the Star Trek movie. This, in part, goes to show that MMO gamers are necessarily the most patient gamers around. You have to be able to deal with delayed gratification for almost every facet of every MMO game, from waiting 3+ times longer for the game to come out (compared to a non-MMO game), to leveling to crafting to dungeon crawls to raids to travel to bug and class balancing fixes. MMOs mimic real life; you simply have to deal with the short term pain and keep your eyes on the prize to accomplish anything worthwhile.

But once it's launched, and once you've been playing for a while, how patient with a single game can you be? In yesterday's interview, R.A. Salvatore noted that for him, both EverQuest and WoW had grown pretty long in the tooth. It's easy to see why, when you look at how long some of these games have been around.

By my count, the combined age of the MMOs in today's Pulse Top 20 is over 45 years, and that includes subtracting about 8 years for in-development games like Copernicus and Star Wars: The Old Republic. In the last month, six top tier games have celebrated 5+ year anniversaries (City of Heroes (5), EVE Online (5), Lineage 2 (5), Final Fantasy XI (6), EverQuest (10), Ultima Online (12)). So, even normalizing the numbers to take into account WoW's dominance, it's safe to say that a huge majority of the MMO audience is playing games that are over two and a half years old.

No matter how you slice it, two plus years pretty much constitutes a life decision. What sorts of things do you do for 2+ years? Jobs, degree programs, relationships, mortgages, and now MMOs? At what point does a world start to lose it's luster? No matter how much Blizzard iterates and improves on WoW, will it jump the shark at some point? And are 10+ year old MMOs like Ultima Online and EverQuest still going strong because they were the first? Or do they simply have more staying power?

Comments always welcome in the Loading... forum. Also, again, we're trying out an MMO release calendar above, 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 WoW Rant Forum

Is it Just Me?

Is charging for instance run-throughs accepted practice in WoW?

For
as long as I've been gaming people have been charging for services
rendered in MMOGs, from druids and wizards charging for teleports in
EverQuest to what ShadowDragon has noticed recently in World of
Warcraft--folks with high level characters advertising their rates to
run through an instance.

ShadowDragon has noticed that the
advertising seems more blatant these days. Other members in this thread
claim they've seen it in game for quite some time. Whatever the case
may be, the topic begs the question of whether charging to help lower
level players make their way through an instance should be an excepted
practice. Whatever happened to helping people out just for the fun of
it? Have we all turned mercenary? Speak up in our WoW Rant Forum.

==============================
Awesome Quotes from the Epic Thread

"I
don't mind doing a run through for anybody if I have the time; after
all, its the TTH way. If somebody wants to tip me for the run I will
let them because it's their way of saying thank you and I don't want to
insult them.

I remember what it was like growing up as a young
pally. It was nice to get something knocked out for me, but I didn't
expect it. "

- ZeroMerc
==============================

Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? Tell us!

3 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 51 in May! 578 in 2009!

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

Warhammer Online: Premium Member Q&A at Baltimore Games Day 2009

**Premium members only until next week** Last week we asked the Warhammer Online enthusiasts among our Premium Members to submit their best questions for the WAR team. And, though it took a tag team of no less than five Warhammer Online developers to accomplish the task, we have some great answers for you! First, Paul Barnett and Josh Drescher take on questions about the Karl Franz encounter, the token system, more DAoC-ness, more siege weapons, and more in a 18 1/2 minute video that's as entertaining as it is informative, then we put your hardcore questions to WAR's team leads culminating in a four pages of quality written Q&A. It's all in our Warhammer Online Baltimore Games Day Premium Member Q&A! Baltimore Games Day Wrap-Up

The Squig cake said it all, Baltimore Games day was fun. Despite being
sequestered in a conference room most of the day to see Land of the
Dead we were able to get down to the show floor and check out some of
the Warhammer and 40K goodness. In closing our coverage on Games Day

this week we'll walk trough some of the high lights from the
show and some of the comments we got from the development team on Land
of the Dead and the future of Warhammer Online. geeked: You Know You Want a Pair

Ten Ton Hammer's very own satirical webcomic on all things geek-related is here to shill clothing for Hot Topic this week. It appears that Spock Boxers are all the rage among nerds bearing unhealthy obsessions with Spock (like Bill). The good news is, you can get your own pair soon enough... and burn them.
Be sure to catch up on any issues of Geeked you've missed by visiting our Comics Portal. Don't forget to rate your favorites while you're at it!



Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to: Exclusive Interview with R.A. Salvatore EVE Online: Sins of a Solar Spymaster #11- EVE and Loathing in Las Vegas Warhammer Online: Land of the Dead Preview at Baltimore Games Day Warhammer Online: Land of the Dead Q&A Video geeked: A Wee Bit Creepy Loading... Live #16 - Aion Dev Chat Podcast 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

Real World News

Spaniel rescued from Prince Charles' sinkhole

Authorities still not sure how the Madrid-born man got past security, let alone how he managed to get stuck in the kitchen plumbing. Mom uses infant as shield against taser

Bystanders were shocked. Bird Birth Control Hopes to Cut Down Pigeon Population

The region’s ranking Catholic Cardinal is vehemently opposed.

Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!

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