Loading... Mac Daddy

Welcome to the 946th Edition of Loading...

If you aren't reading this in your e-mail, you could be. Sign up. Are you looking for gaming news? Look no further for all of the headlines. General industry news, right down to game specific and forum thread feeds are all yours as part of Ten Ton Hammer's RSS Feed . Enjoy!

The Pulse

First, you vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse.

World of Warcraft Warhammer Online Stargate Worlds Star Wars: The Old Republic EVE Online (UP 6) Stargate Worlds (UP 3) Tabula Rasa (UP 3) City of Heroes (down 3) Atlantica Online (down 2) City of Villains ( down 4)

Top 20 Biggest Movers - Daily

EverQuest 2 (UP from 23 to 17) City of Villains (down from 6 to 10) Stargate Worlds (UP from 9 to 6)

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?)

Daily Column - Mac Daddy

Loading... is on the move this week, first to New York City and then to Reykjavik, so apologies for the pre-recordedness of Loading... through Wednesday. On Thursday, Friday, and Monday, we'll be bringing you the latest from EVE FanFest 2008 in Reykjavik, so stay tuned!

Last week NCSoft announced a partnership with TransGaming that would enable City of Heroes and City of Villains to be played on a Mac. The four and a half year-old superhero MMORPG franchise join a fine cast of other Apple cross-platformers (EverQuest, World of Warcraft, and EVE Online come to mind), and will be released alongside the next expansion, Issue 13: Power and Responsibility, "pre-holiday" this fall.

Mac gamers usually have to put up with some severe limitations with PC ports. Not only do you have to wait 3+ years for the Intel Mac version. but you're either stuck on a separate server (EverQuest) or have no hope of anything beyond DirectX 9.0c graphics (such as EVE Online's DX10 "Trinity" graphics), or get a half done, crash-prone port (Civilization IV, Neverwinter Nights 2, or just about anything else done by Aspyr).

TransGaming's has a much better pedigree than Aspyr; their Cedega games ports to Linux have been fairly well received, as have several of their Cider engine ports to Mac such as Spore and Command and Conquer 3. CCP has already taken advantage of both Cider and Cedega to make EVE Online the most OS-agnostic MMOG to-date, so NCSoft isn't breaking virgin ground for online games.

One of the few ground-up Intel Mac releases is the MMOG everyone loves or loves to hate, World of Warcraft, which bravely offered a Intel Mac native version of the game alongside the PC version on the same install CDs with the nifty bonus of a built-in video recorder. Add-ons work just as well with the Mac version, and TeamSpeak and Ventrilo both offer Mac clients (note that TeamSpeak's Mac version is unofficial and therefore unsupported). Apparently, Blizzard felt the move paid off, as the constant stream of patches and the two expansions all offer or will offer some Mac lovin'.

But if the future of computer games is increasingly in DirectX 10 (and more than a few MMORPG developers seem to believe it is) , Mac doesn't yet have a share in that future and likely won't for some time to come. And with increasing numbers of gamers (like me) using Apple computers exclusively - using BootCamp to load Windows on Mac hardware - the issue may become moot.

Excited about CoX on a Mac? If you're a Mac gamer, do you buy or BootCamp? Post your thoughts in the Loading... forum, or email me if you like.

Ten Ton Hammer Epic Thread of the Day

Sometimes they're funny; sometimes they're foolish; sometimes they're flaming;
sometimes they're cool. Whatever this one happens to be, it's
our Epic Thread of the Day.

====================
From our /OOC (Off Topic) Forum

Who does your favorite game developer support in this year's presidential campaign?

Tomorrow,
November 4th, polls open for the U.S.presidential election. Voters are
expected to turn out in droves to choose the next American Commander in
Chief. Just about everybody (in the United States and abroad) has an
opinion about the upcoming election. It should come as no surprise that
some well known game developers have shown their support financially
for their favorite candidates. Rocqu got the scoop and posted it to our
/OOC forum. Would you have pegged Will Wright (creator of The Sims and Spore) as a Republican? Check out the thread, then have your say. You can even bash on Tipper Gore.

Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"[Tipper Gore] had a book out that had a section of warning signs that your child
was listening to 'satanic music.' One clear warning was the use of
satanic symbols you may see on their notebooks. The symbols they showed in the book included the Texas Longhorns logo
and even the Jewish Star of David...."
- EmperorGuanDi
====================

Do you have a favorite Epic Thread? Let us know!

12 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 12 in November! 2809 in 2008!

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

Images/Video

Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria - The Waterworks Chronicles of Spellborn: High House Screenshots - Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous

Interviews

Perfect World: Exclusive International Interview - Raising the Bar Age of Conan: Community Coordinator Wayne 'Yakomo' Soong

Comics

WAR Torn: Issue #11 - The Dress Code

Op/Eds

Warhammer Online: Holiday Content - A Challenging Necessity

Community

Vanguard: Dalmarus' Chronicles - All Good Things...

Guides

Warhammer Online: Empire Public Quests - Chap 3 Warhammer Online: Greenskin Leveling Guide - Tier 1 World of Warcraft: Death Knight Update - Runes and Runeforging World of Warcraft: Paladin Tanking Guide - Part 2 Lord of the Rings Online: Runekeeper Trait and Skill List

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:

Perfect World: Exclusive International Interview - Raising the Bar Age of Conan: Community Coordinator Wayne 'Yakomo' Soong WAR Torn: Issue #11 - The Dress Code Warhammer Online: Holiday Content - A Challenging Necessity Vanguard: Dalmarus' Chronicles - All Good Things... Regnum Online: Attack of the Skinny Smurfs Hello Kitty Online: A First Look at the Founders Beta World of Warcraft: The Adventures of Goob and Begud - 'The Mistake' Age of Conan: Border Kingdom Cryer - Update 3 Comes to Hyboria

Real World News

Naked Pumpkin runners ticketed in Colorado

'They're clearly out of their gourds', a bystander was heard to remark Breeders in Saudi Arabia hold first beauty pageant for sheep

When you're a lonely Saudi sheep herder, it's important not to get stuck with the ugly one Gr. 5 student's Halloween drawing earns him trip to psych for evaluation

Still no test available to detect over-reacting teachers and school administrators

Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!

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