by Cody Bye on Jul 02, 2008
Welcome to the 861st Edition of Loading...
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Daily Column
Loading... It helps you scratch the itch you just can't reach.
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
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com" target="_blank">homepage.
(
target="_blank">What is Pulse?)
Unfortunately, John “Boomjack” Hoskin
couldn’t make it into the Loading… cubicle today
– he mentioned something about having his teeth sharpened
into fine points – but rest assured that Loading…
won’t ever miss a beat as long as a Ten Ton Hammer staffer
has a set of digits with which to type out your daily dose of MMOG
goodness. This week, Cody “Micajah” Bye
(that’s me!) takes the helm of this vast ocean liner and
cruises you to MMOG waters that are more virginal than anything
you’d see in Age of Conan.
For those of you that are fans of the games created by Blizzard
Activision, this week must feel like a small slice of heaven. Along
with the announcement of Diablo
III, news about Wrath
of the Lich King and Starcraft
II has been exploding throughout the World Wide Web.
However, there are a few rumors that still remain in the air concerning
Blizzard’s titles. For example, the Blizzard team was hiring
developers for a “next-gen” MMOG product, but
didn’t officially discuss whether that would be a
continuation of the World of Warcraft franchise or something new
entirely. Was Diablo III
the only new project that Blizzard was working on? Or is there yet
another game hidden behind a curtain somewhere?
Apparently, the editors at the German website OnlineWelten.com heard
your cries of uncertainty, because in their
href="http://trailer.onlinewelten.com/videos,id4103,blizzard_interview_with_rob_pardo.html"
target="_blank">latest video they ask Rob Pardo that very
question. To make a long story short, there is a
“yet to be announced” next-gen MMOG project that
has yet to make its splash. Will it be announced at BlizzCon this year?
If so, the Ten Ton Hammer team will be on site to make sure we get all
the details our readers want and deserve.
In more titillating news, our crazed, rabid news reporters have
uncovered a piece of delicious information regarding Age of Conan.
According to the developers over at Funcom, the sex of your character
actually affects your weapon speed. However, this isn’t due
to any sort of “sexism” or “male vs.
female” arguments that some people would have you believe. On
the contrary, it seems that the combo animation lengths were incorrect
between a number of the different animations when the male / female
avatars were compared. Here’s a small portion of the
href="http://forums.ageofconan.com/showthread.php?p=1314180">much
longer post by Funcom’s Svein Erik "Sharum" Jenset:
Normally, I’d expect a sort of bra-burning outburst
from this sort of problem, but since the vast majority of female
avatars are played by men, it shouldn’t come to that.
However, my ears are already burning from the amount of venom and bile
that’s going to be spewed at Funcom over this mistake.
Hopefully they’ll fix the issue sooner rather than later.
Finally, it looks like Guild Wars fans will continue to have the same
sort free experience in the upcoming sequel that they grew to love in
the first game in the series. The developers at ArenaNet have
href="http://guildwars.com/products/guildwars2/gw2faq/">updated
their FAQ with those details, and here’s
the official wording:
So what are your thoughts on Blizzard’s Next Gen
MMOG? Is it Universe of Starcraft or The EverLost Vikings? Do you think
Funcom’s animation error in
style="font-style: italic;">Age of Conan will
pull subscribers away from that game? Did ArenaNet make the right
decision in keeping Guild
Wars 2 free to play? Let us know on the forums!
Do tell. The
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=30602"
target="_blank">Loading Forums await you. Do you
feel the need to contact me personally with naughty pictures or
derogatory comments? Here's my
href="mailto:cody@tentonhammer.com">E-mail.
--
[A big thanks to Phil Comeau for putting together the links,
headlines and taglines today. ]
39 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 38 in July! 1616 in
2008!
New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today
Blizzard WorldWide Invitational 2008
HallsPreviews
WurmReviews
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/37383">FireteamInterviews
EverQuestOp/Eds
WARFeatures
WarhammerImages/Video
ProjectComics
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/37357?size=_original">AgeCommunity
WarhammerGuides
TabulaHot Content - Or, what I took a
fancy to
Real World News
href="http://www.phillyburbs.com/pb-dyn/news/104-06252008-1554393.html">School Thanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com.
Thanks to Phil Comeau
for doing the heavy lifting with the links.
- Cody "Micajah" Bye and the Ten Ton Hammer Team