by Jeff Woleslagle on Oct 06, 2008
Welcome to the 930th Edition of Loading...
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Daily Column
Loading... in the MMOG website family, we wear the pants.
First, at Ten Ton Hammer, you vote on your favorite games with what you view. We report the results to you with something we call The Pulse. Stargate Worlds made an appearance in the Top 10 with its closed beta date announcement and screenshots, surprisingly pushing EVE Online out of the top ten. I have a feeling it'll be back soon.
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?)
1. Warhammer Online - 200 BPM
2. World of Warcraft - 183 BPM
3. Age of Conan - 60 BPM
4. Lord of the Rings Online - 34 BPM
5. Stargate Worlds - 18 BPM
6.
Atlantica - 17 BPM
7. Tabula Rasa - 17 BPM
8. Dungeon Runners - 10 BPM
9. Runes of Magic- 14 BPM
10. Mabinogi - 13 BPM
I hope you had a nice weekend. For me, it was the glorious and grandiose start of the NHL season, so between hockey and football I'm in sports nirvana. Speaking of which, a number of NHL teams played their premier games in Europe this year in cities like Prague and Stockholm. Though watching these games and hearing (or not hearing) the sold-out yet politely quiet and attentive crowds they drew ellicited painful memories of NFL Europe (thanks Berlin, it was fun!), it seems like every segment of the entertainment industry is getting progressively more global. Hundreds of thousands play EVE Online and Age of Conan, two games developed entirely in Europe, and Warhammer Online is enjoying a great deal of targeted success among Warhammer fans in the old world.
Where games go, the press follows, but the idea of "games journalism" or even "entertainment media" makes my skin crawl. Don't get me wrong, we at Ten Ton Hammer take our jobs and influence very seriously, but none of us are what you'd call serious journalists. We like our games too much, so we pass on what we think is good and let the other guys - flame-fest forums and muckraking "mainstream" sites - do what they do best, make their traffic throwing the weak and infirm under the bus.
If a developer presses us to review or otherwise comment on their game or its otherwise convenient to play and give our honest opinion (and we have space in our content schedule), we will. But you don't want to waste your precious game time on crappy games and neither do we. We're dealing with MMORPGs here - where the golden standard is 20 hours of gameplay time before we can write a review or even express our first impressions - not console or casual games you can play in the morning and review in the afternoon.
But since some game developers insist we pretend to be games journalists before they'll give us their time, we get lumped into the turdpile. Joystick Division posted this article (though its a bit circuitous, you'd do better with Medeor's fine synopsis here) uncovering PR heavyweight TriplePoint's relationship with the games press site GameCyte. GameCyte as a site isn't worth mentioning; Loading... alone does more than 65k uniques in its first 5 minutes the first weekday of the month and its layout screams "I (heart) WordPress blogging."
But a number of folks in our space are double agents, parceling their time between promoting games and writing "objective" pieces about those same games. The problem is: they have more access to the developers as publicists than we can get as independent writers. For our part, despite these advantages, we see this as a serious conflict of interest and don't employ or publish contributions authored by those who have a connection to games marketing. Enjoy your shill-free viewing experience!
The Loading... forum is available 24/7 for your thoughts. You're always welcome to email me directly if you'd rather not post.
Ten Ton Hammer Epic Thread of the Day19 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 67 in October! 2563 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: Exploring the Mines of Moria Runes of Magic: Faction ScreenshotsInterviews
Age of Conan: Game Designer Craig 'Silirrion' MorrisonPreviews
World of Warcraft: The Ebon Hold Preview City of Heroes: Issue 13 PvE Power ChangesOp/Eds
World of Warcraft: Is WotLK Content in Patch 3.0 a Good Thing?Community
WAR-Torn: The Uniformity of Good Vanguard: Dalmarus' Chronicles - Come Out and PlayGuides
Warhammer Online: Rune Priest Abilities - Lvl 1-20 Warhammer Online: Rune Priest Abilities - Lvl 21-40 Warhammer Online: Engineer Abilities - Lvl 1-20 Warhammer Online: Engineer Abilities - Lvl 21-40 Warhammer Online: Ironbreaker Abilities - Lvl 1-20 Warhammer Online: Ironbreaker Abilities - Lvl 21-40 Warhammer Online: Zealot Masteries Warhammer Online: Shadow Warrior Masteries Warhammer Online: Greenskin Public Quests - Chap 2 Age of Conan: Crafting Portal Update Lord of the Rings Online: Book 11 Walkthrough - Prisoner of the Free PeopleHot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:
World of Warcraft: Is WotLK Content in Patch 3.0 a Good Thing? Age of Conan: Game Designer Craig 'Silirrion' Morrison Stargate Worlds: Date Announcement! Champions Online: Dev Q&A with Daniel Stahl Otherland: Q&A with Sr. Producer Kevin Buckner Jeff Lyndon: An Interview with an Ex-Gold Farm Operator Star Trek Online: Dev Q&A with Matt Highison Bigfoot Networks: The Killer NICReal World News
German artist plans to smoke ashes of Kurt CobainThanks as always for visiting TenTonHammer.com.
- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer Team