Loading... November '08 Expansions: Newbie Love Lost?

by Jeff Woleslagle on Nov 17, 2008

<hr /><p> <strong>Welcome to the 956th Edition of Loading... </strong></p>

Welcome to the 956th 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 (What is Pulse?).

World of Warcraft Warhammer Online (UP 2) Guild Wars (down 1) Guild Wars 2 (down 1) Age of Conan EVE Online Lord of the Rings Online (UP 1) Star Wars: The Old Republic (UP 5) Tabula Rasa (down 2) Atlantica Online (UP 5)

Daily Top 3 Biggest Movers

Star Wars: The Old Republic (UP 5 to no. 8) Atlantica Online (down 5 to no. 10) Lineage 2 (down 5 to no. 14)

Daily Column

Loading... releasing a content-driven expansion daily.

It's the start of the second of the biggest two weeks this year in MMO gaming. In what was no doubt an effort to broaden the market (/cough), no less than four top-tier developers picked the middle two weeks in November 2008 to release their major expansions (three of which were big enough to go to retail), and EverQuest 2's fifth retail expansion, The Shadow Odyssey (TSO) , will hit store shelves tomorrow, followed by Lord of the Rings Online's Mines of Moria on Wednesday.

To celebrate, I have five free TSO keys for my favored Loading... audience, available on a first come, first served basis. Be among the first to load up my inbox and one is yours (if I don't respond by this evening, you can safely assume that you didn't get win).

And, since no network loves you like Ten Ton Hammer, we have a couple hardware giveaways of interest to gamers of all stripes that you should enter:

Creative Hear to Believe Giveaway Razer For Gamers. By Gamers™ Giveaway

Four very substantive expansions in two weeks is good news, but how much or how many of these expansions will you personally enjoy? My guess is that many of you (like me) don't have an endgame character in more than one of these games, and these expansions are decidedly weighted towards long-time players.

Only in one (Mines of Moria) does something for new players make the top of the major features list, that is, the addition of the Runekeeper and Warden classes. EVE Online's new certificates system offers some much-needed guidance for new players, and EverQuest 2's The Shadow Odyssey includes all previous expansions and adventure packs. But as for more company at the earliest stages of WoW especially, there's not much to draw new players save the usual wave of flash-in-the-pan excitement that always accompanies a retail expansion.

Also unfortunately, expansions geared to the endgame (or "elder game" if you pedantic types prefer) fuel the race to exhaust PvE content and hit the level cap like we see in today's epic forum thread below. To their credit, Blizzard has foreseen this problem and held back the encounter with the star of the Northrend show and the namesake of the expansion - Arthas himself - for a 2009 content patch.

But, all that said, veterans rejoice - devs and publishers know better than anyone how their bread is buttered, and you're it this time around. Cheers? Jeers? Share your thoughts in the Loading... forum or, as always, feel free to email me with your thoughts.

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 WoW: General Discussion Forum

So...um. Now what?

Dalmarus's editorial
dealt with rush-to-the-end-itis in games like World of Warcraft.
Despite our editor's disdain for balls-to-the-walls power gaming, it
should come as no surprise that a (supposedly temporary) guild named
TwentyFifthNovember, created by a merger of two top WoW PvE guilds, has
declared that that "all WotLK PvE raid content has now been cleared."
Our community member, Winget, wonders what comes next if
TwentyFiveNovember (or maybe FifteenNovember would've been more
accurate) has already "beaten the game." Drop into our WoW: General Discussion forum to join the conversation.

Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"Whew! The world is safe. Now I don't need to worry about WoW. [I can] go do
something else. I think I'll replace the beaters on my snow blower. Hey,
has that been done before?"

- benots4
====================

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

15 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 102 in November! 2900 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today

Reviews

Combat Arms Review Top Ten Free to Play MMOGs - 11.17.08

Interviews

Exclusive Jumpgate Evolution Closed Beta Interview with Hermann Peterscheck Exclusive Interview With Angels Online: The Lost Atlantis Expansion

Comics

WAR Comic - WAR Torn #13 - A dwarf always gets his ale

Giveaways

Creative Hear to Believe Giveaway Razer For Gamers. By Gamers™ Giveaway

Community

7-day WAR Report - Nov 9th-15th