Loading... Ten Ton Hammer Meet 'N' Greet

Welcome to the 907th 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 news syndication program. Enjoy!

Daily Column

Loading... 907 times and I still can't get it right.

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 homepage. (What is Pulse?)

Warhammer Online - 200 BPM
World of Warcraft - 84 BPM
Age of Conan - 41 BPM
EVE Online - 13 BPM
Tabula Rasa - 11 BPM
Lord of the Rings Online - 9 BPM
Everquest II - 6 BPM
Vanguard - 6 BPM
Dungeons and Dragons - 5 BPM
Lineage II - 4 BPM

It's not often and by often I mean ever that a children's game catches my fancy. Consider my fancy caught. Wizard 101 launched yesterday with its Harry Potter meets Disney meets Pokemon theme. My kids and I have been playing the game for about a week and it has been an astonishingly pleasant experience. The pace is a bit slow for me, but my daughter can't stop playing. Padma Fuller, our TenTonHamster.com community manager has posted her first impressions of Wizard 101. For more information, stop by our Wizard 101 community page, take the "What Kind of Wizard are You?" quiz and form your own opinion of what I consider one of the top contenders for Children's MMOG of the Year 2008.

Our resident rodeo clown, Jeff Woleslagle recently attended a guild conference unlike any you have probably ever participated in. We bring you, An Afternoon With The Syndicate. Jeff explains it far better than I ever could.

"What would you call a 600 member guild with a twelve-year track record, credits in more Prima guides than you can count on one emblematic hand, closed testing consultancies in a number of top-tier MMORPGs, and a extremely well-run annual conference that's attracted documentarians and news media alike?

We'd call them The Syndicate, and Ten Ton Hammer's proud to file this video report from the 2008 World Conference in Boston, Massachusetts. We chat with Guild Master and author Sean "Dragons" Stalzer about what it takes to sustain the longest-lasting guild in MMORPG gaming, how to get your guild together for an event like this, their work with the Warhammer Online Prima Guide and Atlas, and much more!"

As fan events go, I don't know of a larger guild gathering than the one held by Sean Stalzer and The Syndicate. The largest developer run event is certainly BlizzCON, which was coincidentally my favourite event to attend last year. BlizzCON 2008 is once again being held in Anaheim, California. TenTonHammer.com will have a large team attending the event including myself, Jeff Woleslagle, Garrett Fuller, Cody Bye, Phil Comeau, Jay Johnson, David Piner and making his first appearance in a yellow jersey Ben de la Durantaye. The highlight of these events for us is meeting the Ten Ton Hammer fans. Nothing beats the feeling of seeing one of the guys' faces when a fan comes up, shakes their hand and says, "You're Cody Bye? I love you man!" The look on their face is even more striking when they aren't Cody. If you are going to BlizzCON, let us know in the Loading... forums and we'll see if one night we can't have a Ten Ton Meet 'N' Greet.

While we were in Leipzig we had a meet and greet with the Warhammer Online team. Sadly, Cody wasn't with us in Leipzig, some story about having a baby or something, but regardless he has delivered (see what I did there?) with The Top Five Reasons Gamers Are Attracted To WAR.

The discussion regarding How To Measure Success continues to build in our forums. There is a whole lotta hate out there, but perhaps it is justified. You tell me.

Funcom got another kick in the pants recently when Independent Security Evaluators took a look at the company's titles discovering that there were security issues with both Age of Conan and Anarchy Online.

Not wishing to give Funcom any limelight EA also took one in the crotch when an upset Warhammer pre-order customer let the planet know that he was wronged. I get it, but guesh. Well, really I don't get the collector's edition frenzy for games. I won't stand in line. I won't pay more to get a virtual item that is useless in a week and I won't pay for a map. Why do you buy CEs? Fill my addled brain with your reasons.

We have lots to discuss today, Wizard 101, fan events, a TenTonHammer Meet 'N' Greet, WAR attractors, measuring success, security issues and preorders. Whoa! The Loading Forums await you. Do you feel the need to contact me personally with naughty pictures or derogatory comments? Here's my E-mail.

Ten Ton Hammer Epic Thread of the Day [Thanks Karen Hertzberg]

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 WAR: General Discussion Forum

From WoW to WAR? No Thanks! (not what you think it means)

Zion
wants WoW players to stay the hell out of WAR. He's got his reasons,
which he shared in the opening post of this growing thread, one of
which is:

Childishness (I don't say immaturity because everyone likes to be a
little immature to an extent). WoW's game play is based off a selfish
style of progression and advancement. You farm Honor to better yourself
and only yourself. There is no real commitment to your comrades. This,
in my opinion, has manufactured a community with a majority of selfish
gamers who strive for self improvement and self improvement alone.

Would you rather WoW players avoided WAR? Or is the WoW stereotype too overblown? Head to the forums and weigh in.

Awesome Quote from the Epic Thread:

"Lets assume for a moment that Blizzard is Pie and World of Warcraft is Apples.

Then lets assume that Mythic is Cake and Warhammer Online is Chocolate.

Now lets divide those by the number of games they've made which we'll use the variable X to represent.

Assuming X > Pie5 and X < Cake3 we can assume that both must be
less than berries where as Berries represents the number of subscribers.

Now to find how many Berries have brains we need to use The Gooney's international system of retardation."

- Barbarious
====================

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