by Chris Noll on Sep 03, 2010
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is the premier daily MMOG newsletter, only from Ten
Ton Hammer!
Welcome
to the 1,411th
edition
of Loading...
Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and Reuben "Sardu" Waters raid PAX
today, but not before spending some time with Runic Games last night.
Dinner was good, company was great, and being able to talk
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight and
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight II was
epic. Read about some of Runic's plans for Torchlight II and Ten Ton
Hammer's plans for the rest of the weekend today in
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/loading/2010/sep/3">Loading...
Torchlight by Candlelight.
You vote with what you
view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the
result
is the Ten Ton Pulse (What
is The Pulse?).
Today's
top 5 Pulse results:
Biggest
movers today:
Upcoming
Events
PAX Prime begins today, and Reuben and I - a.k.a. Team Hammer
- are
pretty much booked solid from 10AM to 9PM+. Bastard that I am, I didn't
even build in time in the meeting schedule for meals. I'd say prisoners
have it better, but prisoners don't get to see over a dozen awesome
games in rapid succession then tell you all about what we see. PAX
Prime promises to be packed, for sure.
While we were waiting for today's festivities to commence, we
met up
with Producer Travis Baldree and a few of the freespirited folks of
Runic Games last night for dinner. The chemistry of the team is
remarkable, in that in an age of rapid turnover and travelling acts
that would make a Bedouin footsore, many of them stuck together through
the disastrous fall of Flagship Studios and have since made a name for
themselves at Runic.
Runic, from a business perspective, seems to be doing all the
right
things - producing Torchlight
and soon Torchlight II
to fund the
development of the Torchlight
MMORPG with cash money, rather than
relying on a monolithic publisher or a group of investors that may or
may not understand the unique demands of creating a quality MMORPG. Not
only that, but Torchlight
II will give them a real life laboratory to
test out their theories about multiplayer combat before going setting
things in relative stone with the MMO.
Before dinner, we got a chance to check out one of
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight II's
newest classes, the Railman. Part John Henry, part an monocle-sporting
robber baron, the railman swings a giant hammer with
turn-of-the-century relish. One of Runic's strengths is breathing
awesomeness into tired old class archetypes, and while the Railman
clearly belongs in the fracas as a pure melee or perhaps DPS tankish
role, it didn't feel Barbarian-esque or like an action RPG class I'd
played before. That playsession was just a taste, though, we'll have a
full writeup following our appointment with Runic on Saturday.
During dinner, many topics arose, from
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight and
style="font-style: italic;">Torchlight II
to Mythos
to Flagship's fall. The last topic seemed especially poignant
given the dismal news and opinion coming out of
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/88496">Realtime Worlds,
Acclaim,
and CME
/ Dark Comet
this week. The ex-Flagship devs told gallows humor-imbued stories of
firing day - of signing each other's layoff letter like a yearbook
("See you next year, XOXO!"), taking turns calling each other into
offices to say "You're fired!"(since apparently no one from Flagship's
San Francisco office was left to do so), taking laptops in lieu of
severance pay or last paychecks, and explaining to a furious landlord
that the same people who write his checks weren't returning their calls
either.
Those sour stories had a happy ending, though - many of the
Flagship
exiles found a home with Runic, and two years later their development
house is one of the most successful young companies we talk with. Let's
hope all the good folks at Realtime Worlds land on their feet as well.
But onward and upward, and this weekend we're focused on
style="font-style: italic;">Guild Wars
2, Rift, End of Nations, DDO, LotRO, EVE Online, Fallen Earth, FFXIV,
LEGO Universe, and many more games that will help define
the future of
MMO gaming. We'll stick with the yearbook theme since it's back to
school time: what's your PAX Prime pick for fall 2010 most likely to
succeed? 2011 pick? Share your thoughts in the Loading... forum, stay
tuned for all of our coverage from PAX Prime 2010, and have a great
weekend!
From our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=139">WoW
General Discussion Forum
Symbolic
e-girl search
Between the title and the OP's username I simply couldn't resist
this WoW thread. I can't quite wrap my head around it. Is it a
joke? Well, then it's a creepy one. Is it real? Then it's creepier
still. All I know is that Symbolic (I can only assume that's a guild)
is looking for "easy going and fun girls to chat and stikam" with.
(Yeah, I had to look up just exactly what a Stikam was, so if you're
Googling it right now come join me among the pop-culture challenged.)
If you want to chill with these guys, know that you're gonna be "geared
out through Heroic ICC and Ruby Sanctum runs." And know that they're
judging applicants "largely...based on appearance." All interested
virtual gold diggers who want to Stikam with these fine, um...chaps
should apply through (wait for it...) Justinbiëber. (Justin Bieber?
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=53287">Really?)
=====================================
Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread
"...it's quite creepy.!"
-
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showpost.php?p=440791&postcount=4">stefman123
=====================================
Thanks
for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle
and the Ten Ton Hammer team