Welcome to the 1,211th edition of Loading...

Loading... is the premier daily MMORPG news, coverage, and
commentary newsletter, only from Ten Ton Hammer.

Most of us have been playing MMOGs for several years now, and
when it comes to our games we know exactly what we want. Or do we?
Developers have been delivering plenty of what gamers seem to be
demanding, and yet there's a growing restlessness in the MMOG community
as games launch to great fanfare only to have their popularity quickly
fade. If developers are delivering what we say we want, then why aren't
we satisfied? The answer lies in today's Loading... You Don't Know What
You Want.

The Pulse

You vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the
result is the Ten Ton Pulse ( href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/thepulse/" target="_blank">What
is The Pulse?).

Here are today's top 5 Pulse results:

1. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/41"
   target="_blank">World of Warcraft
2. Dungeons
   &
   Dragons Online
3. EverQuest
   2
4. Aion
5. Age
   of
   Conan

Biggest movers today:

1. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1841">Alganon
   (UP 28 to #15)
2. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/926">Global
   Agenda (UP 8 to #13)
3. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2213">Dragon
   Age Origins (UP 6 to #4)

• 9/9
  - Dungeons
  & Dragons Online Unlimited (release date)
• 9/15
  - Runes
  of Magic "The Elven Prophecy" (expansion)
• 9/22 -
  Fallen
  Earth (release date)
• 9/22
  - Aion
  (release date)
• 10/8
  - Cities
  XL (release date)
• 11/3
  - Dragon Age:
  Origins (release date)
• style="font-weight: bold;">11/10
  - Final Fantasy
  XI Ultimate
  Collection (release date)
  

• 12/1
  - LotRO:
  Siege of Mirkwood (expansion)
• 12/1
  - EVE
  Online: Dominion (expansion)
• 12/2
  - DOFUS 2.0
  (release date)
• 12/15
  - EverQuest:
  Underfoot (expansion) 
• style="font-weight: bold;">2/2
  - Star Trek Online
  (release date)
  
• Early 2010
  - APB
• Feb. 2010
  - href="http://everquest2.station.sony.com/expansions/sentinelsfate/index.vm">EverQuest
  2: Sentinel's Fate (expansion)

Loading... Daily

You don’t know what you want in a massively multiplayer online game.
No, seriously, you’re clueless. It’s okay, though…so am I. 



You see, when it comes to MMOGs you and I have the attention spans of
fruit flies. Oh, we’ll get starry-eyed while watching the development
of a new game, but once it launches we’ll be losing interest
exponentially for every month we pay a subscription fee. And that’s if
we haven’t already cancelled our subscriptions by the time our free 30
day trials run out. We may have even hit a wall during open beta when
we learned that the game we thought was The Second Coming of href="http://tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/38">EverQuest
(or Ultima
Online, or href="http://tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/39">Dark Age of
Camelot, or whatever our first MMOG
love was), the one we imagined would be the Next Great Game that we’d
lose hours of our lives playing, has failed to impress us. We’ve burned
out. And if we’re like many of today’s gamers, we’ve burned out quickly.



But we shouldn’t be too hard on ourselves. It’s not our fault, really.
There are few surprises in the MMOG industry these days, and most
launches play out fairly predictably.



There’s a certain chain of events that happens when any new MMOG
emerges into the public eye, and that chain of events is, in part, what
leads to burnout, the almost inevitable conclusion. It starts with a
game announcement. Depending on the popularity of the developer, this
announcement may come quietly or with a tremendous flurry of
excitement. Then the slow trickle of information starts to feed out;
bit by bit, via interviews and press announcements, we learn more about
this game to pique our interest.  Now that we’re sufficiently
intrigued, we’re starting to develop expectations. Our expectations may
be entirely fact-based--we may have done our homework and hung on every
word the developers have ever uttered--but already they’re becoming
unrealistic. Why? Because we can’t possibly know what the reality of
the live game will bring. We can make our best guess based on all the
information we have at hand--interviews, screenshots, videos and the
like--but our perception of the game is still nothing more than a
guess.



And then, after anticipation has ratcheted up our expectation levels,
the game we’ve been looking forward to goes into open beta or launches.
And the minute we log in we’re measuring the game against our hopes and
dreams for it, and for every little thing that fails to satisfy, for
every disappointment, however minor, we begin slowly losing interest.
Unless we’re one of the fiercely loyal fans who cling to their chosen
game in small but steady numbers (and kudos to you if you are, because
you’re one of the devoted ones sustaining our beloved MMOG industry),
we’re already on our way to unsubscribing.



I’ll admit, all this sounds depressing. Will we ever find a game we
love again…that game that makes us want to keep playing until we’re
bleary-eyed? The game that, when we haven’t played it in a while, we
actually miss?  I believe the answer is yes. And I believe the
answer isn’t going to come in the form of what we want, but rather in
the form of what we don’t expect.



This notion occurred to me when I was watching episode one of Jace
Hall’s documentary href="http://video.ign.com/dor/articles/1044480/evercracked-the-phenomenon-of-everquest/videos/evercracked_prt_ep1_111209.html?cid=EM1805&_mid=1805&_rid=1805.1801.15973">EverCracked!
The Phenomenon of EverQuest. (See today’s href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=47840">Epic
Thread.) While I was listening to John Smedley, President of
Sony Online Entertainment, talk about the genesis of EQ back in 1995, I
was reminded that its origins were by no means based on a tried and
true formula. There was no precedent for a game like EverQuest--it was
a gamble that Sony decided to take, hoping the public would buy into
the idea of something as yet unexplored. (Before some of
you jump on me and say Meridian 59 and Ultima Online came
first, remember that neither existed yet when
EQ was conceived.) The idea took root, and EQ grew until its subscriber
base numbered in the hundreds of thousands. Five years later, World of
Warcraft took what EverQuest and its compatriots did one step further
by making the MMOG more accessible, and soon millions were playing, not
just thousands.



And now we’re all a bunch of MMOG experts. We know the mechanics of
these games, and we know the features we like and don’t like. We know
whether we want a game that’s level-based or one that’s skill-based. We
know how we like our PvP, or whether we like PvP at all. We have a
pretty clear idea of what constitutes the Perfect Game for us…an
elusive beast if ever there was.



But I contend the next truly great MMOG, while not necessarily
reinventing the
wheel or reinventing the genre, isn’t going to be one carefully
designed to meet the majority of our so-called requirements. It’s not
necessarily going to be about what’s currently popular and trendy
because, as we’re learning through this process of MMOG evolution I’ve
described, popularity and trendiness are usually short-lived. No, the
next great game is going to take us by surprise. It’s going to change
things up in a way we weren’t expecting. It won’t be a game that seeks
to bring a new setting and story to life on the exact same time-honored
platform that is the modern MMOG; it’ll be the game that takes a risk,
that kicks it up a notch and innovates in ways that might look like a
gamble.



So, I’ll say it again: I’m a gamer, and I don’t know what I want. In
fact, I probably won’t know what I want until I see it. Here
is my challenge to all you
MMOG developers out there--take a risk. Try to anticipate what I want
and then deliver it to me in a brand new way. Surprise me.



Do you know what you want, or do you like surprises? Will the next
great MMOG be an innovator, or have we merely not yet seen a developer
deliver what gamers want in a polished and satisfying way? Many have
tried; few have succeeded. Share your perspective in the href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=47856">Loading...
forum.

Shayalyn's Epic
Thread of
the Day



From our href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=3">Tavern
of the Ten Ton Hammer forum



style="font-weight: normal;">EverCracked! The Phenomenon of
EverQuest



You may have heard of EverCracked, a documentary about EverQuest,
around the time of SOE Fan Faire this year. According to the
propaganda, "The film, hosted by veteran video game industry developer
and personality Jace Hall, includes never-before-seen footage and
interviews with industry moguls and longtime players." Khalus provided
a link to the first episode in today's epic thread. 

I don't know about you, but just hearing the EQ theme music
gets me a little misty. Ah, the good ol' days. Come href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=47840">reminisce
with us. 

==============================

Awesome Quotes from the
Epic Thread



"I get that grandeur
feeling of classic epic times that will more than likely never be again
when I hear [the EQ theme music]. Memories of those past adventures
wash over me for a moment...."



- Khalus

==============================



Have you spotted an Epic Thread on our forums? href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=32559">Tell
us!

5 new Ten Ton Hammer MMOG
features today! 67 in November! 3,039
in
2009!



New Exclusives Today at Ten Ton
Hammer

• style="font-weight: bold;">Lord of the Rings Online: Siege
  of Mirkwood Beta Impressions
  
  The
  holiday season comes earlier and earlier each year as lights are strung
  up and store shelves flooded with merchandise and decorations. Some
  gamers are preparing for an early Christmas as developer Turbine gets
  set to launch the newest expansion for Lord of the Rings Online, The
  Siege of Mirkwood, but are fans of the series getting their hearts
  desire or just another lump of coal in their stockings? Join Medawky
  this week as he explores this question and lifts the veil of the games
  NDA
  
  
  
• style="font-weight: bold;">GuildPortal 8 Year
  Anniversary Interview with Aaron Lewis
  
  GuildPortal
  has been a pioneer of free website hosting, providing easy-to-use
  design tools for guilds across a number of MMOGs. This week Ten Ton
  Hammer got the chance to speak with co-owner Aaron Lewis about
  GuildPortal's 8 year anniversary and where the site is headed with the
  help of the community.
  
  
  
• Dev
  Blog: Unveiling the Arachnomancer Armor in style="font-weight: bold;">AdventureQuest Worlds
  
  Artix
  returns this week with another AdventureQuest Worlds blog to unveil the
  new Arachnomancer Armor and the continuing Friday the 13th in-game
  event for the web-based MMOG. Players can join in this Friday when the
  new armor will make its first appearance in a valley with giant
  blade-wielding arachnids. Friday the 13th may be over, but the in-game
  event isn't as Artix explains what awaits players who join in on the
  festivities.

New Features

• style="font-weight: bold;">Aion Weekly
  Newsletter - Aion Meets RMT
  
  RMT
  and item shops have hit most major games in the genre and we are seeing
  our first trickle of it in Aion with the new Holiday Ascension Pack
  being offered this winter. I think many can agree that selling fluff
  items to those who wish to fork over the cash for them isn't terribly
  harmful, but where is the line drawn? Read up on this topic and review
  the last week of game and Ten Ton Hammer news in this week's Aion
  Newsletter!

New Guides href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aion/guides/classes/spiritmaster_grouping_guide">

• href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aion/guides/gathering/elyos100-199"> style="font-weight: bold;">Aion Elyos Vitality
  and Aether Extraction 100-199
  
  Extracting Aether and Vitality from nodes in Aion does not have to be a
  difficult process. Save that precious gaming time and get the level and
  locations of the nodes you need to raise your skill level along with
  valuable tips for gathering. This guide will lay it all out in a easy
  to understand format so that you can quickly find what you are looking
  for while you gather saving not only your time, but also your sanity!
  

Today's Hottest Content

1. style="font-weight: bold;">Lord of the Rings Online: Siege
   of Mirkwood Beta Impressions
2. Down
   to Earth or
   Another Planet - a Star Trek Online
   Ground Combat
   Q&A with Dan Stahl
3. style="font-weight: bold;">Global Agenda Medic
   Class Q&A
   with Exec. Producer Todd Harris
4. Call
   of
   Duty: Modern Warfare 2 PC Review
5. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/giveaways/landing/42">Neverland
   Online Novice Pack Giveaway
6. Dragon
   Age
   Origins - PC Version Review
7. style="font-weight: bold;">GuildPortal 8 Year
   Anniversary Interview with Aaron Lewis href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/co/guides/builds/meleetank">
8. style="font-weight: bold;">Alganon – Breaking
   Out of the MMOG
   Mold in Open Beta
9. In-Depth
   LotRO:
   Siege of
   Mirkwood Expansion
   Q&A with Jeffrey Steefel
10. href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/giveaways/allodsonline">Allods
    Online Beta
    Key Giveaway

Thanks as always for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer
network!

- Karen "Shayalyn" Hertzberg and the Ten Ton Hammer team