Welcome to your Tuesday Loading..., continuing a week of guest writers for the premier daily MMOG newsletter chock full of news, opinion, interviews, features, and the Vin Diesel / weird news bits.

Formerly a Shaolin monkette, Karen Hertzberg took on the nickname Shayalyn when she moved from Tibet to TenTonHammer headquarters. Her trademarked "boots to the head" are feared by staff and developers alike.

You may know Karen from such films as 'Hidden Tauren, Crouching Dwarf" and "Enter The Drow".

When Karen isn't writing for TenTonHammer she is exploding two-litre Pepsi bottles with packs of mentos.

A big black-belt round of applause for Karen "Shayalyn" Hertzberg, your guest host for Loading... today.

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We know how the non-gaming world perceives us gamers. We’re the great unwashed. We’re the lonely Cheeto munching, Mountain Dew swilling basement dwellers with no lives. The only relationships male gamers are able to sustain are online, where they hobnob with the likes of Galladryelle, the hot high elf wizard who quite possibly sports hairy knuckles in the real world. (Of course, as a female gamer I’m not as afflicted with that stigma...but I digress.)

Of course, we gamers recognize this stereotype is categorically untrue. There’s not one of us who would eat Cheetos during a gaming session and risk getting all that fluorescent orange crap on our keyboards.

Probably the most pervasive myth among non-gamers is that gamers have no friends. Not true! Not true at all. In fact, we have dozens of virtual people on our in game friends’ lists. (It counts, damnit!) And when you’re a gamer lucky enough to make some friends, you want to be able to hang out with them. Hell, it’s likely some of the best socializing you’re going to get all week, right? But some of our friends game more than others, which means that some of them level either faster or slower than we do. What to do.

Enter the topic it took me a few winding paragraphs to get around to--mentoring and fellowship programs. When it comes to making and keeping in game friends, these types of programs are priceless. I remember all of my tight-wearing companions leveling right past me back when I was playing City of Heroes. This would have left me wandering the streets alone, endlessly thwarting old lady muggings, while my friends partied in the higher level zones. But thanks to the sidekick program in CoH, I could run with my posse of super-peeps.

There are all kinds of mentoring programs in MMOGs. Some of them, like the sidekick feature in CoH, scale the player up to their group mates’ level. Others, like the mentor program in EverQuest II, scale higher level players down (including lowering the stats of their equipment), so that they can group with lower level companions. In order to encourage high level players to debase themselves and go slumming EQ2 gave mentors an experience bonus. Vanguard is taking a different tack and allowing players to form fellowships. When members form a fellowship, some of their experience is sacrificed to help the offline members stay within level range. (This means the slacker players actually gain experience while doing useless things like spending quality time with their families.)

Which method is best? They all have their perks and their drawbacks. The CoH method of scaling up is fun, but it keeps lower level players from having to earn their way to high level content, exposing them to too much of the game too soon. The Vanguard method is fine for the committed, but players will certainly balk at the idea of losing some of their experience while their friend is offline doing God knows what. (After all, you don’t “ding” a level when your kid gets a good report card, so what’s with the “I have to help my kid with his homework” excuse?) Of all the programs for keeping friends of various levels together, I’d have to say I like what EQ2 has done the best. It’s not perfect (after all, if you happen to be the high level player, you still have to go slumming to places you may have gone through numerous times before), but the added incentive of bonus experience for the mentor makes it worthwhile.

When it comes right down to it, there’s no mentoring or fellowship program that doesn’t require some sort of sacrifice on the part of one or more of the players involved. But hey, that’s what friends are for. If you’re lucky enough to make the virtual kind, then you might be inclined to want to keep them and play the game with them. That’s what these features are all about.

So, what’s your favorite method of in-game mentoring? Do you prefer your friends to scale up to your level, or would you rather scale down to them? Would you be willing to give up some of your experience to keep your best in game friends close to your level? Talk it up! Post a comment below or on our new vBulletin-powered forums.

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Exclusive new TenTonHammer.com Content!

Let us entertain you or at the very least waste some of your time at work.

10.24.2006 Exclusive Content

• EverQuest 2 : Exclusive Interview with Ryan "Blackguard" Schwayder
  "With one of our developers and our Community Relations Manager off grazing greener pastures, the EverQuest II community has felt the tug of loss over this last month. Ryan "Blackguard" Shwayder has left big shoes to fill for sure, but even as we say goodbye to our beloved CM as he heads back to Colorado to start on new, real-life adventures, we want to never forget that before Blackguard was the CM, he was a gamer. Please sit down and take a moment with Savanja and Blackguard as they chit chat about gaming, EQII, and blogging!"
• EverQuest 2 : Coyote Sharptongue Interviewed on SOE Podcast
  "If you're not a fan of Coyote's daily blog, you're sorely depriving yourself of some of the best MMO humor... ever. Catch a rare audio appearance of the man himself in SOE's 6th podcast."
• World of Warcraft : The Burning Crusade - "Hellfire Peninsula " Preview
  "The first location you will visit when venturing into Outland will be the Hellfire Peninsula. The Hellfire Peninsula is the starting location on your journey from level sixty to seventy and as such hosts a myriad of quests and locales for you to visit and level at. We take an in-depth look at this large zone and attempt to walk you through the various cities and structures located within!"
• World of Warcraft : The Burning Crusade - "Blood Furnace" Preview
  "This is a first look at what to expect in the Hellfire Citadel, home of the 4 most accessible brand new instances in the Burning Crusade. This article in particular looks at the second instance that you are likely to adventure through, the Blood Furnace in the Citadel."
• Gods & Heroes : Action Combat System - Fresh of Fluff?
  "Combat animations are a rarely discussed but vital part of a good MMO. Gods and Heroes is approaching them with a unique set of animations. Will this work, and is it really necessary? RadarX attempts to answer these questions and more."

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Vin Diesel Fact of the Day - In place of the daily crossword, Vin Diesel prefers beating the Kobayashi Maru, Hal 9000, and Deep Blue with the morning coffee.

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Now from the real world. You can't make this stuff up.

• North Korea Food Levels Critical
  Starving country + lunatic dictator + nuclear weapons = bad things.
• Finally, Weird Al Album Hits the Top Ten Charts
  Polka parodizing the other nine albums in the works.
• 13,000 Mexico City Chess Players Break World Record for Simultaneous Games
  The event also rivals Dragon Con's record for concentration of sexually repressed males.
• Man Suffers Total Amnesia ... For The Second Time
  Surprisingly, neither multiple trips to Vegas or a televised double-header were involved.
• Police Catch Nude Burglar Stuck in a Window
  And you thought waking up with the King was bad.

As always, thanks for visiting TenTonHammer.com,

-- John "Boomjack" Hoskin and guest host Karen "Shayalyn" Hertzberg