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is the premiere daily MMOG newsletter, only from Ten
Ton Hammer!
Welcome
to the 1,450th
edition
of Loading...
style="font-style: italic;">You’re
in a public venue with your laptop and time to kill. Firing up your
browser, you see the shining allure of Free Public Wifi. Glorious! Or
is it? Join Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle as he goes into the perils of Free
Public Wifi and the ongoing onslaught of “free” in
the gaming world in today’s
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/loading/2010/oct/28">Loading…
Free Public Wifi.
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/">What
is The Pulse?).
Today's
top 5 Pulse results:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow">World
of Warcraft -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/43">EVE
Online (UP 1) -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eq2">EverQuest 2
(down 1) -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/99">Lord
of the Rings Online -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/ddo">Dungeons and
Dragons Online (UP 1)
Biggest
movers today:
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/284">The
Agency
- Up 14
to
#13 -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2035">Rift:
Planes of Telara
- down 7
to
#17 style="text-decoration: underline;"> -
style="text-decoration: underline;">
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/swtor">Star Wars:
The Old Republic
-
UP 7
to
#19
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">9/7
- size="-1"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/aion">Aion:
Assault on Balaurea (free
expansion) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">9/29
- Everquest
2 Extended
(release) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">9/30
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/ffxiv">Final
Fantasy XIV (release) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">10/20
- Champions
Online: Demonflame
(expansion) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">10/20
- Dungeons
and Dragons
Online: Update 7 (expansion) -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">10/26
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/170">LEGO
Universe (release)
Releases
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">November,
2010 - href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve">EVE Online:
Incursion (expansion)
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">December
7, 2010
- World
of Warcraft: Cataclysm
(expansion)
-
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">January
2011
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2539">Test
Drive Unlimited 2 -
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">Early 2011
- href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1407">DC
Universe Online (release) size="-1">
size="-1">Upcoming
Events
size="-1">
style="font-weight: bold;">
- Ask the Devs!
Have you got a question about style="font-style: italic;">Rift:
Planes of Telera?
Well, you have a chance to ask the devs at Trion Worlds directly. Just
submit your questions href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=53660">in
our forums.
alt="World of Warcraft PlayerScore"
src="http://images.tentonhammer.com/misc/PlayerScore/2010/PlayerScore_102810.jpg">
What's
your PlayerScore? World of
Warcraft players, find out at
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/playerscore">playerscore.com.
Loading... the only MMORPG
connection always at five bars.
You’re at a large public venue - a coffee shop or
restaurant, an expo hall, an airport, an airplane –
with a laptop, no recognizable and twenty minutes to spare.
Pulling out a credit card to access a fee-based hotspot fills you with
contempt – not only does the money to online time ratio not
work out (no Facebook updates are worth $.25 a minute; I know we paid
more in the Compuserve days but let’s leave that in the
past), but the whole process of poking out the numbers anyone needs to
temporarily ruin your life gives you a case of the skeeves,
understandably.
What to do? Right on cue, a shining promise appears on your network
browser: “Free Public Wifi”. It’s free,
it’s public, and it’s wifi (not tethered, sketchy
3G – glorious unsecured 802.11) – a gift from the
Internet gods. Except, not. Free Public Wifi, as most of us found out
when first duped years ago, is a shimmering mirage in the Internet
connection desert.
A recent
href="http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130451369">NPR
article explains that Free
Public Wifi is an artifact of pre-SP3 Windows XP systems that, when
unable to find a “favorite” network to connect to,
create their own ad-hoc network. Internet security expert Joshua Wright
likened it to a “zombie plague”, since the ad-hoc
settings will take on the appearance of the last network you connected
to.
If you’ve been duped, fool me once…
you’re probably ok. Most of the time, the connection is inert
– if you haven’t updated Window XP in two and a
half years, you’re probably not a threat to anyone but
yourself. But the ubiquity of FPW makes it a popular (if uninspired)
setup for hackers, since connecting to a ad-hoc network could
potentially grant access to site logins and other sensitive data. So,
Loading… tip of the day – don’t connect
to Free Public Wifi.
The mindset that makes “Free Public Wifi” so
attractive is part of what’s fueling the free-to-play
initiative – some might call it, like Free Public Wifi, a
zombie plague - working its way through the MMORPG market. As
Shay
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/loading/2010/oct/27">pointed
out yesterday, in 2011
style="font-style: italic;">Champions Online
will join the likes of
style="font-style: italic;">Pirates of the Burning Sea,
the Lord
of the Rings Online,
style="font-style: italic;">DDO,
and EverQuest
2 Extended.
I view the move towards free to play as part of a broader cultural
shift towards entertainment entitlement, as in, if it’s
fairly trivial to download or stream TV shows and music for free, why
shouldn’t games be free too? Well, many reasons, but
here’s the best one: because good, compelling games cost a
lot per person entertained to create. Contrast
style="font-style: italic;">WoW,
even with it’s twelve million players, with the microscopic
cost of producing, say, a Lady Gaga track, and divide that by the
people that will listen to that song on the radio, Pandora, at sports
complexes, on commercials, much less buy or download the album.
By driving games to become less profitable per user (especially once
the microtransaction market inevitably reaches its saturation point) we
might be affecting the quality of future games more than we realize,
supporting more and more games that have only the appearance of free
(/cough facebook games) but none of the substance of what makes games
fun and worth paying for. In other words, we’ll be connecting
to the Free Public Wifi equivalent of online games, and finding that
we’re not connected to the fun at the core of social gaming
at all.
What does free-to-play say about our culture? Is there an aspect of
“entertainment entitlement” wrapped up in all of
this? Share your thoughts in the
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=54386">Loading…
forum.
Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the
Day
Epic Thread of the Day
From our
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/forumdisplay.php?f=6">Articles,
News & Events Discussion
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=54361">Apple
to buy Sony, EA?
Is
Apple poised to acquire Sony or EA? Some on Wall Street seem to believe
that Steve Jobs and company have designs on the gaming giants. With
Apple standing $51 billion in the black, an enviable position by any
standards, they certainly have the means to make it happen. Whether
you're loyal to the brand or harbor disdain for overpriced iThings,
there's an interesting conversation underway in our news forum.
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=54361">Join
it!
=====================================
Awesome
Quotes from the Epic Thread
"Since
I dont like the crowd hanging around Apple products or the cencorship
going around Apps and content...
...I will refrain from using products from a game company that is in
the hands of Apple."
-
href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showpost.php?p=444857&postcount=6">Kralle
=====================================
New
and Exclusive Content
Today at Ten Ton Hammer
4 new Ten Ton Hammer
features today! 100 original features in October! 1160
in 2010!
REVIEWS
Arcania:
Gothic 4 Review
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/main/reviews/Arcania-Gothic-4">http://www.tentonhammer.com/main/reviews/Arcania-Gothic-4
Now
that most of you have a copy of Fallout: New Vegas in your hands, it's
time to remind some of you about a similar RPG that came out at the
same time. Arcania: Gothic 4 is a fantasy RPG that is relatively open
ended and has you hunting down evil from sunrise to sunset. Can it
compete against the legendary giant? We break down the game's strengths
and weaknesses in our Arcania: Gothic 4 Review!
REGULAR
FEATURES
Everyday
is Halloween – A Microcosms Look at the Creative Side of
Free-to-Play
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/microcosms/2010/oct/28">http://www.tentonhammer.com/microcosms/2010/oct/28
With
Halloween just a couple of days away everyone is getting into the
holiday spirit with fancy costumes and outlandish outfits. Unlike World
of Warcraft players, who need special occasions to look different from
each other, many free-to-play gamers revel in looking unique every day.
Join Jason “Medawky” Bolton as he looks at some of
the best and
brightest in this special pictorial edition of Microcosms.
MEDIA
DCUO
Scarecrow Revealed in Time for Halloween
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/dcuo/images/scarecrows-sewer">http://www.tentonhammer.com/dcuo/images/scarecrows-sewer
style="font-weight: bold;">FEATURES & GUIDES
WoW
Cataclysm: Goblin Portal
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/races/goblin">http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/races/goblin
Goblins are one of the two new exciting races being introduced in World
of Warcraft: Cataclysm. Goblins have always played a big part in the
world of Azeroth yet have gone fairly unnoticed, simply falling into
the background of everyday game play. However, with one sect of Goblins
pledging allegiance to the mighty Horde, players are finally sitting up
and taking more notice of the Goblin race and finding many unanswered
questions. To fill the need for more information on the Goblin race we
here at Ten Ton Hammer are pleased to introduce the brand new Goblin
Portal, a resource that will hopefully leave no question unanswered,
and will be updated with new information as it becomes available.
Today's
Top 10
-
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/rift/interviews/reader-submitted-questions-part4">Combat
and Abilities - style="font-weight: bold;">Rift: Planes of Telara
Reader Submitted Q&A #4 -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/diablo3/classes/preview/demonhunter">Hands-on
with the Diablo
III Demon
Hunter -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/races/goblin">
style="font-weight: bold;">WoW
Cataclysm: Goblin Portal -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/blizzcon/2010/raid-dungeons-panel">BlizzCon
2010: World
of Warcraft
Dungeons and Raids Panel Overview -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/dcuo/images/dr-fate-lair">Exclusive!
DC
Universe Online Screenshots
– Dr. Fate’s Lair -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/main/reviews/Arcania-Gothic-4">
style="font-weight: bold;">Arcania: Gothic 4
Review -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/guides/politics/why-caldari">Ten
Reasons To Be Caldari In style="font-weight: bold;">EVE Online -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/dcuo/interviews/2010/jim-lee-and-chris-cao">DCUO's
Jim Lee and Chris Cao Talk Green Lantern, a Moon Mission, &
more! -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/wow/guides/seasonal/hallows-end">WoW
2010 Hallow's End Guide -
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/eve/guides/business/newbie-professions">Five
Newbie-Friendly Professions In style="font-weight: bold;">EVE
Online
Thanks
for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network!
- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten
Ton Hammer
team
