Loading... Is PvP the future?

Welcome to the 965th Edition of Loading...

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The Pulse

First, you vote with what you view at Ten Ton Hammer, and the result is the Ten Ton Pulse (What is Pulse?).

Biggest Sinkers and Floaters in the Top 20

Lineage 2 (UP 6 to no. 10)
Runes of Magic (down 4 to no. 15)
Tabula Rasa (UP 3 to no. 9)

Daily Column

Loading... served daily, like your Thanksgiving leftovers.

I hope you had a great holiday weekend, or at least a great weekend if you live outside the US. But if your country doesn't celebrate the American variant of Thanksgiving, I highly recommend it. A day of feasting and football, followed by a day of shopping, a day of Christmas decorating, and a Sunday to recover before the work week is the perfect antidote for an otherwise cold and ugly month.

My family altered our routine a bit this year. Instead of an early morning walk through the mall, Friday saw me slogging through Penn's woods looking for the perfect tree. Our victim was a perfectly shaped 6 foot concolor that smells like oranges and pumpkin spice. It appears happy to be out of the cold, drinking almost a gallon of water so far. If slaying a tree for holiday revelry seems brutish to you, know that this years tree is next summer's compost and next fall's firewood, so nothing will go to waste. Think of it as giving a humble, farm-raised conifer a big sendoff.

Today is December 1st, the start of the winter blahs for news in the games industry as publishers weigh the profits from the 20% of games that succeed against the 80% that don't, developers shore up their latest releases, and gamers settle in and enjoy the glut of quality games and expansions that came to market in the last few months. I'll save most of my reflections on 2008 until later in the month, but it's been quite of a year for the PvPers. Both of this year's major MMOG releases promised heady player-on-player violence and by most accounts, both (eventually?) succeeded.

These PvP-oriented games came at an interesting time, as World of Warcraft (itself responsible for introducing many players to the MMORPG PvP craze, even though it was hardly a pioneer in MMO PvP) had evened up its PvP and Normal (each including RP) server counts in late 2007 after tipping the balance solidly in favor of PvP for two years. I'll have to dig up the exact counts, but it's curious to think that WoW grew the PvP niche then filled it, leaving little in the way of scraps for future competitors. More interesting still is that WoW's biggest opponents are usually veteran PvE gamers, whose roots usually extend to EverQuest rather than the more PvP-oriented Ultima Online. Vanguard seems to have represented the last great hope for a completely PvE-oriented high fantasy MMOG, as every single developer I talk to seems to have elaborate plans for the player-competitive side of the game.

The problem with this be-everything-to-everyone approach is that the class design and balancing associated with PvP takes an immense amount of time, perhaps more than anything else except raid design. Even with 180+ developers working on a game, something has to give. Unless the MMORPG industry caters more to the vast array of niches within itself rather than mass appeal (and reviewers can stop comparing every MMOG to WoW, which is probably a loftier goal), we're likely to have a number of games that do everything with mediocrity. And that will probably ensure the lopsided dominance of WoW for many years to come.

Share your thoughts in the Loading forum or, as always, feel free to write to me directly.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of
the Day

From our WAR: General Discussion Forum

Subscription ran out. Uninstalling.

When
it comes to Warhammer Online, our community member, lawlers, is taking
his toys, climbing out of the sandbox, dusting himself off and going home. (And no, you can't have
his stuff.) And, even though his post is a legitimate gripe and a plea
for Mythic to sort out WAR's server population issues, it only took one
post for someone to say something akin to, "STFU, you're part of the
problem!" and then someone else said (I'm paraphrasing here), "He was just
dissatisfied with the game..." and then someone else said, (again with
the paraphrasing), "Go back to WoW, ya WAR hater!"

Or something like that.

This brought Ten Ton Hammer's Warhammer Online community site lead, Tony "RadarX" Jones, charging into the thread to say, "I have no issues with anyone discussing current issues they have with
WAR but could we PLEASE keep WoW out of it for just one thread and
avoid the rush of defense from it's fans? Thanks!"

Poor
RadarX; I've called attention to this thread, thus increasing the
likelihood that the WoW fans will find it. Now, the least you
Loading... readers can do is go have some fun. (And maybe keep it
WAR-centered fun. Please, think of RadarX.) Let the games begin!

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

Awesome Quote from the
Epic Thread:

"Pavlovian response, Radar. It's unpossible!"

- Unclefacts

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

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

13 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 13 in December! 2987 in 2008!

New MMOG Articles At Ten Ton Hammer Today [Thanks Phil Comeau for links and Real World News]

Interviews

38 Studios: Audio with Aubrey Hodges

Community

Reviews

City of Heroes, Revisited

Guides

Hot Content - Or, what I took a fancy to:

Real World News

Ugandan women robbing bar patrons with chloroform-covered breasts

Victims wake up without any mammary of where their valuables went
Bangkok airport protest halts import of orchids to Hawaii

It's getting harder and harder for visitors to get lei'd
Police seize frying pans in homicide probe

Prosecutors claim a cast-iron-clad case, defending attourney says the charges will non-stick

Thanks for visiting the Ten Ton Hammer network and enjoy the holiday weekend!

- Jeff "Ethec" Woleslagle and the Ten Ton Hammer Team

To read the latest guides, news, and features you can visit our World of Warcraft Game Page.

Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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