Ten Ton Hammer | Loading... Hellgate: London

Welcome to the 996th 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?).

Here's today's top 5 Pulse results:

Biggest Movers in the Top 20 today :

EverQuest 2 (UP 12 to # 13)
Dungeons & Dragons Online (UP 9 to #12)
Tabula Rasa (down 6 to # 14)

Loading... Daily

Loading... ten tons of awesome in a fifty pound sack.

FusionFall, which launched last week, has been well received by everyone I've talked to here at Ten Ton Hammer. Including myself, since I do talk to myself with alarming frequency. Our free-to-play guru Ralsu goes so far as to say that FusionFall is poised to clean up, being an intelligent, kid-friendly game for a wallet-friendly monthly price.

FusionFall devs are understandably busy keeping things ship-shape, but we did catch up to Executive Producer Chris Waldron over the weekend. Chris had this to say:

"Many years in the making, and we are finally live! You cannot believe how excited, relieved, and ecstatic I am to have FusionFall out in the hands of the people it was made for. Many people in Atlanta and Seoul have worked very hard on the game and have my deepest respect and admiration for an almost flawless launch. I hope everyone out there enjoys playing, and we look forward to adding some really cool features and new characters in the months ahead! Thank you everyone."

If you're channeling your thanks through Loading... to everyone at Cartoon Network and Grigon, either 1) your respective companies are super cool and subscribe everyone to the Ten Ton Hammer newsletter by default (not a bad idea, you highly informed, highly motivating scrum leaders), or 2) you might want to dust off the ol' corporate mailing list. Nonetheless, thanks to Chris Waldron for stopping by, and what CN and Grigon have done here is already worthy of dev conference panels and keynotes on international collaboration.

Item the second, because you can't have a Loading... without a gripe (I signed a contract). At the very last not-for-pretend E3 (2006) I wasted a few hours chasing down and writing up a Hellgate: London impressions piece. I say wasted because, upon arriving I was promptly told that Hellgate: London isn't an MMO . This article from the Ten Ton Hammer archives and the page layout is a little... crunked up, so please pardon our dust.

E3 is or was no time to split hairs, so I wrote up what I say and worried more about the games that actively claimed the MMO mantle. If I'm returning to split hairs now, it's only because HG:L has become the lynchpin in The Impending Doom of MMO Gaming articles from the short-bus bloggers all the way to print publications like Game Informer. These articles annoy me to no end simply because there's no consistency between categories. At least 80% of console games fail including more than a few big-budgeters each year, so why don't we see "The End is Nigh" articles for the PS3 or Wii? Probably because your dad has way more fun with the Wii than you do, but that's for another Loading...

Back in 2006, it wasn't cool to be an MMORPG (if it is today); Guild Wars had even taken to putting some distance between itself and the category. From the official Guild Wars FAQ: "Rather than labeling Guild Wars an MMORPG, we prefer to call it a CORPG (Competitive Online Role-Playing Game)."Guild Wars is the touchstone wikipedia et al. uses to describe HG:L's multiplayer structure, that is, a lobby and instance format, heavy on the instance. But while I believe DDO and Guild Wars had much more game-like "lobbies" and as such met the longstanding defintion for an MMORPG - more than 92 persistent characters interacting in a single space toward game objectives - I'm not sure HG:L did. In the safe zones maybe, but you certainly couldn't take more than a handful of your friends into an instance.

Flagship later equivocated, claiming that HG:L draws heavily from MMOs (and from the tone of the rest of the interview, "draw heavily" meant using a subscription pricing model). Flagship CEO Bill Roper (now Champions Online executive producer) even seemed glib about blurring the distinction, "I think that just as Diablo and Diablo II started this religious argument over whether they're RPGs or not, I think that Hellgate will spark that same debate over whether it's an MMO or not." Later Roper went on record to comment that Flagship failed to connect the dots between subscription revenue and continuing content, lending credence to the argument that HG:L's "mmo-ness" was mostly a money grab.

With apologies to Bill Roper - you don't need to look beyond Diablo and D2 to see that the guy has had incredible success as a dev, and his charisma shows in our latest Champions Online exclusive dev diary - if you muddy the waters and shun the pat definitions, you'd better have a serious hook. Guild Wars was forgiven its MMO-ness or lack of MMO-ness because it was free-to-play. DDO had a major league license in Eberron and has a host of dedicated players to this day. HG:L might as well have been Shadowrun when it comes to persistence and multiplayer structure, but for all of Shadowrun's faults, it didn't require a separate subscription.

The end result that, instead of focusing on Tabula Rasa as a worthy experiment in a crossover MMORPG-shooter that failed to attract a following, the MMORPG category is supposedly full of fail because HG:L, this straw man MMO, along with TR, will be shutdown in a little more than a month. I don't buy it, not with games like FusionFall just released, plus DC Universe Online, Star Trek Online, and Star Wars: The Old Republic on the horizon. Nor should you.

So what do you think? Was Hellgate: London an MMO in more than its revenue model? Your comments are welcome in the Loading... forum, or email me directly if you like.

Shayalyn's Epic Thread of the Day

From our Articles, News & Events Discussion Forum

The Elder Scrolls Online: The Next Great Fantasy MMOG?

Back
in the day I took breaks from EverQuest to enjoy a little
single-player fun with Morrowind: The Elder Scrolls (even though the
first person viewpoint in the game always made my stomach lurch). When
Oblivion launched, I quickly snapped it up. (And, again, experienced
that familiar motion sickness.) If a MMOG launched based on the Elder
Scrolls IP, you can bet I'd be lining up to try it out...and hoping for
a nice third person PoV that wouldn't make me seasick.

Cody Bye's speculative commentary
about the possibilities behind the Elder Scrolls IP got me thinking
about the many ways Bethesda could do an Elder Scrolls
MMOG right...and the ways they could potentially screw it up
(camera angle not really included). Are you an Elder Scrolls fan? What
would you like to see, or not see, in a MMOG based on this IP? Head
over to our forum to talk about it.

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

Awesome Quote from the
Epic Thread:

"I completely support an Elder
Scrolls MMORPG. However, I support it only if Bethesda stays true to
their game. Elder Scrolls has always been amazing because of its
open-air, sandbox-type gameplay and their ability to offer completely
open situations.
Theft. Murder. Assassination. Betrayal.

The
sheer open world of Elder Scrolls and the ability of the player to
function almost freely in it is what makes those games great. Hence, if
they do make an Elder Scrolls MMORPG, they need to continue that
heritage in a multiplayer environment."

- Barbarious
=================================

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

6 new MMOG hand-crafted articles today! 71 in January! 71 in 2009!

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

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