Mom Gamers

Dungeons and Dragons Online
I've been exploring Dungeons and Dragons Online. This was a subscription game, and then they adopted a free-to-play format recently.

DDO is really fun at first. I made a ranger and she can summon animals as well as tame animals in the wild to assist. She's an Arcane ranger and can conjure her own arrows. Later she'll be able to conjure fire arrows, poison ones, etc.

It's easy to get through the starter area alone. However, the game is built for grouping. You really have to get into a guild, and go on runs together, or make good use of the Looking-for-Group tab, to either find groups or post for help for your own quests.

Lately I'm annoyed with it. I've spent hours standing around waiting to try to get a group, or for guildmates to login. They take me regularly (three times a week at least) but in evenings. Sometimes I want to play in the day and can never find anyone to go with. If you go alone, you die fast.

Anyway the game is really fun when you go with others. I find it a LOT less stressful than WoW grouping. So that's a positive. I guess because it's free I should try to be more patient with it but it's tough when you have some time and want to game but can't.

News about the Free-to-Play Model
Since DDO (a Turbine game) went Free-to-Play, they brought in a whole new set of folks who knew nothing about the game, who at the very least add life back in the game, and at most could be potential paying customers in the DDO store. The DDO store sells things like Adventure Packs (not all areas are free-to-play), cosmetic changes, hirelings to help you solo some dungeons, and tomes that give permanent status buffs.

Other games like Lord of the Rings (also a Turbine game) and EverQuest 2 have announced they are moving toward the same model. There will be differences between each game of course. For example, Unlike DDO's pay-to-play adventure packs for certain quest lines, LoTR will have every questable area free to play, and there will be other things that folks can purchase from their store.

WoW has also made an announcement that they want to go Free-to-Play in the future. I can't see that happening any time soon with Cataclysm fast approaching. They'll make a lot of money on return players, who will undoubtedly play at least 3 to 6 months to check out all the new content.