I've been very bored on the game front as of late; which has led to no posts here. I've not been gaming because there's been nothing good to play!
However, there are some interesting looking games on the horizon, and one current new game that's excellent.
Articles to come soon on each, but here are the ones to try and why:
RIFT - amazing new game from Trion. Watch out for one of their free trial weekends. Think WoW, but updated, different, with some tweaks. Excellent graphics. Excellent character creation. Excellent skill sets and talent tree design. Craving playing this game so much after the free weekend, that it looks like it's going to be a purchase and sub for me. More to come on this game.
Coming 2011:
Guild Wars II - I want it because it's supposed to be a great game, and it's a one-time purchase, no subscription fee MMO. These gaming companies make TONS of money off the customer purchase of one game package. I don't know why companies like Trion and Blizzard can't change over to the format that the folks who make GW have. Buy the game, online play free. They're still making tons of money off the expansion packs.
Skyrim - this is THE 2011 game. You must buy it. I can't wait. It's due out 11/11/11.
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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.
Playing games with friends is always so much fun, whether it's kick-the-can, online games or MMORPGs. Even single player games have their connections with other folks via forums.
So why do some games and game types succeed when others fail? Example: recent GoPets closure. GoPets was the best pet game. A very social, very cute, very customizable game. Just the best. But I could never get any of my friends to play it. I tried and tried - no interest whatsoever. You'd even think they hated games by the looks they gave me. So ok, gaming is not for some people.
Then GoPets gets bought by Zynga. What comes out shortly after? Petville. Who makes pets and plays Petville? Some of those folks who wouldn't play GoPets before! Why is that?
- Facebook games are very lazy games - it's possible the simple do-nothingness of the games draws folks in. Yes I'm saying most folks are lazy by nature. :) At least we like to take the easy road lots of times.
- People are on Facebook daily - add some games and you increase the chance that people will play them. It's kind of like that people will do the crossword puzzle in the paper, but most won't go out and buy a crossword puzzle book and do them regularly in there. (why, I don't know, because I do buy game books and magazines. Maybe I'm odd!)
- The social connection is there. Your best friend plays Farmville? "Oh maybe I'll try it too!" could likely be someone's thinking.
That's where the Jumpstart series of games come into play. My children enjoyed the Jumpstart games on their computers years ago. Today your children can play Jumpstart games on the Wii, making it easier for you to watch while they learn.
The Jumpstart folks have asked me to review for you their latest release, Escape from Adventure Island. I'd not played one of these educational games for quite some time and expected a simplistic set of learning tools. However, I was in for a surprise!
You start out by creating your own avatar - hair, face, eyes, clothes. You have a restricted amount of items you can use and you learn immediately that if you want a particular hairstyle you need to earn sand dollars to obtain the changes you want.
You start out on a beach and are introduced to a local, who tells you about your treehouse that you can decorate and other things you can do. I didn't find my house right off, but went straight to exploring. Along the beach are entrances or portals to different types of games. Enter one and you'll find that there are series of games that you can play in this portal. There are lessons, with curriculum levels set at Easy. Medium and Hard. I found that the Hard level is the same lesson type, just with more in-game obstacles.
For example, your child's goal may be to target the written word "eleven" from the vocal clue "Find the word that spells eleven." Your child moves the avatar through the field of obstacles (sometimes having the capability to shoot the obstacle) and through the card that reads "eleven". If "Hard" is the chosen level, there would be more obstacles to shoot to get to the word "eleven".
Other fun things included riding a mantra and shooting shapes or colored targets, or squasing punk punks to get to the target. As you complete lessons you earn those sand dollars to buy more items for your avatar.
This style of game makes learning fun for children. They get to practice their skills, while enjoying fun game play along the way!
There are a lot of areas to explore. There's a DDR-type of dance game that's cute. You can ride the slide and go underwater and be part of the fashion clothes show beneath the surface. There are plenty of learning games both underwater and on the beach.
Don't forget your house! When you find your treehouse you can decorate it as you like. I liked having a house, but tired of it quickly, because it was only exterior decorations. I didn't find that you could actually go inside and arrange furniture or the inside of the house. Too bad - that would have expanded on the game nicely.
Some things I would have like to have seen done differently:
* You have to earn more sand dollars but it never says how many more you need to get particular items. You just have to play and keep checking back as you get more.
* The treehouse customizing is only external - would have loved to decorate inside as well
* In one game I had to shoot colors and their yellow looked like olive-green so much so that I couldn't actually find the yellow colored cards. It's not like yellow wasn't displayed properly elsewhere on that same screen.
Things I really liked:
* The RPG-ish-ness of the game (avatars, quests, squashing beasts, shooting obstacles, riding mounts)
* Wii remote technology - good use of the remote+nunchuk
* The fashion show - you can try on a bunch of different clothing styles on your character, even though you can't afford them yet
* That there are worlds both above and under water
* That there was a LOT to do. There were lots of areas to explore, and each was full of lessons of different difficulty.
The kids can really get a lot of playtime from Escape from Adventure Island, and lots of practice on their basic skills as they progress. Learning really is fun!
Learn more about Escape from Adventure Island at Jumpstart
WoW has in their store two purchasable in-game pets: Lil KT and Pandaren Monk. The monk looks so cute and cool - he bows to you and supposedly does Kung Fu moves. Also, for a limited time, when you purchase the monk, Blizz donates $5 to Make A Wish Foundation. Half of your purchase is given to charity - that's a good cause that I plan to support!Supposedly, today and tomorrow is the Holiday Day of the Dead. I heard it's an EU holiday but I was also told we can do it too in the US. Going to check it out later.
You can get a "pet" - make some bread from the recipe you can get, then give it to the Cheerful Spirit:
"Your reward is a Macabre Marionette, a small pet that looks like a skeleton wearing a sombrero and holding a pair of maracas. This pet can only be used during the Day of the Dead event - it cannot be learned and kept like other small pets."Too bad. :( But still fun to look into.
GoPets is the cutest pet game ever so far. They had some financial issues last year and had to lay everyone off; keeping a no-staff of the president and his wife. It was only a matter of time before the company totally shut down. I wish this game could have gone on forever - I obtained many great friends and a real-life job through this game. I hope to forever continue to reap rewards from my relationships from this game, and to help these friends in the same ways.
I've not seen my pets in a year and was just thinking of them last night. I was so tempted to try to login but didn't want to feel the pain of seeing my pets, and the pets on accounts that my kids created, knowing that i.) our accounts would probably be messed up (lost land if not logged in in a long time) and ii.) the game could close at any time and I didn't want to get freshly attached again, even to a broken account. It really was the best pet game out there, and I hope we can see the likes of it again one day - even better.
It's really sad to see the game totally go. It was special to be able to login to my kids' accounts and play with pets they created, with desktops they layed out. Even though they no longer played, it was special to me, as I'm sure it was to other parents. Many parents with very young children created accounts for their kids, so they'd have the good items when they grew up. The good, rare items traded for a HUGE amount of shells! Also I remember a story of a girl whose dad created an account and she wanted access to it because he had died. It was wonderful to be able to care for these virtual pets and it will be so sad to see the company totally shut down this wonderful virtual world.
Here is the forum post from Erik:
Dear all GoPets Players,
It is with profound regret and sadness that I compelled to report that we will have to shut the GoPets and GoDance service down.
It has been a privilege to work closely together with you the fan base over the past 5 years - over a million pets, 150,000 custom items, robust trades and countless adventures – all wonderful.
At the core of the issue is that despite heroic work by staff and volunteers the fundamental structure of GoPets including being a client vs. a web application and numerous others challenges, we could not grow GoPets large enough to be self-sustaining.
The staff members have moved on to good jobs, and GoPets itself will be carefully archived – for now there are no plans – but there can be hope.
The target for end of service is November 7th, 2009. We suspended payments earlier this week and we will be using our remaining savings to best refund remaining subscription time to the best of our ability. Other details of the shutdown process will follow.
I would like to thank the special volunteer players who have made extra ordinary contributions of creativity and sweat over the past year – all amazing.
Also, I must thank Mike, Ken, Nancy, Houston and Tony for keeping GoPets running for the past year as well as creating GoDance with such a small staff and huge time pressure. It was always a tough situation but I think you can be proud of what you created.
Finally, I must thank my wife Kaiwen – Lotus. GoPets could never have been created without her adventuresome spirit to move to Korea in 2003, and since then she has grown into our community leader, our localization leader and most recently a prolific designer. Beyond all that she has been my partner through all of these ups and downs and has endured and helped solve all of chaos to our family and personal lives.
Deep sadness,
-Erik
I love looking at lists of peoples' favorite games, and hearing about the best games they've ever played. I like to see if my faves are on the list, as well as maybe discovering a new game!
Here's what Taichi Inuzuka from Square Enix has to say about Dragon Quest:
What is your favorite game you have every played on any console and why?
"This is not promotion or anything, and it comes from the bottom of my heart, but I think DRAGON QUEST IX is the best and favorite game I've ever played. I've played around 500 hours so far. Reasons are because I could play such a long time and haven't felt almost any stress while I play."No stress - hmmm...sounds like a game I'd love to try!
The author of this article says:
"I’m pretty excited, I have to admit. I want to ding 80 before Christmas, which should be easy enough (again, level 49 right now) but my play schedule is pretty wacky."Well. I have to say that I'm 52 and hope to be 80 by then too. I figured it's going to take me that long. I don't know how my friend did it. He made a little mage two weeks after I made my lock last month. He's at 80 already and no he's not on the referral program. MAN. I asked him how he does it and he just giggles. He plays a lot of hours, definitely. He's a fast leveler.
This article includes a link to some Facebook games and apps that have been subject to hacking. I'd avoid all the apps on this list:
- MyGirlySpace
- Ferrarifone
- Mashpro
- Mynameis
- Pass-it-on
- Fillinthe
- Aquariumlife
- CityFireDepartment
I've been wanting to try Aion for some time. This review makes me want to do so even more quickly!
"I've been hooked on this for some weeks and can see I'd like to play this long term as it's fun and feels different from other similar MMORPGs.
"It's a standout title all on its own - which is a good thing as it doesn't need the inevitable comparison with WoW."Sorry I've been away for several days; was fighting off some virus. I did play WoW some; I'll be posting a related article soon.
Today I decided to try out Artix's AdventureQuest Worlds. I wanted to try it out because it looked interesting, is free, is browser based, and has reached 10 million players in 10 months. OK mostly because it's reached 10 million players in 10 months! Who doesn't want to see what that's all about?
I go to the site, and create an account. In the character creation screen, you have some control over the look of your character - hair style and color, and skin and eye color. You can choose to be a warrior, mage, priest or rogue. I wanted to choose rogue, or my typical warrior choice, but I decided to try a mage.
You get a little intro story...
...and you're dumped into the intro area.
I had a little bit of a hard time figuring out where to go. The quest givers are extremely easy to see. I suggest using the map if you get lost.
Here's the main map - if you get lost just look into the center and zoom in on that area:
- I was summoned in on a couple of boss battles - fights with others always makes things easy!
- You can help others and they can help you fight - you only need one hit on the monster they're fighting to get some rewards
- The arena fighting against several bosses was easy and not bad at level 4
- There are several types of servers - chat, kid-friendly where only canned chat is allowed, and then paid-for members servers
- When I bought a house it took a long time for me to be able to get in (several hours). It kept saying I didn't have one. When I tried to buy one again t said I already had one. :D
- I can't post on the forum until I've played several days.
Techmamas is a great site for tech news that appeals to women, mothers and families. A recent article covers girls and mom gamers!
"I have seen an increase in my mom friends gaming habits as well in the following areas:
Enchanted Island is a recently new Facebook game. It's done by the folks that do Growing Gifts. Enchanted Island is a different kind of game, what's known as a passive game. You can keep it open in your browser tab and come back to it during the day every 15 minutes to play. It's a game of patience!
On Enchanted Island, you start out as a visitor to the island. In town you meet up with folks who help you out along the way. You acquire a wand which helps you grow flowers. As you cast and grow more flowers, your skill level increases, as does your silver and gold. Silver is used to purchase more flower seeds, pots, wands and clothing. Gold is used to purchase special seeds and potions.
Casting is 2 casts every 15 minutes. The game runs in a tabbed window of your browser so you can visit and cast at your leisure. It's a relaxing game.
Viewing your profile will give you information on what you've currently got on your flower stand. As well, it's fun to look at other folks' profiles to see what they have sitting on their stands.
Additionally, you can see the pots you have in your inventory, seeds, and special quest items.
You can also see your badges. There are seed badges, quest badges and other special badges awarded along your journey.
A very cute, albeit not very prominent, therefore probably overlooked, feature of the game is the option to write your avatar's story (or any story you want!) As you level, you are able to write another short chapter in your book. You can right now only read chapters of others who are the same level as you. The more you level the more you can write and read others' stories. There are some interesting and creative chapters out there!
Some folks have complained that getting 2 casts every 15 minutes is boring. Where's the excitement? Where's the fast action? This game isn't about that. You'd be surprised how many 15 minute segments you can miss when playing, if you don't pay attention. The game's passiveness makes it a wonderful tiny enjoyment to a busy day.
Zynga's Farmville is a recent Facebook application where you grow vegetables and fruit trees, and raise animals for profit.
Everyone loves to make as much money or gold from games. The more money you have in Farmville means the more things you can buy to expand and decorate your farm. Fun! Here are two articles that detail which trees and veggies are the best gold makers in Farmville.
Top 5 Money-Wielding Trees
Farmville Treeconomics
According to the latter article, date trees and Super Berries are the most bang-for-the-buck plants to grow.
Take a look too at Farmville Village for unofficial guides, tutorials and tips.
MomGamers was designed with the idea for gaming women in mind. You don't have to be a mom to want to find great games to play that aren't merely hack-and-slash.
Women like to play some of these hack-and-slash games, for sure. However, we like a lot more interest to our games as well, and these types of full-featured games make for the types of games we love. MomGamers welcomes every gamer with an interest in finding news, reviews and information on great games.
Games we'll cover will have mom appeal in some way. We'll have fame reviews, tips on how to get more currency in particular games, review features, or recommendations.
The games we cover will cross all boundaries - casual games, to mmorpgs, to facebook games, to wii, ds games, xbox, etc. It'll be anything that would appeal to women and moms. Lots of moms stay at home and some have lots of time to play. Some moms with younger children only have short bits of time, and games provide a little down time for them to relax.
We'll cover more of the type of games that includes lots of
- crafting
- decorating
- cooking
- collecting
- fashion (we like hot gear too!)
- pets
and we'll focus on these types of things more than the latest techniques in a hack-and-slash game. Not that that can't be fun too! There are plenty of sites covering that sort of thing, and we're more about finding relaxation, enjoyment and satisfaction from the above types of aspects in gaming.
I hope you enjoy stopping by and come to us when you're looking for ideas for new and fun games to play that are perfect for you, your gameplay style and your lifestyle.
Here are some favorite videos:
Do You Wanna Date My Avatar? by The Guild -- very funny and watchable series of short videos also on You Tube at user watchtheguild. This video features the characters in The Guild.