Mom Gamers

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.

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." 

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.

So the mages are pretty cool. You get about three shots with your available mana before you're out and have to sit down and rest. By level 4 I had fire, ice shards and also a buff which restores mana as you fight.

I died pretty early on. You get about 10 seconds of laying there in a blue-black screen and then you can respawn right there.

I managed to make 1000 gold quickly enough to buy a cottage.

I look forward to doing some decorating in my very bare house!

Other things I discovered:

• 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

What I didn't like:

• 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. 

I look forward to playing some more and discovering more of this game.  I don't know how appealing it is for adults to play regularly, but it seems like this will be a good game for kids to play..