EverQuest

Penny Arcade starts off Freeday Friday with a little bit of snark about the Chronicles of Spellborn payment plan. While it’s true that you can now use a credit card like for every other game… I think trying to figure out their Coins-based plan is a fun game all on its own, don’t you? Reported everywhere is Lord of the Rings Online’s second anniversary promotion. Free to try again, 25% experience bonus on kills that stacks with all other bonuses, tokens you can trade in for cool stuff, etc etc. The xp boost is very nice, anyway. I haven’t seen what the tokens trade in for, but I have my suspicions I have a lot of Blueberry Tart recipes in my future. ...

If you really wanted it all to yourselves, you shouldn’t have ordered the Carrion Surprise.

Wednesday? Seriously? All these MMO companies, at the same time, said, we’re gonna have some big news, and it’s gonna come out on a Wednesday? What’d I do to them? Last night, I was going to do a new one panel comic, and then sit down and game for awhile. That little test I linked to yesterday that where they wanted to know how MMOs were destroying your life? I wanted to pencil in, want time to play MORE. ...

Tomorrow she’s going to dress up like Foomby and hand people paper bags instead of Evil Eye sacks.

These are the games I’ve played at least a little in the past week. I’m going to end up with Chronicles of Spellborn, because I haven’t talked about it in awhile. First up: I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in Free Realms and as much time as I’m allowed in another which I can’t even name. What I can say is that I predicted awhile back that 2009 could be the best year ever for MMOs, and I’m sticking to that. There is some incredible stuff coming this year. ...

Welcome to the Sunday Web Log! When’s the new EverQuest server coming? The rumor mill has it that the 51/50 server – new characters start off at level 51 with 50 AAs – is in the bag. Others assume that SOE will be opening a new progression server, and have reactivated their accounts in order to start over. As near as I can tell, nothing has been announced yet, but it seems likely that we’ll be able to play on the new server, whatever kind it is, in June. Oh, and EQ players? You voted two frogs in as Mr. and Miss Norrath of 2009? I mean, grats to Kannak and Molleah but … frogs? ...

Interested in playing a little game called Free Realms? They’re letting ANYONE in. They let ME in, right? If you haven’t gotten a key, and want to try out the Next Big Thing, head on over to http://www.freerealms.com/index.vm?cid=1054126 and sign up, first thousand get in (via @freerealms). Odds not good enough for you? USA Today has 20 thousand keys to give away (via Grimwell). Why exactly can’t we talk about this game? This sounds so much like an OPEN beta. ...

To celebrate EverQuest’s tenth anniversary, guides, GMs and the gods themselves are running through the servers getting down and giving treats. Nostalgia the Guild, EQ2 division, was there in force. Because, if you’re gonna talk Classic EverQuest, nostalgia is gonna happen. Plus, all this Shards of Dalaya stuff has me thinking about those good old, old days, where we used to group up to kill fire beetles and run screaming when Queen Klaknak showed. ...

Next month, nothing but gnome bruisers. Bet on it.

The original definition of “blog” was as an abbreviation of “web log”, where you’d point out interesting places you found while surfing. I don’t really have anything to write about today – I did 1.1.11 in LotRO last night on my hunter and started in on the Forsaken Inn quests, and played Free Realms for a couple of hours but I can’t write about that, so… welcome to my web log! ...