Facebook Games

Trapped in a world without color I don’t actually talk, or type, like that texty speak. I don’t know what came over me. Well, I kinda know. There was a bunch of bloggish commentary a few months back on the kind of random ranting bloggers do. You know, bloggers don’t have any deeper insight than anyone else on anything, by and large, but we do have our blogs. It makes us feel more important, gives us a louder voice. But everyone shouts on the internet. It gets tiring. I realized that I really don’t have anything to say about the current state of MMOs. I’ve stopped trying to follow the crowd to every new game; Sim City 5 cured me of that. Wow, way to buy into the hype, right? ...

The Castleville board. With each new “-Ville” game, Zynga adds something new to their base clicker gameplay. Their latest, Castleville, adds fairly involved crafting to the farming mechanic from Farmville and the town building and creature fighting mechanic from Frontierville. Cityville’s trading game and Empires & Allies rudimentary PvP are absent here. The majority of the Castleville board is hidden beneath a “gloom” that can be dismissed via exploration, that can expose new resources and NPCs with which to expand your kingdom. The ever-helpful NPCs you meet will lead you through the game with quests, as in all the previous games. ...

Magic Castle for Sale: Sold! A few days ago I was trying to define what I thought of as an MMO. I started off thinking it was just a realtime, online game with other players, but as the day went on, thinking about it more, I felt it had to include a persistent avatar representing the player that could be named and customized. I was pretty confident that nailed the essential nature of an MMORPG. ...

Treasure Abyss' goodbye message I was on a quest last year for a Facebook game that was really a game, especially some sort of RPG. The great thing about Facebook games is that there are so many of them, that there’s bound to be a couple that appeal. I fell pretty hard for Treasure Abyss, a whimsical RPG from gaming giant Namco Bandai that let you create a party formed from your character and those of your friends and kill dragons and other stuff. I sunk a lot of time and a fair bit of money into the game. I don’t mind paying for games if I’m having fun. ...

Dragon Age Legends One thing you gotta say about Dragon Age Legends: like the single player games upon which its based, in Dragon Age Legends you Get. To. Kill. DRAGONS. (Warning: link goes to Facebook). Unlike, say, Dungeons and Dragons Online, where I have yet to kill a dragon. The one you see in the tutorial is little more than a tease. It’s fighting a mind flayer, though, and we HAVE started killing those in our static group, but the name of the game isn’t Mazes and Mind Flayers Online now, is it? ...

Even Dragon Age Legends needs more tanks I was amused to load up Dragon Age Legends last night and find a message urging me to recruit friends to the game and to urge them to play a tank. Given Blizzard’s new Call to Arms program, which rewards needed archetypes that queue for random dungeons with potions, loot and cosmetic items like mounts and pets, I was a little surprised to see this bleed into the world of social gaming. ...

Oh, wicked, bad, naughty Zoot! She has been setting alight our beacon, which, I just remembered, is grail-shaped. It’s not the first time we’ve had this problem. – Monty Python and the Holy Grail Is Fortune League a social game? The “fantasy raid party” game is on Facebook, after all, but just putting a game on Facebook doesn’t make it social – not by itself. It seems to me that social games require other people to play. When this came up on Twitter a few days back, I thought that the whole reason why they were called social is that, by definition, they couldn’t be played alone. ...

Party Lineup Screen (click to enlarge) A couple of weeks ago, I started playing Fortune League on Facebook with absolutely no idea what I was doing. Or rather, with all the wrong ideas. Fortune League is based off of EverQuest II, and success in the Facebook game brings rewards to the live game. You get AA experience and enhanced XP potions just for participating. If you do well, you can get some cosmetic items – currently some tattered wings and, for the best of the best, a gold trophy for your home. ...

Dragon Age Legends character creator Ahead of Dragon Age Origin’s release in the fall of 2009, Electronic Arts’ web games division, EA2D, came out with a teaser game, Dragon Age Journeys. DA:J gave a taste of the Dragon Age milieu, introducing several of the locations you’d explore in game (such as Ozrammar and the Deep Roads), the creatures you’d kill, and the classes you’d be playing. Completing goals in Journeys led to rewards for your characters in the game. ...

“Hacker 4 Life? Turn it into a career. Study hacking and get a degree. We match you with programs quickly.” I’m surprised there’s not a Facebook ad for how to shoot a politician, but maybe my profile doesn’t include enough gun references. The picture in the ad shows a bit of JavaScript that authenticates that the new password you entered matches the password in its “type it again” field, so props for actually having the picture be somewhat relevant to hacking. ...