MMORPG

I really missed writing about these guys. But we’re all hoping Free Realms will be a hit!

BREAKING NEW: 2:31 AM EDT – Free Realms is live! They almost ran out of Tuesday in San Diego but managed to pull it off! BREAKING NEWS: 1:44 AM EDT – Playing GEMS on EVERQUEST… BREAKING NEWS: 12:50 AM EDT – Oh, actually it’s still Tuesday here in Connecticut, too. But SOE is cutting the FR launch pretty close, and that’s if they bring it up right now. ...

Will EverQuest 3 be going cartoony? Free Realms looks great and I know I’ll be playing it for a long while, but I came into this genre playing EverQuest (if you don’t count Nexus: Kingdom of the Wind), and I’ll leave it playing EverQuest, so now that they have Free Realms out of their system, what’s next for our my favorite franchise? One of the things I liked least about EverQuest 2 was that EverQuest still existed. Here I was in EverQuest with several high level characters, and I had to start all over? A lot of EverQuest players said, well, if I have to start over anyway, I might as well do it in World of Warcraft as EverQuest 2. Because they still had EverQuest, you see, for their Norrathian fix. ...

I’ve renamed the Web Log to the Daily Blogroll, just because I like the name better. Also, in the Shameless Self Promotion dept, look for the last Adventures in Monopoly scheduled for later today. There’ll be more adventures with Dire Bear, Scottie and Car, when they have another story to tell. It’s server merge time in EQ2 again. This time, the US PvP servers Nagafen and Venekor (RP) will merge after Fan Faire in June. Most PvP players seem okay with it, but some are taking it really hard. ...

I spent a couple of days wandering lost through the silver mines in Quarterstone’s Statue District, which ended the only way they could possibly end – with my character’s death and revival at the dungeon exit, whereupon I took off. While wandering through the dungeon, which is mostly a PvP-enabled area, I was attacked by packs of hyenas, hunted by raptors, burned by salamanders and tied to a plank by pirates. Vicious, vicious place, and I only got half of the incredibly rare resource I needed to harvest there. ...

Welcome to Monday! We had a gorgeous weekend here in Connecticut. The cat loved sunning herself in every patch of light, shorts weather for sure, and everything is in bloom. Free Realms is also in bloom. FR’s beta ended yesterday with a huge bash in the port town of Seaside. Oz of Kill Ten Rats isn’t feeling the love, and cites deceptive practices in game among reasons why he doesn’t feel FR is ready for prime time. Tobold responds by pointing out the collectible card game was not nearly as expensive as Oz opines, or that beta testers were required to pay to test member-only content, and offers his own thoughts on the Free Realms beta. ...

The servers are coming down this morning, all beta characters are being deleted (answering a question of mine), and tomorrow, you’ll be able to start cooking, racing, shooting, mining and everything else. Here’s the full announcement: Some of you have seen the signs. The NDA being lifted. Cryptic twitters from developers. Unexpected fan site announcements. Some have speculated that the next stage of Free Realms is here…they are right. Since our initial closed beta announcement, we have been flagging more and more beta sign ups for access to the game. We have also been working with an affiliate site, Miniclip.com. The Free Realms beta has been open to the millions of players from that site as well as any new registrations made on our home page. While we did not announce it, we are already well into our open beta period. ...

I read on The Friendly Necromancer’s site that little leprechauns had appeared all over Wizard City, ready, willing and hoping to give everyone who talked to them 50,000 gold. So, my excited overspending on the first night of housing on the Test realm, was erased! When I logged in, I found more than that had been erased – all the characters had been reset, and I had all my original money back but had to buy those islands again. ...

Way back in February, I was getting within a few weeks of finishing Dragonspyre and was wondering how many times I would have to complete the final instance before I got Malistaire’s drop, my Life class robe, the best Life robe in the entire game, bar none. After running the numbers, I concluded: “How many times will you, personally, run the last instance? Count on at least seven.” Tonight, with a pickup group, I got my Life robe on my seventh try. ...