Anarchy Online – best MMORPG – if you have the time to blow

I have finally found a game to play. Yup you guessed it, Anarchy Online, its free for now, and its highly playable.

After having tried a few other titles, I have found this game to be better than the rest of the titles (Fiesta, 2nd Life, etc). If you are looking for a good and free MMORPG type game, this one is the one to go for.

There are lots of options in this futuristic science fiction world. Loads of missions, loads of character improvements, and a lot of players to mingle with, trade with and party with.

If you find yourself in Athens, then I recommend you head straight for the subway in teams, if you do this you will level up a lot quicker than by playing missions (which require a lot of walking time). Once you reach level 25 – you can leave the subway and start taking on some real missions.

Good luck and post a comment if you liked the game.

Fiesta

This game is surprisingly playable, and requires no real money to play, unlike some of the other MMORPG cons out there.

The game client is around 700MB, and the game play on a 2Mbps ADSL connection was excellent. The game actually performed with very little bugs, but I did manage to lock some items in my inventory and get some windows onscreen that are not easy to get rid of, actually I still have not managed to free myself of these newly created windows.

The interface is clumsy and not intuitive at all, right clicking or left clicking in different places has strange effects, and there is an unmentioned double click in other places to further confuse the user.

The enemies are not challenging – and fights are carried out in Diablo fashion left click till you get RSI (sore fingers). The enemies are actually the worst part of the game, and you cannot attack real players – so there is no real urgency to form groups or clans.

The main reason why I have lost interest in this game was it seems that the game is full of masses of players who are all just out for selfish gains, and no real purpose other than to get new and better weapons, the game has very little depth, and the areas feel more like arenas.

Its difficult to get someone’s attention in the game, and I am sure you could play this game without actually chatting to anyone for months.

The quests that are presented are weak, boring and provide little rewards.

Having said that its at least a real game that you could play for a few hours at least till you get bored. It does have at least one hook, which might be that the game play could improve if you put in more time, but I am doubtful about that, so I gave up early on rather than wasting more time.

2nd Life seems a bit of a joke to me

Having watched a BBC documentary on virtual worlds online and technology improvements, I decided to download and try 2nd Life.

I played it twice, each time for about 30 minutes, then I decided to uninstall it and move on to try something else. These are my findings.

2nd Life’s 3D environment is pretty outdated, and comparable to 2001 type games. I mean with UNREAL 3 / Crysis 2 engines available for developers, 2nd Life looks like it was designed using gamestudio A7 – Bad bad bad!!!

The game is also full of bugs, my character got stuck moving around quite often – and as crazy as this sounds, I even managed to append a go-cart to my left leg and walk around with it for a while – looking absolutely ridiculous with some torch item attached to my right elbow and a party hat on – all of this was unintentional. Not the greatest look to try and socialize with the other 2nd life citizens.

You fall through the floor too I noticed, which is simply a result of crummy game design.

Through out the game there is constant pressure to spend real money to improve your appearance or to purchase land – don’t think its cheap either!

So once you are fully sorted – I guess there is very little to do other than have cartoon cyber sex, and just stand around and chat with other avatars.

I found this whole experience too boring personally – so I give this title a skip. But at least it seems a little less intrusive into your personal life and real details than Entropia.

Entropia Warning – stay far away from this cash trap

I have decided that I would tryout a few MMORPG’s in hope to find a fun and exciting online gaming experience. For those of you who don’t know the genre Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games theoretically are supposed to provide a fun an unique gaming experience, You are online playing with real people, who you can team up with in your quests, or fight against. You can fully review the genre at Wikipedia if you like.

Entropia was a game I decided to rather put down, even before my access details were fully processed. I created an account using fake details, which was rejected, the game company really wants your real details, those I was not willing to provide, but I provided a 2nd fake set that resembled a real enough address.

Well this registration can take up to 24 hours, I decided to read up on a few reviews on this game, and was so horrified, I decided its best not to get involved in this game, if you can even call it a game.

The whole game is designed to make you spend REAL money, by purchasing items that will help you in your quests, I could already smell a rat. I then read some reviews from ex-players who have mostly had bad experiences with the game, and confirm – its just a cash cow designed to extract money from players.

The actual game experience was reported as tedious, boring and amateur.

So I gave this one a skip, I suggest you do the same….