Another vote for Magicka

Anton pointed me towards Magicka so I tried it and I am very impressed. Apparently it uses the same technology I was using to make our game, XNA creation studio. at 10 bucks, its worth checking out for anyone. Plenty of humor and creative spell casting with many combinations of elements. It gets an A for the day in my book.

Finally, somebody is getting the picture

Torchlight 2 is launching with no subscription fee. Finally somebody has figured out that while you might make more money for a month or two, you'll get a lot more customers (including me) if you don't put hurdles in the way for your audience. I really like the Pay for Content and then Own it Model that DnDOnline uses. Lotro uses the more questionable one which is "pay for content and stat increases..." not as cool, but still better than: pay 15 bucks a month whether you want to play or not, and constantly ask yourself, "Is this really worth my money? Is this money really worth worrying about? Can I play enough of this to get my money's worth and not get in trouble with my spouse?" I can't wait for Guild Wars 2. Definitely going to try it out.

Thumbs up, Thumbs down

I tried two AA Free MMO's this last week, EverQuest 2 and Champions Online

My feeling are mixed about each of them. They are bpth worth checking out for any of your fans of MMO's out there. It only takes a couple hours for Champions and less than an hour for Everquest.

Some of my feelings (this is not a review, just impressions) about EverQuest 2 are that it sure has a ton of types of crafting nodes, the quests are kinda neat, they show you what you can do in the game, and the zone I picked was very pretty. (plus) Nothing even got close to killing me so the challenge wasn't really there. (minus) And the combat isn't that hard with the caster I got. (minus) I wonder if its different for other classes. (?) I do think its interesting that it downloads content dynamically (big plus) and the quest tracker system made sure I never got lost wondering where to do things. (plus and minus) Overall it feels like a lot of chores to me though so I passed on it.

In regards to Champions Online, it feels less intricate than EverQuest and less well executed than City of Heroes at this point in its life, however, it is FUN (at least for me) However it wasn't fun for me when I tried in October (minus) so I think choosing a tank and making sure the graphics settings were set low enough to prevent lag might have had something to do with it this time. (plus)  It is a simple beat-em-up game with quests you find by exploring and some that have no obvious exclamation marks (plus) I loved the ability to pick up almost anything around me, including ambulances, giant rocks, etc.. and throw it at the enemy or at anyone(plus) Character creation is cosmetically kind of close to city of heroes level, but not quite there (plus) but if you aren't paying for your account, you have to take a preset character build which is a plus or minus depending on your personal preference. I am going to try and get my wife and some other friends interested in this one, since I can tell that playing in groups is where its at later.