I seriously considered not doing Part 3 to this series. Then I looked at the list of games I haven’t covered yet and decided I had better do part 3. There will probably be a part 4 as well. There are a couple of games that I have quite a bit to say on them. And without further delay the games I expect to cover in this article are (where’s my drum roll….): eRepublik, Runescape, and TribalNations. There is a common theme here, they are all browser based games. Just as a way of clarification, a browser based game is one that you play from within a web browser and most of the time you do not need to download or install a seperate software.
TribalNations. I am an active player of this game.
I got an email to give it a try from Akklaim people because I have a 9Dragons account there. So I signed in and tried it out. It took some getting used to. The game was very new and I was a new citizen of a very small village. So the idea is that you are a native in MesoAmerica before the Europeans landed. You have to eat to stay alive. You have to work to get money. To advance you have to increase certain stats such as strength, intelligence and charisma. This is done through eating certain foods. If you fall below a certain health level you loose stats. So once you start getting those stats, better make sure you have a steady source of food. You can sell stuff on the market. Most of the time this is the way to sell stuff though once in a while you can sell stuff to the clan hall. You elect your clan chief. Once you have enough reputation and money you want to level to level one where you will want to choose your farm. You can grow different crops or raise animals. At level one you will need to start raising those stats and more money. You will need much more money to reach level two. For one the food that gets you the stats, some of that is expensive and then you have to be dressed a certain way when you go to level up to level two and they are costly and that doesn’t include that you have to have much more money to level to level two.
TribalNations really is an easy game to play, at least the way I play it. What I like about it more than it being all in the browser is that it takes me about 10 minutes or less a day to play and I have advanced to level two so far. The game isn’t very fancy and you really don’t get to see yourself walking around and all. Still it’s kind of cool and doesn’t require the committment of time that some of the bigger standalone games require. I’m sure it could if I wanted to get involved in the government or running a tavern. Since I don’t, no big deal.
Runescape was the first browser based MMO that I came across. I thought the idea pretty cool as that meant I could play from any computer. It being based in Java was a thing I thought really cool too. I’m a bit on the geek side so strange things like that appeal. The game has a nice intro tutorial to show you how to do some basic things and get you started. I found the map a little troubling. And I have to admit I only did one or two quests. I got all stuck on one and then very frustrated with it. It’s not very sophisticated looking. I’m not a fan on the top down view that you get with this game. Still there’s only so much you can do in a browser based situation. There is leveling of a sort. You level the individual skills. Some contribute to your overall stats. You can learn to do a whole variety of things such as mining, cooking, crafting, farming, fighting, and I forget what else. You can learn magic.
With Runescape, though you can play for free, you do miss out on some skills and the ability to mine certain ores. You can pay to play and I think that is less than $10 a month. I have a co-worker who lets her son play. The game masters or designers are pretty good about keeping the foul language down. I couldn’t even type something close to foul. It got censored. While the general idea is pretty cool with it being a browser based game, I have to admit, I got frustrated with getting lost so often and not being able to get back to some places. Though the frustrations I had with the game were relatively small and with just a little more perseverence they would not have been an issue, I did not find the look of the game and the occasional crowding, and overall enjoyment compelling enough to continue to be an active player. I can’t remember the last time I logged on.
And finally eRepublik. I’ve been seeing this one advertised in the sidebar when I’m on TribalNations. That’s part of what prompted me to put in my two cents worth on it. To be fair to the developers of the game, when I was playing it was still in beta. I was so excited to get a chance to participate in a game before it went live. I had to sign up and then wait until they sent me an notice that they needed more eCitizens. I really thought this was going to be cool. It was billed as a sort of game and social networking thing in one. You had to work to earn money to buy food to eat. You could purchase money. You could, if you could get enough money, start a buisness and hire workers and produce goods. I never got this far. I was only a worker. You could have your own newspaper at no cost. It was much like a blog. The trick is that the topics were only supposed to be fiction or in game related. No commentary on Real World movies or goings ons. That was a challenge. I had a newspaper. You have probably noted how often I get articles up here so you can guess how well that went. I did get readers and a few comments. I was going along fairly happily in this game until the much anticipated v.1 came out. The look changed completely as well as a few fundementals to the game play and the place I was working didn’t have enough raw goods to make the final goods so most days I couldn’t work which stunk because you got a bonus for good work attendance. With that and not liking the new look of it, I gave up on it. I was mostly annoyed with the game and not willing to get past it. At the time it was not compelling enough to slog through. I have not been on it in many monthes. So once again, to be fair the the developers and the people who play this, it may be much better. I’m not likely to venture over and find out.
So that’s my fairly short take on these three games. I know this assessment isn’t quite the same as the previous ones. What can I say they aren’t the biggies. A few games that I have an even shorter take on: Planetside, this was and I think still is in development and when I was playing the server went down a lot. It seems like a fairly cool idea though. I didn’t get very far before not bothering anymore. Dark & Light was also still in beta/development at the time. There were server issues and some of the profession quests were broken so you really couldn’t advance in that area. I think I tried it for a weekend before deleting from the computer. Silkroad Online: this one I met someone else who played it and really liked it. I had trouble with it and I was very new to online games so I didn’t really give it a chance. I have considered trying it again. I haven’t yet.
That brings us to the next in this series. There are two games left that I’ll share my opinion on. If you’ve read some of the other articles you can probably guess at one of them. To find out for sure though, you will have to check back for part 4 in this series.
See you in the machine.
Games
Originally published at: suguayproductions.com/joomla which has been discontinued.
