If you don’t like browser based games but you like free games please check this older post with free mmorpgs here.

Runescape

Runescape is a pretty popular game and it’s around for quite a few years  (it was released in 2001). It’s a 3d java based MMORPG set in the fantasy world named Gielinor . The controls are the classic point and click and the view is isometric. Many say this is the best browser based MMO out there and I don’t blame them, the numbers speak for themselves; over 10 million active accounts. It is recognize by the Guinness World Records as the most popular free MMORPG.     

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Might and Magic Heroes Kingdoms

If you played Heroes of Might and Magic, especially the 5th installment the game will feel very familiar. It is a browser based (go figure it out ), turned based strategy. The game features 4 town types : Heaven, Academy, Necropolis and Inferno with their specific unit types (from Heroes 5), resources and schools of magic.
The goal of the game is to get into alliances with other players and with your powers combined to obtain  Tears of Asha, which will allow the building of tear structures. There are 3 ways to obtain a Tear of Asha.
1. The Domination path: Explore the map to find the obelisk that provides the location

2. Wealth path: Build an oven that melts a lot of resources to create the Tear.

3. Honor path: Fight the NPC’s with army restrictions on yourself .

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Ikariam

I’m actually playing this game and I’m enjoying it a lot. It reminds me of the Civilization series . You start with one city on your little island, your citizens are sun bathing, you’re under the protection of the Gods, so everything is nice and dandy, but we can’t let it like this, can we? Well you can but it will be very boring . The goal is to expand your cities, build your armies and make other players life miserable and why not, take over the world.

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Travian

Who hasn’t heard of Travian ? This is one of the biggest and most popular strategy BBG. The game was developed by the German software company Travian games. It was translated into over 40 languages, and has about 5 million players on over 300 servers, so it’s big.  The players can chose between 3 factions: the Romans, the Gauls and the Teutons each with their own characteristics.  When you enter for the first time in the world of Travian you start as the leader of  a  small village with a population of 2 people. I guess they have a lot of  “work” to do for populating your village . This game actually has an end game, which happens every 300 days. The ultimate goal is to build and upgrade a Wonder of the World to level 100.

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Lords online

This game stands out of the crowd with its high quality graphics. It is a strategic game based on the AD&D rules. Being a strategy game it involves war of course, because things tend to get boring without some action.  The gameplay is based around the hero, which is a little different from most bbs strategy games. The player will construct buildings, train troupes, recruit heroes and gather resources. The troupes are led in combat by the hero who appears on the adventure map. If you played Evony online the game will seem familiar. Put in the equation, the hero based gameplay from Gaya and you have Lords online.  You should try the game. it really has potential.

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OGame

OGame is a strategy game set in space,  where no man has gone before.  The Sci Fi setting is not very popular like the medieval fantasy one so the few games set in the future have their loyal players.  The game began in the year 2000 and has about 2 million accounts by now. The new players start with one planet at a random location. The players can expand up to 9 planets from where they can launch missions, build constructions or make researches. The planets are gathered in 499 systems which form a galaxy. All universes in the game have 9 galaxies. I almost forgot, one system consists of 15 planets.   

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The West

If you miss the old western movies, you should try The West, but that’s not the only reason . The game has clean nice graphics, very good interface which is friendly with new players.  This game takes a different approach from the classic recipe: build a town, recruit your army and kick someone’s ass, it give you control of just one character, which you evolve, and then you can kick some ass . The town plays a central role in the game, it’s like your alliance. All players can contribute  to build buildings which give everybody bonuses. You can get items, jobs , or can duel other players in towns.  Although you can’t customize the appearance of your character you can customize the skills and attribute points.  With all this and a unique combat system this is a nice game and you won’t feel like you waste your time playing it.

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BlizzCon, the place where Blizzard makes it’s biggest announcements. We have Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, but I’m not here to talk about them. Blizzard’s flagship is in my focus here… World of Warcraft, the MMORPG that brings Blizzard over $100 million a month.  The long speculated expansion was finally announced and what can I say….WoW!!! . Here’s the list with the most important features.

Game Features:

Two new playable races
-Worgen : Alliance … I like what I see. It looks like a good opportunity for me to change sides.
-Goblins: Horde

Level Cap Increased to 85
New talents, new abilities, better characters.

Classic Zones Remade
Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms like you never saw them before.

New High-Level Zones
Explore newly opened parts of the world, including Uldum, Grim Batol, and the great Sunken City of Vashj’ir beneath the sea.

More Raid Content than Ever Before
More high-level raid content than previous expansions, with optional more challenging versions of all encounters.

New Race and Class Combinations
Never-before-available race and class combinations.

Guild Advancement
Progress as a guild to earn guild levels and guild achievements.

New PvP Zone & Rated Battlegrounds
Take on PvP objectives and daily quests on Tol Barad Island, a new Wintergrasp-like zone, and wage war in all-new rated Battlegrounds.

Archaeology
Master a new secondary profession to unearth valuable artifacts and earn unique rewards.

Flying Mounts in Azeroth
Finally, flying mounts in Azeroth

Read more here and enjoy the trailer bellow.

I woke up this morning with a strange feeling of happiness. Rushed to the corner coffee shop for my usual “double venti caramel macchiato” thinking to myself :”This is going to be a fine day for selling insurance door-to-door”.

32 houses, 2 macchiatos and a black eye, later : “I hate my life !”

I always thought I was meant for something greater, “Screw this, I’m done for today”. Got myself a coffee and

headed for home.

Hmmm … who would have thought you could die from caffeine poisoning !?

When I woke up, yeah I woke up after I died, everything was different. I was alive but not really, like a zombie from those old horror movies.At first, I really freaked out, but after a while I realized: “This couldn’t get any worse”. As I walked out of the crypt, cause that’s what it looked like, I realized the scenery had changed from the steel and glass buildings I was used to seeing every day, to a creepy forest decorated with spider webs and graves everywhere.

Something started walking towards me …

“Welcome to Tririsfal Glades… “

Here are the steps you should follow:

• first of all make some demos. I usually record all my games, you never know when you’ll do a cool move. To record a demo you have to enter this 2 commands: “g_syncronousClients 1″ and “record demoname”. demoname should be an intuitive unique name. To stop a demo you type “stoprecord”. You should bind these commands

bind F1 “g_syncronousClients 1;record”
bind F2 “stoprecord; g_syncronousClients 0″

• To playback your demos use Seismovision. You just double click the demo and it starts Quake. It has a cool config specially made to record videos “OJs Movie Config.cfg” Use it. Open the file in a text editor and see the key binds for record and other useful commands. I usually do some twicking like frame rate or video resolution and quality. You want to get the best looking demo, right? Adjust these settings in the config according to your system specs. Just hit the record key, the game will not run smooth when you record but that’s not a problem. Now for some theoretical stuff. You can skip these if you whant. Quake 3 has a real useful command for recording videos “cl_avidemo”. Although there is another way to record… using Fraps, I recommend “cl_avidemo” . This command writes TGA files in your screenshots folder. If you use “cl_avidemo 30” like I do, it will write 30 files/second on your HDD so you need loots of free space. This means your video will have 30 fps, which is great for action sequences. Most movies on TV have only 24 fps. Now for the resolution… DVD quality means 768×576 resolution. I recommend 800*600 or higher. The bigger the resolution is the more free space you need. You should use a wide resolution, it’s cooler. I use 1280*800 (16:10 aspect ratio).
• After you have your screenshots you have to transform them in a video. I use Virtual Dub, but there are other alternatives like Bmp2Avi. Just chose Open video file and chose Image sequence from file types just like in the picture.

• Now open the first screenshot. Save your file with File/Save as AVI option. By default VD saves an uncompressed avi file so  again you’ll be  needing a lot of HDD free space. You can chose to compress the file using a codec installed on your system like Xvid. Go to Video/Compression.. and chose your favorite codec like in the picture. Don’t forget to set the framerate from Video/Framerate.. (CTRL + R).

• Finally you have a video file with your quake moves. Now it’s time to edit this video files with your favorite video editing tool. You can use anything between Windows Movie Maker to Adobe Premier. It’s up to you. It really depends on your video editing skills and the complexity you want the video to have.
• Optional: You can record the in game sound and synchronize it with your video. I find that to time consuming with all the synchronizing so I don’t record the in-game sound, I’m happy just with the soundtrack.
• It’s time to publish your video. Youtube is the easiest way to go. If you have a web site and you want to publish your video there just convert your movie in a streaming format like flash.

When my masterpiece is ready I will show it to you and you’ll have the chance to criticize it all you want .

Title:Runes of Magic
Website: Visit
If you played WoW this game will seem very familiar…but this isn’t a bad thing. The game has many new features to make it interesting…and the best part is that it is free. Currently the game is in open beta stage and already is fantastic. This only means is only room for improvement. In the first day of open beta 190.000 players joined the world of Taborea…this says a lot.

Title:9 Dragons
Website: Visit
This game is more for hardcore players then casual ones. It has a lot to offer if you give it a chance and you don’t uninstall it after the first hour of play. The game is about martial arts,it takes place in ancient China during the Ming dynasty the 9 Dragons era. It gathers many chines myths and legends so you could say it has a seed of truth in it. It’s more about the art in martial arts then the violent part like most games. Your goal is to become immortal, but not necessarily through blood and through meditation as well, so you have to learn something about the eastern philosophy so the game will make some sense. It has lots of minuses too, like the simple old looking graphics and animation or the control. It’s up to you to decide if is worth your time or not.

Title:Dofus
Website: Visit
Dofus is a Browser based MMORPG made in Flash, developed and published by Ankama Games, a French computer game manufacturer. It’s graphics is cartoon like and the combat is turn based, so there is a little tactics involved, but not too much to scare away casual players. Basically is a Pay to Play game, but it still also offers a limited amount of free content. Dofus is set in the world of Amakna (Ankama spelled backwards). As the Dofus community continues to grow, new areas and add-ons are added. The developers continually add new content as well as balance items/classes.

Title:Tabula Rasa
Website: Visit
Tabula Rasa is a MMORPG game that takes you, the player, into lush forest planets, volcanic moons, and exotic alien civilisations. Face off against powerful alien soldiers, armoured mechanoids and vicious creatures… so as you can see is…a 3′rd person SF game. Heavy ArmourUse a wide range of weapons and unique alien powers to help the Allied Free Sentients (AFS) in their desperate fight against extinction. Tabula Rasa combines a vast, persistent game world and ongoing storyline with fast-paced action, resulting in a striking new approach to the design of multiplayer online games.

Title:Dungeon Runners
Website: Visit
Dungeon Runners- The mother of all RPGS- like they say on the official site, is a fast paced, action RPG experience where you take on the role of a brave hero and explore dangerous dungeons, battle ferocious monsters, and discover unique items! Your hero can adventure alone or team with a party to hunt terrible monsters and reap fantastic rewards.

Title:Anarchy Online
Website: Visit
Anarchy Online is the first science fiction-based massively multiplayer online roleplaying game (Sci-fi MMORPG). Thousands of players world-wide can compete and cooperate simultaneously in a rich, futuristic world. The graphics, at today’s standards is kind of simple snd … ugly, but if you can past that is worth checking it out.   The sound, brought to you by the award-winning developers of The Longest Journey, Casper the Friendly Ghost, Speed Freaks, Championship Motorcross, and Pocahontas is doing a good job. Maybe for some of you the game is too complex…so the best thing you can do is try it out.

Title:Hero
Website: Visit
Hero Online is a masterpiece created by three generations of distinguished martial art novelists. The storyline is written by first generation martial arts novelist, Kum Kang, who utilizes a complex combination of story content and plot twists, free from prearranged paths, that brings a whole new gaming experience. The controls are not that good in this game either.

Title:Mu Online
Website: Visit
MU Online is a 3D MMORPG that takes you, the player, into a fantasy world full of excitement, adventure and monsters. It’s around for quite a while so you’ve probabily seen it…so you know what to expect. I really liked the events in game but after some time it becomes boring, there aren’t too many quests so all you do is hack and slash, slash and hack.

Title:Perfet World
Website: Visit
WanMei or Perfect World is one of the hottest and most played MMORPGs of this genre. Featuring a full 3-Dimensional environment with excellent environmental effects, graphics and gameplay, it is set to bring online gaming to the next level. Based upon a collection of ancient Chinese mythology, culture and history, the world of WanMei is a blend of fantasy and adventure. I didn’t quite liked the control but maybe it was from the lag. If you can get past the first half an hour then this is the game for you.

Title:Entropia Universe
Website: Visit
The Entropia Universe is more than a game. The Entropia Universe is for real. Real people, real activities and a Real Cash Economy in a massive online universe. You can buy everything in game with real money like land, houses and items.

Title:Requiem: Bloodymare
Website: Visit
Requiem: Bloodymare is a MMO for mature audiences that will immerse you into a dark world of bloodshed devastated by generations of scientific and magical abuse. You’ll need to fight against the grotesque monsters that stalk the cursed land, and band together with your allies to survive against the stronger, bloodthirsty creatures that only prowl at night. If you’re tired of MMOs without blood, this is the place where you should be.

Title: SilkRoad
Website: Visit
The online game SilkRoad is a 3′rd persson MMORPG which targets the unceasingly active world other than the existing online games which the has built the entrenched world. On the specious Silk Road, the merchants constantly moves for trading and burglars who intend to strip them of goods. In addition, there are hunters who specialize in removing such burglars. On the Silk Road which seems to be static, the hostility and secret strife in which various groups continuously engage for the benefit of their own groups inform the Silk Road world with new life.

I came across an interesting puzzle game: Auditorium. It basically is a little flash game…that’s why this is a short review . You can finish the game in 1-2 hours. You have 3 elements in this game. A flow of sparkles, some square areas where you can “score points” when you redirect the flow of sparkles to them with the third element…some resizable modules that you can move around. If you don’t understand what I’m saying just play the game and see for yourself .

The interesting part, that tingled my interest is that when the flow of sparks hits the square areas they produce a sound (piano, drums and others), practically you create “music” with your actions…or I can say you hear pretty things when you advance through the level…That’s why it is called Auditorium. I almost forgot, your goal is to score the maximum amount of points in each square thingie by redirecting the flow accordingly. This is how you advance to the next level.

You can play the game at this link. If you like it maybe you can make a donation to the team. They want to do more with this game. This is what they say : “Want to hear more music, or see the full version on consoles or the iPhone?” It sounds like a good idea to port it on the iPhone… with the touchscreen and all.

If you never played a WW II FPS before or Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare you will find this game great, superb…put here any superlatives that come in your mind. This, not being the case, because I play WW II shooters since Wolfenstein 3D and I played COD 4 too, I’ll not give you this perspective on the game. The important minuses that this game has, are: the same COD 4 game mechanics, the lack of a story and of course…the old, tired WW II setting. Modern Warfare was a breath of fresh air…that’s why it was so appreciated. It’s too bad that World at War won’t get the same attention from the players and critics because it is a really good game if you look at it like a standalone game, and not put it in context. The developers could have put more effort in making the characters in the game more complex. Even Sgt. Reznov and Sgt. Roebuck could have been made a little better. Although their voices are performed by Gary Oldman (Commissioner Gordon from Dark Knight) and Kiefer Sutherland (from 24), it feels like something is missing. You don’t feel any attachment to this characters. It’s not the actors fault, they do a good job…it’s something else I can’t quite put my finger on it. The story…like I said before, kind of doesn’t exist. Practically the game follows Pvt. Miller from the US Army and Dimitry from the Russian Army on two different theaters of war in key moments from their lives and the war at the same time. There is no connection between missions (with some exceptions), this means there is no continuity, maybe that’s why it feels like something is missing or maybe because the game is focused on action too much and you don’t have time to get attached to your companions but on the other hand it gives you a taste of the despair many soldiers probably feel in the heart of the battle. I should probably tell you that the game isn’t a walk in the park, and you will dye a lot, especially if you are not familiar with the game’s mechanics. But at least the game is kind enough to tell you how you died… A grenade killed you…bla bla…I saw this too many times…it even became frustrating and I had to exit the game in the middle of the mission.

Like the previous COD this game gives you a unique perspective on the war, for example you are the gun man in a plane and you have to destroy a Japanese ship convoy or you drive a tank …and this tank has something special..a flamethrower…I bet you never burned before a dozen of Nazis at once. Speaking of flamethrowers, you have the chance of using one on several missions with Pvt. Miller and it’s spectacular, the bayonets are a new addition to the weapons too, harder to use but when you get the chance is ….spectacular.

Compared with Cod 4 and most shooters this game is more bloody, more violent even shocking in some moments. It actually starts with a scene where you and your comrades are being held capture by the Japanese and interrogated. You are tied up in a corner and watch the whole thing… one of your mates spit the interrogator in his face… an unfortunate action…because the Japanese takes his cigar and puts it out in your mate’s eye, after that he commands another guy to … cut his neck with a big knife…which he does….blood all over the wall…you get the picture. This is just one of the very explicit violent scenes. When you get your hands on a heavy machine gun you can dismember or blow the enemy’s heads off. The game is rated M for Mature, so it shouldn’t fall in the wrong hands. It gives you just a glimpse in the atrocities of war. For a video game it’s enough…the next best think is the real deal I guess. Splitting the game in two parts is not a bad idea because the two enemies…the Nazis and the Japanese act very different, giving you an unique experience. I really liked the first mission with Dimitry..it is very atmospheric and reminds me of the movie “Enemy at the Gates” . I’ll let you discover the rest by yourself.

The graphic is good, it’s not Crysis but it looks nice…you saw the screenshots. The sounds are well made, the music stands out. It runs smoothly which for me is very important(I hated Crysis for the slow performance). The multiplayer is very similar to COD 4 which is a really good thing. The maps are big so don’t forget to bring as many friends as you can…or join an internet game. The new addition is the Cooperative mode which allows 4 players to play the single player together…hmm…in that case I guess is not called single player any more. If you finish the game you will be awarded with a bonus mission: Nazi Zombies…which I enjoy very much. This concludes the review, I’ll give the game 8 out of 10.

They are sticky, they are slimy…some say they are even cute…it’s GOO for most of us. Like I promised this is the review for one of the most interesting, captivating and addictive games I played in years. It’s World of Goo. It looks like you don’t need millions and millions of dollars to make a great game and a good idea sometimes is enough. If in this period when Far Cry 2 , Fallout 3 or Red Alert 3 are out I play World of Goo…well…it says enough. This game has all the elements to be great. It’s fun, which is very important for a game and it’s competitive. This two elements are at the basics of all good games and I don’t mean only video games,. It’s a general rule from board games to sports and World of Goo has them both…that’s why it is so awesome.

It basically is a puzzle game based on physics. You start with a certain number of goo balls with which you have too build a structure, like a tower or a bridge to reach your goal. This goal is a little strange, you have to take the remaining goo globes to the pipe…it seems that a goo is fulfilled when it reaches this pipe. This is kind of the story of the game, the journey of Goo around the world, from one pipe to the other. This journey is split in 4 chapters and the epilogue, divided in 48 levels. All the extra goo balls that you take to the destination are sent to World of Goo Corporation, wich is kind of the multiplayer of the game. It is a palce where the players meet over the internet and have to build the biggest tower with their extra goo. The players are represented by clouds with their name, nationality and tower height. In the right top corner is dispalyed the place which you are in real time. This is the competitive part of the game. Now for the fun part. “As the sun set over the last of the hills, one of the Goo Balls seemed to say that life sure seemed like a giant physics simulation, but as he fell into the spiky death pit below, he knew it probably didn’t matter – love the Sign Painter ”. This Sign Painter is a real funny guy. He leaves signs all over the levels with funny and useful …signs.

9 out of 10.

id.

Another thing about the engine is the rain. It is very well maid…first the wind is starting to blow, the clouds are forming and voila you have rain. After the rain the sun is making its appearance and if I mentioned the Sun I should say I saw the best Sunsets and sunrises in a video game…it’s simply beautiful. They captured Africa’s atmosphere quite good.

Enough about the graphics, let me tell you about the gameplay, another very important ingredient. As you know Far Cry’s 2 single player takes place in a 50 square kilometer zone in an unnamed African country that is teared apart by civil war. You’re a mercenary and your mission is to capture and kill the Jackal, the bastard that armed both sides of the conflict, actualy most of the sides in Africa’s conflicts. After you finish the first missions a message that says: The tutorial part is over, the game world is open and your mission is to capture the Jackal, or something like that, apears on the screen. I really liked this, it gives you a lot of freedom. It basically says …Hey buddy you have this huge zone, do whatever you like to finish the game. It’s not quite like that in reallity but it’s close. This freedom is not necessarily a good thing, I’ll tell you later why. You have to do jobs for the different factions in the game, for you’re buddys,some underground missions to get medicine for your malaria … I forgot to say…you have malaria and the simptoms come up in the most inapropiat moments. There are other missions from the weapon dealer, to unlock new weapons…and from the mobile phone antennas in the area… when you go to an antenna between missions your cell rings and a strange voice gives you a target…I don’t want an strange voice to order me around. I’ll give more bad stuff about the game because they are a lot. The most annoying is the repetitive jobs…you basically have to go to an location and kill someone, take an object or destroy something.

Enough about the bad stuff because I don’t want you to remain with the impression that this is a terrible game. This freedom you have in the game has its good parts too, you can complete every mission from any angle you want…kind of hard the stealth approach, cause I didn’t found any silencers for my weapons. When you are almost dead and heal yourself a very cool animation is played where you pull bullets out of your hands, legs, you put your bones back in place or bandage yourself. This gives the combat a very intense feeling…I can’t get enough of it. The weapons have a nice feeling but you have to be careful cause used weapons jam a lot and can even blow in your face. You recognize a used weapon after its look…it is dirty, rusty you get the picture. I really like this details and the game has a lot of them, things that you don’t see in other FPS’s. The day/night cycle is well implemented; if you want time to pass faster you can sleep in your safe house. I almost forgot the sniper rifle. It’s grate…the best feeling of a sniper rifle in a game. It’s really put to a good use in this game, my favorite. The game is very well optimized, it squeezes every drop of performance from your rig, although it has some memory management issues that should be fixed in a patch.

I haven’t had the chance to try the multiplayer but I hear it’s great. The game also has an easy to use level editor that should make this games life much longer.

As you can see the game has its ups and downs but overall it’s a good game, you can get past all the bad things. Nothing compares with an off-road drive through the vegetation with the sunrise in your face and a gazelle or other animal running in front of you. I’ll give it 8 out of 10. It could have been a 10.