Part 2: Fantasy - The Tolkien Influence
Fantasy and medieval locales are the usual haunt of most role-playing games, and there's no better environment for a firebolt-flinging mage than green-soaked lands in which elves roam and paladins ready their broadswords. The three following games have their own interpretations of these traditions, but if you like Dungeons & Dragons or the Lord of the Rings trilogy, these games will cater to your affinity for dwarves and wee folk.
Who Should Play: Fantasy lovers with a sense of humor
In Dungeon Runners' trade chat channel, you'll see the oddest items for sale. For example, you may purchase the Doom Mallet of the Bouncy Bunny or the Carviscerating Super Buckler of the Puking Manatee. One of our quest givers told us, in broken Middle English, "Afterwards, er, I shall reward thee with a goodly amount of... rewards." NCSoft's colorful, stylized MMOG may be yet another fantasy RPG, but what sets it apart is its wink-wink, nudge-nudge approach to quest design and item naming. At first, it's hard to shake the feeling that Dungeon Runners is a poor-man's World of Warcraft--what with its similar visual style and interface. Once you spend some time with the game, however, you'll find it has an aesthetic all its own, and if you don't believe us, we'll shoot you with our Cardboard Gothic Crossbow.
This kind of humor goes a long way toward making the game fresh because otherwise, Dungeon Runners is, appropriately, a pretty typical dungeon crawler. You'll create a character, choose one of three classes (fighter, mage, or ranger), and kill mythical beasts with spells, swords, or crossbows. Its basic nature is quite similar to another NCSoft RPG, Guild Wars, though it exists on a much smaller scale. It's easy to teleport from locale to locale, and getting into an instanced dungeon is as easy as a few clicks. Like with Guild Wars, battles are over quickly, and minor quests can be accomplished in nice, bite-sized chunks. On the other hand, if you'd rather group up to clear out a cavernous dungeon, you'll find plenty of meanies to mangle and players to befriend.
What elevates the usual hullabaloo is the cynical quest writing and constant stream of hysterical dialogue. Dungeon Runners doesn't take itself--or the conventions of the genre--seriously. If you really like it, a monthly subscription will give you access to better potions, more storage space for your cardboard armory, and a few other caveats. But even free players will find plenty to keep them amused, and only the most stoic of them will be able to hold in the guffaws.
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Who Should Play: Teens and Tweens
Approaching this browser-based Java MMO is a daunting proposition. That's mostly because of its huge, vocal, and young player community, which may welcome you into its fold or alienate you with cries of "noob!" depending on which server you choose out of the dozens available. Yet at any given time, 150,000 or more people are logged on to this virtual fantasy world, and with such technical accessibility, it's no wonder. After all, almost anyone who can run a Web browser can play Runescape. Getting around is a simple point-and-click affair, and you can rotate or zoom the view easily with the arrow keys. A simple tutorial introduces the basics in a straightforward manner, and a few minutes later, you're burying bones--a central activity in Runescape's many kingdoms.
As you can imagine, the rudimentary visuals and sound aren't apt to pull you into the experience. What may surprise you is just how big the world is and how much there is to do. Early activities include baking bread, chopping trees, barbecuing shrimp, and mining ore. With time, the crafting can get pretty complex, and you can make pottery, jewelry, lanterns, and much more, then sell these helpful items to adventurers. The downside is that to get that far, you need to raise your various skill levels, which means putting a lot of time into chopping down trees, shearing sheep, starting fires, and more. These tasks may get repetitive, but it's nice to have more to do than simply beat up on monsters.
Of course, you can do that too, though combat involves simply clicking on your target and waiting--maybe even casting a few spells in the process. It's not very involving or demanding, which means the more interesting bits are what you do outside of combat. Random events may whisk you away to other locations, you can participate in various minigames with leaderboards, or you might even unlock new music tracks. Developer Jagex is counting on you to enjoy these tasks because with a little bit of cash, you get access to a great many more quests, the majority of minigames, and plenty of other members-only activities. If you're an MMOG veteran, this isn't the game for you. If you're new to the genre, it's a decent introduction to online adventuring, and there's a good chance you won't need to worry about whether it will run on your five-year-old eMachine.
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Who Should Play: Grizzled adventurers who embrace the dark side
Shadowbane takes a C.S. Lewis "it's all good" approach to character creation: The usual suspects are available, but so are traditional villains, such as vampires, centaurs, and hawk men. And as we all know, they've never been evil--just misunderstood. There is a confusing grace period for the first few hours, and your only guides are a few cryptic messages. Once on top of the learning curve, you can look forward to slicing up pockets of creatures scattered around the map. The first few areas are protected from player-versus-player combat and monsters are easy to master. The later game is more focused on the PVP combat, which focuses on nations battling for control of virtual real estate.
Because creature parties are scattered so far apart, you are encouraged to hunt an area until the flow of experience points slow down to a trickle and then take a long trek to find new creatures. These new creatures are often no harder to battle but inexplicably fill a good chunk of your experience bar. Of course, all of this grind is just a prelude to killing other players, and the PvP system supports a large a population of gleeful player-killing misanthropes.
Even at the time of its original launch in 2003, Shadowbane hadn't broken away from the complexities of yesteryear RPGs as other MMOGs had done. The game is built around a large series of menu screens that look much like old DnD printouts. The complications are compounded by a lot of redundant button clicking--even during activities as simple as initiating combat and moving around menus. Issues aside, Shadowbane should appeal to hardcore fantasy enthusiasts who embrace the rough edges and guilds that enjoy siege battles. The combat is genuinely enjoyable, and playing as a traditional scoundrel is a liberating experience.
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Cheaper by the Dozen: A Look at Free MMOGs
We compare notes on some free-to-play massively multiplayer online games so you can decide if any of them sound right for you.
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