2007 June 11 | I Am Teh Bagder

Entries Tagged as ''

MMO: Free Allegiance (Windows PC)

Allegiance Screenshot
Image courtesy of FreeAllegiance.org.

Allegiance was originally published by Microsoft, but they eventually released the source code to the game into the wild where a bunch of fans took the game and modified it to make Free Allegiance, integrating forums and a central account system. At its heart the game is part space-sim, part tactics and strategy game. Working with other players in factions, you’ll find yourself in the kinds of space battle that Star Wars and Babylon 5 fans love. If you’ve ever played the classic game Elite, then this game is your cup of tea and then some when you add in the multiplayer aspect and the various alien factions. You’ll always find lots of players online throughout the day, and play can be reasonably simple or as complex as you want. With integrated voice chat, you’ll soon be immersed deep into this game, and picking off your enemies one by one, getting rich and upgrading your ship to do even more damage.

To play, you’ll need to create a free account and download the game client, which requires at least a PII 300 and DirectX 9 along with the .NET Framework 1.1 (the current version for Windows XP/Vista is 3.0). There’s also a Crash Course available online and in PDF format to download and print.

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MMO: Dungeon Runners (Windows PC)

Image courtesty of Kotaku.

Dungeon Runners is published by NCSoft, the same publisher for Guild Wars, and is the first entry in their stable of free-to-play-fee-to-upgrade style games. Heavily influenced by Diablo II, this is a pretty snazzy dungeon crawler that allows you to meet up with other players and go into instanced dungeons together. You can create multiple characters, but only play one at a time, and you get to choose from a Fighter, Ranger or Mage. As you venture through the game you gain access to more skills and spells. The quests are reasonably fun, and the interactions with the NPCs in towns are quite hilarious, although it seems that Sean Connery has populated about a third of the game world and let his spawn roam around freely.

There are two levels of play. The first is the free version, which suffers from not being able to use some of the cooler drops and equipment in the game. You can still get by fine though and level up quite handsomely, but you’re going to be selling a lot of the loot you get just to clear out your backpack and inventory. The second level is the $4.99 per month Premier account that gives you access to much more and better equipment and armor, more bank slots for inventory and priority for server access. Depending on how important these elements are to you, you might be able to get by with the free play. Ultimately the free level play is really enjoyable, and it’s hard to beat free.

There were sometimes glitches in updating the client in the past, but they seem to have been fixed, and all updates are handled before you log in so that you’re running the latest version of the game client and data.

If you fancy some really cool old school hack and slash, slathered with some very funny character acting and dialogue, check out the game. You’ll need a free PlayNC account which you can get by going here.

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Administration: SnapShots Previews

To make links easier to use, I've included Snap Shots to the site. Whenever you move your mouse over a link, a context window will pop open showing you a preview of the actual page. This is incredibly handy for readers I feel because it allows you to get more information about the pages behind the links and to decide whether to click on the link. Some of the previews don't quite fill properly if Flash is used, but most work fine.

Let me know what you think.

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Administration: Teh Internets Iz Borked

My cable Internet access is acting up at the moment due to a faulty cable modem which should be replaced by Wednesday. I'm planning to go to the local library and use their WIFI connection to allow me to post the MMO Monday articles I've got prepared. I'll post them as soon as I can.

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