Been in any good dungeons lately? I have. Although I've been in many more bad dungeons than good ones. Allow me to illuminate you with the benefit of my experiences before you go out and trade your hard earned cash for game gold. I have lost track of the exact number of MMO's (massively multiplayer online games) I've played since I started reporting about them three years ago. By now I've played all the most well known ones. Here's a short list; Dark Age of Camelot, Guild Wars, Lineage 2, World of Warcraft, Dungeons and Dragons Online, Vanguard, Dungeon Runners and Mythos. My motivation for this all along has been to bring more women into online gaming.
In some ways all of these games are the same. The variations can be slight or huge. The ones that have a swords and sorcery theme are the most similar. But there are many that are outside the box such as the futuristic Tabula Rasa, or the super hero themed City of Heros, and City of Villains. Auto Assault is a driving based MMO and there are even MMO's for kids like Disney Toontown Online.
In any MMO there are several stages that you have to go through to get started. First you will need to check to see that the computer you have can run the game. The easiest way to determine that in some cases is to visit the official website for the game and look for a trial version or demo. Many of the games give out additional "keys" or long pin numbers to the subscribing players. That way gamers can invite friends to try the game before they invest the great deal of time and money that this addictive pass time requires. One good way to get into it is to try one of the free MMO's like Dungeon Runners.
Once you have picked out a game and loaded it in you will be ready to get started. The load time for some of games can be as long as four hours. Others will come on a series of CD's or even DVD's. Guild Wars and the MMO's from NCSoft are in general the most user friendly at this stage. The software that you play with on your computer is called the "client". It is sort of a bridge between your machine and the servers at the game company. The most interesting thing about online gaming is the attempt by the developers to create an entire new world online. They call that a "persistent world" and it exists on those servers, not on your computer.
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