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style="font-weight: bold; color: rgb(255, 204, 51);">Top
Ten
Free-to-Play Games

Week
of July 18 - July 24, 2010




1. Dungeons
and Dragons
Online: Eberron Unlimited


2. style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://us.runesofmagic.com/us/index.html">Runes
of Magic target="_blank">

href="http://everquest2.station.sony.com/"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://allods.gpotato.com/" target="_blank"> style="text-decoration: underline;">3.  href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/1303"
target="_blank">Atlantica Online

4.  href="http://atlantica.ndoorsgames.com/center/default.asp"
target="_blank"> href="http://www.freerealms.com/" target="_blank"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/856"
target="_top"> href="http://www.freerealms.com/" target="_blank"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://www.freerealms.com/" target="_blank"> style="text-decoration: underline;">FreeRealms

5.  target="_blank">  href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/856"
target="_top">The
Chronicles of Spellborn
href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/581"
target="_top">

6.
Perfect World International


 7.  href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/581"
target="_top"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/856"
target="_top"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/581"
target="_top"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/181"
target="_blank">Sword of the New World

8. target="_blank">Aika href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/856"
target="_top">

9. target="_blank">Allods Online

10.  target="_top">Requiem: Bloodmayne href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/581"
target="_top"> href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/taxonomy/term/2433"
target="_blank"> href="http://heroesofgaia.gpotato.com/" target="_blank"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://www.gamersfirst.com/swordofthenewworld/"
target="_blank">

style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://www.freerealms.com/" target="_blank"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://atlantica.ndoorsgames.com/center/default.asp"
target="_blank"> href="http://allods.gpotato.com/" target="_blank"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://us.runesofmagic.com/us/index.html"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> style="text-decoration: underline;"> href="http://allods.gpotato.com/" target="_blank"> style="text-decoration: underline;">


Has anyone else been glued to the
coverage of Comic-Con in w:st="on">San Diego the
way I have?
It isn’t just the costumes and the cast of colorful characters that has
my
attention, either; there has been a ton of good gaming news pouring out
of this
year’s convention. (You can check out all of our href="http://www.tentonhammer.com/events/sdcomic-con/2010">coverage
here. )Who
would have thought that one day MMOGs would be popular enough to
integrate into
events like Comic-Con? Maybe in another year or so we will start to see
free-to-play games taking center stage on the convention circuit.

 



Convention “season” seems to be a year-round affair now,
even though the summer months are peak times for cramming thousands of
sweaty gamers
into cramped spaces. We are shipping off folks all over the globe with
GamesCom
in Germany,
SOE Fan Faire, and BlizzCon on the agenda just to name a few. My
personal pipe
dream is to organize a large scale convention devoted to nothing but
free-to-play
gaming, however I can’t quite nail down what I would charge for
admission. Maybe
I could make it microtransaction-based. (Hey now, it works for
validated
parking doesn’t it?)




With all of the conventions going on these days, and so many of them
having some sort of MMOG presence, it’s almost surprising that there
isn’t a convention devoted to free-to-plays. While I would love for my
pipe dream to become reality there are several questions that need to
be answered first. Could such an event make it? Is there enough demand
and popularity for these games? Could I snub Blizzard if they wanted to
come? The answers I come up with are yes, yes, and who am I to judge
the maker of the mighty sparkle ponies. Probably the more appropriate
question would be whether a community could be be forged from such a
diverse group of players.



Over the past few months of writing a weekly column about free-to-play
games I have had the opportunity to get know folks from both the
development/publishing side of the equation as well as the players.
While the development community seems to be fairly tight knit, the
player side is as spread out as it is diverse. Boasting both the
largest player bases and the most titles to chose from, the
free-to-play subset of MMOGs poses the biggest set of challenges to
creating a cohesive community.



So why even worry about community? What benefit does it really have?
One of the biggest challenges in this wildly diverse range of games and
players is in finding common ground. Blizzard has it easy--3 games,
millions of players and instant name recognition allow their players to
communicate and share information, and communication is the key. Once
you start talking to other gamers about a common subject, you will find
that the conversation can quickly snowball into an avalanche of shared
interests and experiences. Our common experiences give way to better
recommendations for new games to explore. A more cohesive and focused
community is also a better way to keep developers and publishers
accountable because a united front of players will be less likely to
tolerate sub-par games.



Would a convention be the best way to get the community rolling? Even
though the idea is solid, and would make for a fantastic event, it
would be a short term solution. Once the convention euphoria subsides
and the accumulated swag and business cards are stowed away things have
a way of returning to normal. In my brainstorming to find a way to
create a solid and thriving community I always come back to one central
theme – you.



No idea will work without the most important ingredient, the players of
these games. This is where you come in my friends, I need your help to
create a community of free-to-play gamers – an elite fighting force
poised to conquer the world…well, scratch that last part; you’ll have
to forgive me because I tend to get carried away.



Your mission, should you chose to accept it, is to help me create this
community and in turn compile our own living database of game
information, tips and recommendations. To get the ball rolling, href="http://forums.tentonhammer.com/showthread.php?t=52547">go
to our forums and let us know what games you are playing,
what you like about them and why we should come check it out.
Eventually I would like to take this information and expand it by
inviting other gamers to come and play our favorite games with us, and
maybe even convince the developers to throw in some contest swag.



Let’s make those subscription-based folks take notice of the great
things going on in the world of free-to-play gaming, and maybe someday
I’ll see you at the convention.







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alt="2MOONS">

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 Strength in Numbers.





Last Updated: Mar 13, 2016

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