With summer fast approaching and bringing with it the joy of no school, time in the sun, sweet sweet air-conditioning, and everything else, I’m highly anticipating the time I finally get to spend without being graded constantly. The upside (and possible downside) to all this is a sudden burst of free time. Veteran MMO players groan at the thought of the zerg of teenagers pouring back in barrens chat. Trust me, I’m right there with you.

If you’re like me, you may find sometimes, with that nice extra amount of free time, you being to grow bored of the things you’re playing. Naturally, I could always go outside and maybe play a sport, or perhaps take up stamp collecting. But, um, no. I’m a gamer. And if you’re here reading this, so are you. A lot of us freeload…er…gamers, may or may not have the money to spend on picking up a new console game or MMO every couple of months. Because of this, I’ve decided to try to be helpful and put together a list of free options for summer gaming fun.

The downside to this list is that they all require a computer. The upside is that I’ve included a variety of options. It’s also best not to expect miracles from some of the free games. They’re really just an amusing way to kill a couple of hours between Supernatural and bedtime.

First on my list is Angels Online. This game is one of those cutesy MMORPGS that requires about as much skill as it does attention. To put it simply, it’s not challenging. But, I will say that after spending time raiding in WoW or doing my eleventy billionth paper, I did enjoy the mindlessness of AO. You can shut your brain off and just enjoy the colors, music, and game play. The class system is very basic, and when I was playing the beta you could switch between any class at anytime. It’s pretty much a grindfest MMO any way you look at it, but eh. Can’t expect miracles, despite the name. The art is pretty adorable. Cartoony, but adorable. The game also has additions like neat armor sets, mounts, a necromancer class, and it’s pretty open to exploration. All in all, it’s decently fun, and hey! It’s free.

Maple Story is ‘that free MMO that everyone talks about’. A lot of you have probably even seen the commercials. I have a fundamental problem with games that require money in order to fully upgrade a character, but with Maple story, the game itself is free, so they have to fund themselves somehow. There’s not much I can say about it that hasn’t already said. The unique aspect of this game is that it’s a 2D platformer MMORPG. Yeah. I couldn’t really get into it, but a lot of my friends seem to enjoy it. I figured it was worth a mention for anyone curious enough to google it.

Fly for Fun is yet another cutesy grinding MMO. I know, I’m starting to sound like a broken record. Honestly though, I enjoyed this game. The armor sets are really interesting, and so are some of the classes. (Jester for instance) The selling point is that once you reach a certain level, you can fly on either a broomstick or some crazy space-age boogie-board all over the map. Having experienced it, it’s pretty fun. There’s no real craft system to the game, it’s a straight up monster drop/NPC buy/sell game. Some people would probably like that lack of complication in the game. If it sounds like something for you, by all means, give it a try. You can’t beat the price.

And now, my personal favorite. Hello Kitty Online. Yes, you heard me. It does exist. I wanted to get into the closed beta, but I didn’t bother trying at the time. This game looks exactly how you’d think it would. The appeal, at least to me, was the fact that combat isn’t the central focus of the game. Though it does exist, which sets it apart from virtual chat environments. You can have a house, decorate said house, plant a farm, cook, the list goes on. The only problem is that it’s still in closed beta, so only a select few are enjoying battling dragons with Hello Kitty at their side. Hopefully, it will open up sometime in the summer.

Moving right along, I’m going to offer the option of MMORPGs with free trials. Just in case, say, your birthday or payday is coming up soon and you don’t need a free game, just something to test drive. I do always stress the fact that you should always -wait- until the last day of your free trial to decide whether you want to pay for the full version. Trust me.

Yes, sigh, I have to mention the big boy. World of Warcraft is still offering free trials to anyone who hasn’t been sucked into their ridiculously populated MMO yet. So if you want, download the trial, log in, kill some goretusks and make some westfall stew, then decide whether you would want to buy the game. If you do buy it: Welcome, and enjoy being a sunlight starved zombie like the rest of us.

City of Heroes/Villains has been offering free trials since I stopped playing (Though I’m not sure if it still requires a friend giving you a trial code or not). This game is definitely worth giving at least a tryout. The character creator is literally second to none. If you want to design a 9 foot tall booger colored archer, CoX is the place to do it. The game play is incredibly simple, as is the leveling/upgrade system. You have a slot to put an enhancement in. You put the enhancement in. You are stronger. There’s no armor upgrades or tradeskills or anything like that. You just run around and smash. Again, I recommend waiting until the last day to determine whether or not you’d like to buy the full copy. However, recently they’ve made it so that installing one version nets you both CoH and CoV, so you can play either hero or villainside. There’s a lot of content for not a lot of cost.

Horizons is a game I discovered only recently on my quest to find an MMO where you can actually play as a dragon. What this game lacks in visual prowess, it makes up for in lore. I found the way the game actually gave major tutorials for crafting incredibly refreshing. About half of the actual game is harvesting materials and crafting. It might sound mind numbing, but believe it or not, I enjoyed it. And if I can sit through it, even a 3 year old hopped up on pixi stix and redbull could. This game is very fantasy-esq. And I mean that. There is a lot of lore, and it’s like playing through a Pern of Forgotten Realms novel. Some readers would probably turn away from this, but I know a couple are probably enticed at the idea. Did I mention you can play as a dragon?

Lastly, I’m going to include some text or web-based games for the people who may not have the most stellar of computers. (I played these a lot when all I had was my laptop)

MuDs have gone terribly out of style over the last 5 or so years. Big time MMOs hit the scene, and suddenly everyone wanted moving pictures to go with their words. The nice thing about MuDs is that normally only the most dedicated of players are playing them, which makes the userbase small and friendly. There are also a variety of MuD worlds out there. Fantasy, sci-fi, teenage monster high school thriller. (Okay, the last one was a lie. I hope) Just google the top MuD sites and find one that seems interesting. Learning the commands might take a while, but it’s definitely fun.

As far as petsites go, I’ve run the gambit. I tried neopets, gaia, etc. I enjoyed them for a while, but eventually I got a little tired of the same things over and over again. The site I’ve recently settled on is Subeta. I really enjoy the site due to the close relationship between the staff and the players. Every single player’s opinion matters, which is a blessing and a curse. I mean, it’s awesome to know the artists will take all critique into consideration, but then you get the people who have nothing better to do but trash everything on the site, artists and content included, and I really just want to slap them until my hand is a bloody stump. Ahem. Regardless. Subeta combines the elements of chatboards and pets (It seems some people forget it’s actually a petsite) into a fun little family-esq experience. Making SP (the currency of the realm) is easy, so the things you want are never out of your reach, which is another difference from other, more agitating, sites on the web.

So that’s my long, over-inflated list. I’d assume a lot of you readers have some input, and also some games you may want to suggest. Feel free to do it in the comments to this entry. I’ll probably check a lot of them out when I’m finally free to enjoy my summer!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 23rd, 2008 at 12:20 pm and is filed under Video Games, MMORPGs, Casual Gaming. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.