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It offers a wide array of different types of games; from card games to puzzles. You can focus on the socializing or build up your character's skills and become part of a crew. It appeals to the casual gamers more than the hard core crowd.

Puzzle Pirates

In the eyes of the law (and flash) they are facily-tatin' the illegal distribution of moonshine. At the very least, they look guilty as hell, with them outlaw haircuts and that fancy car."

I agree with this. I think that if they look guilty, and have a name that makes them sound guilty, they should be treated as though they were guilty of breaking the law.

Details like, "are they actually guilty" then become totally irrelevant! They are being treated as though they were guilty, so they must be!

Besides, they have "pirate" right in their name! Just like those IP thieves over at Puzzle Pirates, or those hired goons in Pittsburg.

I don't think most of those games turn a profit, or even that much in revenue. For full-time game developers who don't have a day job to pay the bills, they need to earn money with the games they make. Some go with ad revenue, donations, or micropayments to keep their games free; others, like those from the author of TFA, prefer to charge for their games.

If you would like to play only completely free games, you're certainly welcome to. I'm willing to pay for games that I want to play, and hopefully that will encourage the developers to make more games I like.

My point is that your examples are of games that don't need to make money, which completely ignores the entire indie games market. Don't devalue games because free ones exist; examine the quality and decide if it's worth paying for.

In response to the GP, Ubuntu makes money on service contracts, Firefox on donations and corporate partnerships, and Gmail from ad impressions - analogous to micropayments, donations, and ads in games.

Puzzle Pirates. Play puzzles to bilge, sail, build clothing, etc. It's a (vaguely) player driven economy with a mostly laid back group of people. And, of course, there is Viva Pinata.

I think the original poster's goals are unreachable with current technology and techniques. You can't befriend a game in any more substantive a fashion than you can befriend your television... lots of games have tried various ways of simulating human interactions, but humans are notoriously complex. Emotional simulation systems quickly break down into either simplistic grinding or laughable parodies of humanity. If you attempt to replace those computer entities with actual other online human beings... Let's just say that you can't rely upon other human beings in online games to act like human beings.

The closest thing to what the grandparent poster asked for is the sims. It's a good example of how simplified human interactions have to be made in order to work in a simulated environment.

Three Rings has been doing this for several years with Puzzle Pirates, Bang Howdy, etc. So not exactly new here in the US. Three Rings does offer "traditional" US subscription model, a second currency track, doubloons, for purchase with out of game money or trading in game money for the doubloons.

I have seen micropayments done properly - Puzzle Pirates runs separate subscription and pay-as-you-go servers, and it's reasonably fair. You get basic gameplay for free, and pay to gain access to extra content. Works rather well, IMO. (I only stopped playing after two years out of general "been and done" boredom).

$3MM was already a relatively low number. Consider the recent statement by David Jones of RealTime Worlds (they of Crackdown) where he says he'd struggle to make a game under $50MM.

Now, that's for a console AAA title with whiz-bang graphics, voice acting, etc. I'm sure the NASA MMO doesn't need to be on that level but I'm not sure the term "MMO" can properly be applied to anything with a $3MM budget, short of stuff like Puzzle Pirates.

I mean there's plenty of MMOs that were made for something closer to free than $3MM (Omerta comes to mind) but I don't think when you hear "NASA" and "MMO" you envision a text adventure.

They should just develop things on SecondLife since the client exists already. I believe they've done that already, but I'm not sure what the extent of it is.

1. Calculation of your pirate/crew "level" is based on ability at mini-games
2. You can play for free or pay for easier access to "vanities" as per Korean games
3. Mini-transactions are the norm (for paying players)

That's why Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates is probably the most outside-the-box MMO currently in existence. Players get good because they develop skills, rather than using grind-for-experience techniques.

That, and it is an incredibly social game.

There is already a MMORPG just like that. Puzzle Pirates has been around for years now. The performance of your character is directly based on the players own skill at the various in-game puzzles. Of course, the more you play the puzzles, the better you get.

While it doesn't have the popularity of WoW or the other big name MMORPG's, it has been doing well for itself. Come take a look sometime.

You can play for free on a 'Doubloon Ocean', with restricted rank, limited puzzles and less fancy clothes. To get more, they suggest paying to play on a 'Subscription Ocean': costs.

That article missed a great time waster. I haven't played any of the others but http://www.puzzlepirates.com// has certainly eaten up a lot of my free time.

Java gaming? maybe, sure it is cross platform, but your app is horribly VM limited and performance will sucky no matter how you tweak.

Depends on what you want. The very excellent game Puzzle Pirates uses Java Webstart. But if you want the most advanced pixel shading stuff in your game, Java is not for you. Although in that case, perhaps Open Source development isn't for you either.

Yohoho Puzzle Pirates is free to play on doubloon oceans. If you want to buy things (swords, ships, houses, the better pieces of clothing) you will need doubloons, which you can buy with pieces of eight that you worked for or gained as booty from a pillage or you can purchase the doubloons with real money.

I think the main problem of most MMORPGs, which manifests in gold farming, is that in those games, how good you are is determined by stats and equipment, and both can be acquired only by spending a lot of time in game (or having other people do it for you), and that it takes high stats and good equipment to be able to play the more advanced parts of the game, which to most people is highly desirable. You might be able to get there just playing regularly and casually, but if you want to get there quickly, you have to grind.

For an example of an MMORPG that has mostly eliminated these problems and level grind, see http://www.puzzlepirates.com/
Basically, skills are based on Tetris-like puzzle games, and your stats represent not how often you have played the puzzles, but how WELL you have played them. Having someone else level up your character is completely pointless because if you can't play the puzzles as well, your stat will drop quite quickly. And stats gain you little except bragging rights, they don't make you more powerful. So grinding for stats is not possible. Grinding for money is possible but not required if you have top skills instead. Also, almost everything you can buy for money does not make you more powerfuly either, it's just shiny stuff i.e. again bragging rights.

Also, the game has completely eliminated RTM trading by introducing a second currency (Doubloons) that is used as micro-payment to unlock certain aspects of the game. This replaces the monthly fee, but at the same time, Doubloons can be traded in an open in-game market for the regular in-game currency, with prices adjusting to supply and demand. If you don't have the skills and don't want to grind for money, you can buy lots of Doubloons directly from the game company and exchange them for in-game money on the market. Voila, an official alternative for RTM that does not introduce inflation (due to the unfixed market price for Doubloons)

Other advantages of PC games (I've got karma to burn, so why not jump in?)

1. A greater sense of agency. Because of a lack of save file size limitations and oodles of ram, players can make tons of changes to the world in PC games.

2. Greater variety of PC games. As anyone can make pc games, you get titles from pirate themed MMOs to massive to galaxy spanning adventures to the Switzerland-sponsored Catch the Sperm

3. PC screens just look better

Cons:

1. Quality assurance. PC companies are getting better about this, but I've never played a PC game I couldn't crash.

Other advantages of console games:

1. Brain-dead simple... which is usually what I am by friday after work. No installation, no patches, no driver conflicts. It all just works with never an issue. I can't tell you how many PC users who have come to me trying to figure out how to shut down their consoles without damaging Windows.

2. Local Multiplayer. Want a 4 player game of Gears of War? Plug in 4 controllers.

3. Twitch games. Ikaruga would not work on a pc.

4. TV screens are just bigger.

cons:

1. Where did that Xbox 360 warranty card go again?

I work at Three Rings Design, makers of Puzzle Pirates.

The game is free to download, but we had a publisher and put out a box version with some extra goodies. The game was sent off to be rated and they came back with an "E" rating, to which we replied "Really? Even though there's a drinking game in there?" It's not a central part of Puzzle Pirates, but is easily found and playable at any Inn: pass out and miss a turn.

They hadn't even noticed, but after our helpful idiocy they bumped us to "T".

I have some more to that list:
Puzzle Pirates
Bang! Howdy
Soda Play
JSettlers

Base it around puzzles...ya...that's the ticket. Make everything puzzle stuff that you can do. And..and..make it non-fee based, play for free but buy in-game money. Ya. Great idea. After all, its never been done before. (sorry, no pop)

>A pirate MMORPG? Sure. That could work.

Yarr, me hearty. Sure it could.

http://www.puzzlepirates.com/

They did.
http://www.puzzlepirates.com/

But it was created by a (then) no name company, so its release didn't get the frenzy that some games get. Still, the player base is growing.....

So you have some bad apps.

There are good Java apps out there.

Look at Puzzle Pirates (www.puzzlepirates.com). They have a persistant world game in java that plays fast.

Ok, so you need at least 512 MB, preferably 1gig of memory. And yes, it works (Slowly) even with only 128 or 256.

But it works. It doesn't require a reconfigured kernel. It doesn't crash in the middle. It's not horribly slow.

Yes, there's loading lag when you go from A to B. Most games have that, sadly.

You want to blame Java. What for?

1. An app that wanted a reconfigured kernel? Yes, no good app should need that. This one did.
2. Horrible config file re-write? That's not a language issue.
3. Death from timeout with no ablity to fix up? That's not a language issue.
4. Writing config file changes in-place, without getting everything changed first? That's not a language issue.

You've used a bunch of bad apps, that happened to have been written in one language, Java. Shall I talk about the bad C++ apps I've used, and blame the language?

Ohh --- better. I'll complain about the bad Microsoft Windows brand graphical operating system programs I've used, and then blame MS Windows for it.

Oh, wait, I just ruined my own argument, didn't I?

The Puzzle Pirates client is written in Java, and I think the server is as well. They don't have WoW-level numbers of players, but the game seems to do all right performance-wise (with the notable exception of glitches with the Mac client, due to differences in Apple's Java VM).

Strider - Game that looks hard but is actually quite easy and fun to play. You always feel like you're doing amazing things.
Puzzle Pirates - Time to bilge your life. Yarr.
Ikaruga - My nethack. Just play. You're dead. Ouch.
Sim Golf - I don't actually like playing golf, but for some reason running a golf course is really relaxing.
Ore No Ryouri - No matter how panicked things might get in real life, nothing can compare to running a japanese ramen house in a video game.

[a repost of mine from "Another Golden Age of Gaming? I thought it applicable] (Off-topic fer just two shakes of a Parots' Tail....Sept 19 -ITLAPD!!
Arrr! I must get me plug in fer the day o' days before me comments. I hope no scallawag keel-hauls (-1 Mod) me fer me ferver -Yar Har!)

Ye' must be three sheets to the wind, if ye' were to tell me 'twer not an age ye' call "GOLDEN" (Yarrr! GOLD!)

Aye, I can recall back to day I was but a gamin' lubber - Me Atari and me spent many a countless watch ravenging the .00001-bit seas! Sailin on, who can ferget (yarrr! who can remember?) the death dealin Captain... errr... Commander Keeeeeeeeen?

Let me take ye' forward a stormy watch or two, and remind ye' of where the ship lies -
Weee've got us photorealism, Multiiii-thread Cooores,
Swashbucklin and Adventurin
An' Lo' Killin. Aye, Killin Galoooore!
An' Now in 5.1 audio, needn't bother with letter's yer Eyes

Have ye seen ye Oblivion?
Have ye seen ye F.E.A.R. - W.O.W. - Ye Console P-Cube-X?
Even now yer belov'd Dungeon-o-Dragons?
Ye scurvey dog, could ye live now without PCI-Express?

Yarr - I fear thar be some dissen't among the ranks,
the ol' buccaneers tend much t' thar ways
Those dogs who worship thar good ol' days, aye, they should walk the plank!

Aye! 'ts ne'r been be'er
te see games as a treasure
Ye'd have te be plum-gone rum insane,
te think the past be'er 'an than a world with
Massive Multiplayer Online Raidin' Pirate Games! YARRR HARRR!!!

http://www.puzzlepirates.com/ It be the best pirate related game ye can play for free upon the vast untamed seas of the internet.

(Off-topic fer just two shakes of a Parots' Tail....Sept 19 -ITLAPD!!
Arrr! I must get me plug in fer the day o' days before me comments. I hope no scallawag keel-hauls (-1 Mod) me fer me ferver -Yar Har!)

Ye' must be three sheets to the wind, if ye' were to tell me 'twer not an age ye' call "GOLDEN" (Yarrr! GOLD!)

Aye, I can recall back to day I was but a gamin' lubber - Me Atari and me spent many a countless watch ravenging the .00001-bit seas! Sailin on, who can ferget (yarrr! who can remember?) the death dealin Captain... errr... Commander Keeeeeeeeen?

Let me take ye' forward a stormy watch or two, and remind ye' of where the ship lies -
Weee've got us photorealism, Multiiii-thread Cooores,
Swashbucklin and Adventurin
An' Lo' Killin. Aye, Killin Galoooore!
An' Now in 5.1 audio, needn't bother with letter's yer Eyes

Have ye seen ye Oblivion?
Have ye seen ye F.E.A.R. - W.O.W. - Ye Console P-Cube-X?
Even now yer belov'd Dungeon-o-Dragons?
Ye scurvey dog, could ye live now without PCI-Express?

Yarr - I fear thar be some dissen't among the ranks,
the ol' buccaneers tend much t' thar ways
Those dogs who worship thar good ol' days, aye, they should walk the plank!

Aye! 'ts ne'r been be'er
te see games as a treasure
Ye'd have te be plum-gone rum insane,
              te think the past be'er 'an than a world with
Massive Multiplayer Online Raidin' Pirate Games! YARRR HARRR!!!

Like a lot of slashdotters I've quit WoW to salvage my real life. For the last few months I've been busy downloading and trying a variety of mmogs trying to find some methadone. These articles show there's a lot of folk out there trying to cater to my needs! I like that a lot (because I haven't figured out what my needs are yet). Damion Schubert's Moving Beyond Men in Tights talk has some nice ideas, "You don't need fantasy but you need an inviting world. People want to spend their spare time here. This is their corner bar. Even the bad guys in WoW are cute and funny." It's because of this idea that I've settled on Puzzle Pirates while I'm waiting for the next great mmog.

Puzzle Pirates has been pretty successful (for an indie game) with a micro-payment model. Items, clothing, and badges that allow access to more advanced parts of the game cost a certain number of game tokens (in addition to their cost in in-game money), and eventually decay. There is an in-game exchange between the game token and the game currency, which makes it possible to play entirely for free or to buy everything for real life money or a happy medium. This payment model is actually the magic bullet that made Three Rings profitable after a couple years using a subscription model (legacy subscription oceans are still around for people who prefer an 'all you can eat' model).

The core gameplay doesn't actually require itemization for most players (though having a cheap sword is usually better than a stick). Gold farmers never get a foothold in the market because they're competing against legitimate free players - the exchange is on a free market which is settled somewhere near a value that makes you work twice as long to get an item for free as to pay half with game tokens. You can't cash out the tokens and the game is rather small, so no professional farmers have moved in (it's also a skill-based game rather than a time/item-based game, so it's not that easy to farm).

I don't know if it can be translated to something like WoW, which relies on leveling and item mechanisms that scale exponentially. It could certainly be lucrative, and allowing people to choose their time/money trade off without going through chinese gold farmers means more profit for Blizzard.

There is also the game Puzzle Pirates. Its a Java game, so it runs on Windows, Mac and Linux.

On any single night, there's 1000 people or so online on the server that I'm on. There's 5 oceans/servers (not counting the test server); then factor that up by geography and day of the week timing. As I post, there's 3259 online, and it's the middle of the US night. Mmogchart.com puts them at 35k current subscriptions in March, so your 50k figure is probably about right; but your earlier reasoning is off. Only a tiny tiny fraction of people will have filled up 15 slots; it's largely pointless. What does complicate it is that by creating a satellite account to buy dubloons, you get shanghai points for your crew; you can then transfer the dubloons and ditch the satellite. Bonus shanghai point. That, in the dubloon/micropayment oceans, is what's boosting this figure.

Sure, 2 million characters is a flawed number; and a figure of 50k when compared to games like WoW is pretty small. It's still by far the most social game I've seen - and that with easily the largest ratio of girls to guys. I'd guess it as around 50:50, probably ± 5-10%.

Your estimate is quite definitely off. Can't say how much, but I can point you in the right direction to come up with good figures. http://www.puzzlepirates.com/status.xhtml has up-to-the minute concurrent user counts, which typically range from 3k to 6k at any time of day. Go do the math making reasonable assumptions about average session length and you'll end up in the right order of magnitude. Oh, incidentally, the 2 mil figure is total number of account registrations, so no need to divide by 15 there (although there might be a few people with multiple accounts).

Actually, you can already see a bit of this business model in modern online games in what I like to call a "pay for perks" business model. In this model you don't pay just to play the game, but you do pay for enhancements ("perks") in the game.

A great example of this for a U.S. game is Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates. In addition to the subscription-based servers, you can join servers that are free to play. However, some activities and in-game items cost "doubloons", which are a currency that can only bought using offline money (or "real money" like dollars, etc.) You can play most of the game and enjoy a majority of the puzzles without paying one penny. But, most people do buy at least a few doubloons to enjoy a larger section of the game. You can also convert the doubloons to in-game currency ("pieces o' eight") at a fixed rate.

This model is good for the player for two reasons: first, it allows you to control how much you want to spend. Only want to spend $5 this month? No problem, just buy that many doubloons. You aren't forced to pay $15/month like other recent games charge. On the other hand, you might decide that you want to have more in-game cash without spending the time to earn it; in this case, you can spend more than $15/month and get more money to spend in the game. So, even people who want to experience more of the game but that have limited play time can enjoy the game as well.

Of course, most current players won't like this type of system. To be perfectly honest, the $15 you pay for a month of gameplay is an incredible bargain for entertainment. So, having access to the whole game for a low monthly fee is a great deal for the people that play the game for dozens of hours every week. These people could end up paying more in the long run if they want to play the same number of hours over an extended period of time.

From a developer point of view, this business model is nice. It doesn't put limits on how much a customer can spend per month on your game. Also, even though some people play essentially for free, others will usually spend more than enough to make your average income per customer higher than it is under a subscription model. I've heard stories of people spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a game in one month. Personally, I couldn't see myself ever doing that, but I'm more than happy to take someone's money if they want to do that in my game. :)

The biggest downside is that your game has to be well-designed for this business model. It's very hard to shoehorn it into the game after launch. You also have to balance what people can buy very carefully with what people can earn in the game. If you give too big of an advantage to the people buying stuff, you'll upset the people that can't afford to keep up. If the advantages aren't good enough, people won't buy the items....

I wrote about this a bit on my professional blog, where I pretty much say the monthly subscription business model is doomed. Perhaps a bit strong of an assertion, but probably accurate. Goes into more description on why I think this is a good future business model from the developer's point of view. I also cover some of the negative aspects in more depth.

Hope this is interesting for some people. :)

Have fun,

That's exactly what Three Rings is doing with http://puzzlepirates.com/ and http://banghowdy.com/.

Mac OS X treats Java as just another app framework, equivalent to Cocoa or Carbon. (I'm fairly certain I've seen an older version of that diagram that also listed Classic in that layer.) I imagine they've done a bunch of optimizations to tie it into the system, though I don't know whether it launches the runtime at boot or not. You've probably noticed that on Mac OS, you get your Java runtime from Apple, not from Sun or IBM.

The downside is that things don't work quite the same as they do in Sun's Java runtime, so there are differences between Java-on-Windows and Java-on-Mac. For instance, my wife is an avid Puzzle Pirates player, and the game client is a Java app. There've been Mac-specific bugs in the past, and at one point a major slowdown appeared when the game was run on a Mac. It hasn't been fixed, so while she can still do crafting on the Mac, whenever she does anything multiplayer, she has to switch to the Windows box.

Umm... I think [Namco's Katamari series] is a "truly interesting and original game concept" that has come out recently.

Katamari was invented in 1983 by Williams.

Other games that I find to be fun and amusing are games that move away from the conventional console controller.

The topic is "indie games". What indie can afford to have a custom controller manufactured?

Samba De Amigo, DDR, Guitar Hero, Donkey Konga... games like that have a very bright future.

Music games are patent minefields. See Konami v. Roxor .

I always thought that a team puzzle games would do very well

Then go pirate one.

Puzzle Pirates (http://puzzlepirates.com/) has been a successful and fun project for Three Rings; it's targeted a lot of social gamers, avoiding the wailing speedmongers who powerplay on WoW and go around ganking. The lack of vast rewards for time-in-game disinterests those who want to be ahead of everyone else; by leveling the playing field to depend significantly on skill, they've made it a much more interesting game to play. The graphics are amusing; the cartooniness again pushes away powergamers. As a result of this the community as a whole is more social and interactive. They've filled a nice niche in the market, and made it work well. Hopefully Bang!Howdy will follow the same vein in a different style; if the developer/community interaction is as good as it has been for Puzzle Pirates, this should be a great game.

Powerlevellers, gankers, and those who believe that the best games request and require top-spec hardware need not apply. It won't interest you anyway, and it gets rid of you for the rest of us to enjoy better.

Stranger things have happened; I found my girlfriend on Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates.

Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates!

The sailing puzzle is pretty much Dr. Mario

Try Puzzle Pirates. Yes, it may look cartoony, but it really rewards team play, but you can play solo if you want by taking on missions with the Navy rather than a pirate crew. In addition, if you don't feel like setting sail one day, you can play any of a number of parlor games with a pirate theme (like poker, spades, rumble, swordfighting, drinking -- check the Games link on the Puzzle Pirates page for explanations of the last three.)

As a bonus, you can play for free or you can buy doubloons if you want to get different clothes, equipment, ships, etc. faster.

Eh? Puzzle Pirates has been doing the MMOArrrrPG joke to death, it's been going for years... So how can the next one be the first?!

Nope. Second at best.

Yohoho Puzzle Pirates http://www.puzzlepirates.com/ Nothing more to say

It will never surpass Puzzle Pirates. Yarrrr!

There exists a pirate MMORPG (MMOArrrrPG) named Puzzle Pirates. It's fun and addictive and different, and in a survey a while back it turned out they had almost exactly 50/50 men and women playing it, that must be pretty unique in online games. It's an MMO not based on killing things for xp, but running ships cooperatively, with everybody doing a puzzle that does something the ship needs, and a player driven economy that also runs on people doing puzzle games.

The company behind PP is named Three Rings; the article is about a presentation about their upcoming new game, Bang! Howdy, which is in some ways completely different and in some ways similar.

One of the interesting things they did with PP was their micropayment system. They have a few different servers, named "oceans". Initially, they had only servers in which you had a week or so free trial, with limited options, and after that you needed to subscribe, for about $10 a month. An all or nothing model.

Then they made "doubloon" servers - you can play without limit for free, but you need to unlock stuff in the game with doubloons you can buy (about $0.25 per doubloon, I think?). You can pick the stuff you want - if you want to be captain, you need an expensive captain badge (that disappears after 30 days of playing, days you don't login don't count), if you're happy being a lowly cabin person, you don't need to spend money. Items like clothes and houses that you buy also have a doubloon cost added to the normal in game money they already cost.

An interesting thing is that you can also trade doubloons with other players for in game money - so kids with too much spare time but no real life money can play all day, and sell their in game money to busy people with wallets. No need for eBay here. You can't turn doubloons into real life money, but you can play for free and do everything, if you want to spend the playing time.

It turns out that the doubloon model servers make them more money than the subscription model servers, they're much more popular. So Bang! Howdy is going to use a similar micropayment method.

I didn't notice anything odd about Zonk's review at all and thought it was very interesting... then I realized that I know a bit more than people who haven't been addicted =)

Really? I don't know about you, but I think pirates are pretty cool. Long John Silver, Captain Hook, etc. There's a successful MMORPG devoted to pretending you're a pirate. Plus, they're the ninja's arch-rivals.

Yes, I "pirate" software, music, movies, and TV shows, and I do it proudly. My family asks me to help them download Lost every week, and I tell them "It's about time you learned to pirate TV shows on your own."

Hoist the main sail, scupper the scuttlebutt, and hand over yer digital booty! YARRRRRRR! I'm a mighty pirate, and if ye don't like it, ye can polish me pegleg!

My girlfriend and I play Yohoho! Puzzle Pirates together.

It's a massively multiplayer game where you play a pirate, and to perform duties, you play puzzles. The better you do at a puzzle, the more you contribute. This means that you two can play together, cooperatively and on the same ship, working towards a shared goal. It's also a very broad game, so if you like one puzzle and she prefers a different one, you can both play different puzzles on the same ship. The money you make can be spent in any number of different ways, and as you get better and begin to meet people, you can join a crew or form your own, buy ships, run shoppes, get involved in politics and war, take over and govern islands, or just buy yourself a really nice hat.

Don't let the graphics fool you, it's a surprisingly deep game. And, as it's Java, it runs on just about any OS out there.

Hope to see ye on the high seas!

You're probably best off going coop games. If you're going PC games, any MMOG would probably do the trick.

My girlfriend and I happily played a fair bit of Puzzle Pirates together. She's not a big gamer, but she loves puzzles and puzzle games like Tetris, and that sucked her in to the MMO aspect of the game. That was cooperative, and a lot of fun.

The other game we play together is Dance Dance Revolution. That's not so cooperative, but we're both at similar skill levels, so it's fun for all concerned.

So if I were to draw lessons from that, it would be to pick something that a) she likes, and b) she's at least as good ast.

Anyway, the real culprit here is the game design. If Blizzard want their players to worship at the altar of the great Time Sink, then they can expect them to use things like this to make it less mind-numbingly tedious.

That's a fantastic point. I think games like Puzzle Pirates make a lot more sense. There, your skill in the game is determined by your real-world skill in playing various puzzle games. It seems like much more fun to me.

Anybody happy with others that follow that model?