Most Popular Online Games

Most Popular Internet Games

The most popular online games changes all the time, as game designers debut new game options every week. Some of these are free online games, which are popular with smaller kids, people at work and those who want to play electronic games on their cellphone while waiting somewhere. These are the casual Internet gamers who want freebie games.

Other people want to play the hottest new online games with the best graphics and sounds, because they want an immersive experience. These people can be highly competitive and their online gaming experience can be a large part of their time away from work. For these people, online games might be a cathartic release from the tensions of the workaday life, or they might be an escapist hour or two where they get to pretend to be someone else.

Since there are two distinct communities who are searching for the most popular online games – the paying and the free game players – I want to cover a few games for each community.

MMORPGs

Massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPG’s, are games where you buy an installment disc at a store, then (typically) pay a monthly subscription and eventually take on the role of a character in an immersive virtual world with its own storyline, organizations and rules of engagement. Among these, the most popular games of the last few years are World of Warcraft, City of Heroes and Everquest. I’ll discuss a few of these.

World of Warcraft

WoW by Blizzard Entertainment is the gorilla in the room of the MMORPGs. World of Warcraft has had over 10 million members, including 2 million in the North America, 2.5 in Europe and a whopping 5.5 in Asia. WoW has had three expansions (The Burning Crusade, Wrath of the Lich King, Cataclysm) and sold tons of novels, comics and trading card game packs. World of Warcraft has also inspired board game and traditional roleplaying game, as well as having been featured on its own South Park episode (always a sign a piece of pop culture had “made it”).

In the World of the Warcraft, gamers take on the role of a elves, dwarves, orcs or undead creatures in one of two large armed camps: Alliance or Horde. Players can take missions along with their gaming group or alone, or they can go into the PvP (player-versus-player) rooms and fight it out among Alliance and Horde contingents.

City of Heroes

CoH is an MMORPG for people who prefer comic book online roleplaying to sword & sorcery or fantasy roleplaying. Instead of a magical race with a sword, you play a modern superhero in tights and cape. Players send their avatar around Paragon City finding street thugs, gangsters, aliens and supervillains to fight. Like World of Warcraft, the more foes you defeat, the more experience points you acquire and the more powerful you become. Like WoW, City of Heroes players enjoyed the wonderful graphics and solid gameplay, while enjoying the character creation, with incredible flexibility in the type of superhero look you can wear around.

City of Heroes has inspired an expansion called City of Villains, where you can play a supervillain instead of the staid old hero characters. These days, City of Heroes has a new competitors in “Champions Online”, inspired by the Champions RPG by Hero Games.

Second Life

Like the name would imply, Second Life is a simulated life environment where players more or less go through a standard world in their avatar forms. A player in Second Life can own virtual property, make virtual friend, have simulated sex and so on. Second Life has been so popular that some people make a living in the virtual economy of Second Life. Yes, there have been cases where people sell Second Life money for real world money, creating a virtual economy. One player creates and sells “sexgen beds” and apparently makes six figures a year selling them to other players. Incredible, but true.

Free Online Games

If you prefer free online games to those you have to buy a subscription and a kickass computer to play, here are a half-dozen games you should enjoy.

• Bloons TD 4 – The highest rated free online game ever, at least according to one or two games sites out there. This is the latest sequel in the Blood TD series.
• Arcuz – Another action role playing game that might remind you a little of The Legend of Zelda.
• LRD Rebirth – Another turn based fighting game with a mixture of strategy. Build up your strength and conquer the human race from your stronghold in the Pacific. You power is based on training to learn new spells.
• Good Game Poker – A simulated Texas Holdem game. Despite the straightforward nature of the game, Good Game Poker is highly rated.
• Agony: The Portal – A free action-packed fighting game that spoofs some of the other online fighting games.
• Desktop Tower Defense - You just don’t know how addictive this game was. For a month in there one time, I was completely addicted to this game. You’ll devise all kinds of strategies and defensive positions to keep the monsters from defeating you.

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This entry was posted on Thursday, December 31st, 2009 at 3:38 pm and is filed under Online Games, Roleplaying Games. 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.

One Response to “Most Popular Online Games”

1. How To Play Chinese Checkers says:

   January 4, 2010 at 4:44 pm

   [...] Most Popular Online Games Popular Party Games Popular Kids Games popular-rpg-games Popular Family Games [...]

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