Pelantas: a fighting league game

Have you ever thought about coordinating a group of heroes in fighting leagues and championships? Pelantas is your chance. This free game allows you to gather the best Dwarves, Elfs, Orcs and - of course - humans in the fighting against other groups. Train them, choose the 5 best and order an incredible strategy to defeat your enemies. Hunt amazing monters and complete the weekly quests. Try your lucky in special events. Become famous and the most glorious team in Pelantas.

I love this game, it is yet in open beta, and it is totally free. I hope the game creators find some way of managing the game without giving advantages in the fights to paying players, at the same way Hattricks and others do. Hopefully, it appears they are walking at the path of allowing graphics and another suplements to paying players.

• Site adress: http://www.pelantas.com/
  
  


• Totally free.
  
  


• Time spent playing: two log ins per week of 20-30 minutes each are enough for me. Beware, IE 6.0 lags too much with this site, but you can still have a lot of fun.

Syrnia: a game to play while working

Yes, exactly. In this incredible game, you create a character and try to develop his skills (in woodcutting, farming, robbing, magic, etc) extracting goods from the different cities and selling them in the market. To extract one good, however, you will need to spend a lot of time (60-100 seconds) waiting, and to develop a skill it is needed to spend hours extracting goods. That is why this game is to play while working or reading that book for school/university: it has the great virtue of making things less boring.

A lot of people log-in in this game in their free time though. Why? Because this game has an incredible chat. And once you have joined a good clan, you will make great friends there.

• Site address: http://www.syrnia.com/
  
  
• Totally free indeed.
  
  
• Time spent playing: As much as you like. Your character don’t die if you don’t log in, and you can stay out up to six months.

Visual-Utopia: a different war game

Five different races, a city where you can construct buildings to gather resources, an alliance to fight against others, conquer them ... What makes Visual-utopia different from a lot of similar games? Its map. Yes, you can move your troops freely there – no coordinates – create cities in bridges and in another strategical alleys to make your defense easier, etc. Strategy is everything in this game, and the trio “science investment, troop composition and troop location” may make a difference here.

With three main resources – wood, stone and food – plus gold, and a real time-market, the game is based in turns: each turn you receive gold and nother resources based on your city composition. Totally free (yes!), you can RP the life of your character through the innumerables eras this game has already had.

• Site address: http://www.visual-utopia.com/
  
  


• Style: War game .
  
  


• Totally free indeed.

• Time spent playing: To be successful, multiple logins during the day are needed. Prepare yourself to spend at least one hour distributed along the day in this game if you want to survive ;)

Live in Middle Ages: Renaissance Kingdoms

This text-based RPG try to simulate the life in the Medieval Age (1450s). Choose one country to live in Europe (England, Portugal, Byzantium, Aragón, etc.) and give life to your character in the forums. Atheist or baptized? A soldier or a criminal? Politician or a Priest? You choose. Your character can vote, can be elected, can rob, can defend the city, can trade, can pray... the options are incredible.

I am playing this game since 2006. It is incredible how it is addictive, take care with that. It is totally free (I have never spent money with it) but you can buy a package that makes your character an “In-game noble” (one can be a “forum noble” too, due to the services done to your country, but without the benefits). Buying that package may make a difference when you reach level 3 – after 1-2 years of gameplay - and become a student in the University: “In-game nobles” learn 2x quicker. It is possible to have a lot of fun without it though, since the best part of this game is in the histories role-played in the forums, where your imagination is the limit of your character life.

• Site address: http://www.renaissancekingdoms.com/
  
  


• Free, but there is a premium package gives some advantages to payers - what doesn’t make the game unfair, since there isn’t competition in this game.
  


• Time spent playing: 10 minutes each day. Daily log in required, or your character may die of famine. Take care with the forums though: one can spend 5 hours per day there if he wants.

Footbal team management: Hattrick.

The biggest browser based in the web, among the most accessed sites in the World: Hattrick. Hattrick is a game where you are the manager of a football team, hiring players, selling them, setting up friendly matches, competing in the league of your country and in your state’s league. And more: try to have the best team in the world, competing in the Hattrick Masters Championship!

You haven’t heard all: Hattrick is totally free. One can play it for free as much as he can. True, there is one statistic and graphic package being sold, to make your experience more enjoyable, but there is no need of it to play. Players that acquired the package don’t have any advantage upon others that don’t.

Do you still have doubts about the quality of this game? I started playing it nearly 2 years ago, and I still enjoy it. There is a big number of players with 4 or 5 years of experience, and the oldest player there has an 8 year old team. Be sure of it: if you start playing hattrick, it will be part of your life for a long time. And if you stop playing, I guess you will restart it someday ;)

• Site address: http://www.hattrick.org/;
  
  



• Style: Football team management game;
  
  



• Time spent in playing: with 2 log ins/week of half an hour each you do everything you need, but prepare yourself to spend much more ;)
  



• Free and fair? Yes, and you can buy an optional graphic/statistic package if you want.
  



• Others: Translated to a huge number of languages.
  
  

Mmorpg capital open :D

I intend to publish, at least once a week, reviews of free browser-based mmorpgs I have played or that I play currently. I always felt the need of a site/blog that did it and I hope this site can make your life merrier.

Notice that the browser-based games to be treated here don’t have the great graphics, most of them are text-based: the ones you can play in your mobile, in your work, and in your old computer. They are here, in the web, to save your life in one boring day at work, in your grandma’s house, and in case you don’t have money to buy a new computer and play the expensive games being sold at the shop. And believe me, the games I am going to review here are great :D

Be welcome!

Paulo Ladeira