Yeah, I'm an adult (ToonTown)

[LionelThompson]

www.toontown.com

I am an MMORPG whore, this has long been established. Now I find this game, while not as deep or as large as EQ, still maintains a nice reward system to keep me playing just a little bit longer each time.
There are no 'levels' per se, just an evergrowing list of skills and abilities. A nice mix of mini-games thrown in to help you earn cash (jellybeans), and the damn thing is cheap. $10 for the first month, $7 each month after.
To prevent stalkers, they do not allow normal chat, you can only speak through preset phrases (like Phantasy Online had). The difference here is you can set up 'secret words' with another person outside the game, and then use those to speak 'normally' in the game.
If anyone plays and wants to chat with me, let me know. I go by (I cannot say this with a straight face) Professor Pickles Purplepocket.

[TomChick]

I go by (I cannot say this with a straight face) Professor Pickles Purplepocket.

That sounds dirty.

-Tom

[gnmarsh]

I've been playing this quite a bit as well. Some interesting lessons in game design could be learned here by current developers. They have done a lot of things right.

[LionelThompson]

Agreed. There is almost no opportunity to grief. The only thing I can come up with to do so is to join someone(s) to enter a building, then jumping out of the elevator at the last minute, sending them to their demise.

Otherwise, I like the variable missions that still have an overall 'finish' path to them (with a great many side quests that allow your character to have peculiar, temporary perks, like small avatar or giant head). The 'linear' quests still maintain variable paths to them so you can increase your health first OR go for bigger pockets to hold more gags (ammo).

Granted the population is considerably less, but they have collision detection in this game, a nice touch. Again, the mini-games are varied enough, and you don't have to visit them too often so they remain relatively fresh. Downtime during death is minimal, and that time can be spent earning coin at the minigames.

I have noticed though that as I start my quests in the 'third realm' (Daisy's Gardens) that the population has dropped among players, even on the most populous of servers (you can switch between servers at will). This will make defeating buildings a challenge. As an aside, if you need to visit a building, and it has been converted to a cog-building, you can switch servers and try to find an uncoverted one. I've had to do this a couple of times. It seems that the greater the population, the higher the rate of villains converting buildings, which is nice as it prevents the lower populated areas from becoming wastelands of cog buildings.