Social Networking + F2P

I’ve noticed a few social networks cropping up centered around the free to play mmo culture. I decided to give a mention to the major contenders.

+ OnRPG
The original. Pretty much all you need.

+ Game Gravity
Newly opened. Reminds me a little too much of MySpace.

+ Curse
Seems interesting. Offers a few useful features and up to date news.

Taksi : Open Source Video/Screen Capture

+ Official Site

Taksi is an open source screen/video capture program, useful for capturing video of your game play. I figured this information might be useful for some people, since most of the alternatives are crippleware or cost money.

OpenSim : Open Source Virtual Worlds

+ Official Site

An interesting item of note. OpenSim is a virtual world server for creating specialized or general virtual worlds like Second Life. It also seems worlds built on OpenSim can link up.

Game Gardens : community for game developers

+ Official Site

For those interested in game development Three Rings has a game development and hosting community called Game Gardens. It mostly seems focused on developing in Java with NetBeans and Eclipse. Game Gardens hosts games created by players, so if you are interested in developing your own game this community seems like a useful resource.

OGPlanet and the business of free MMOs

In a recent interview with OGPlanet’s executive producer it was revealed that OGPlanet is currently planning to drastically expand their library of games. It was also revealed that the game publisher hopes to begin catering to a wider North American/English audience by localizing their games instead of just translating them. If this is true then this means that the quality of game play for OGPlanet’s games is likely to improve drastically. Culturally Chinese/Vietnamese/Korean games are characterized by a large amount of repetitive level grinding. OGPlanet intends to change this for an English audience.

+ Source