Minions of the Fickle Muse

Guild Wars 2 has announced a free trial this weekend. Smudge and I are planning on trying it out, and I figured I'd spread the word to everyone else who hasn't already bought it (which I think is just Bel). The game is already available for free download and install if you want to be prepared for it:

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/

Also, last weekend, Smudge and I tried out Neverwinter. I have to say that while it's not great, it is good enough to fire me up enough to keep going at it for a while. There's only a few MMOs that do that; so far I'm saying it's about as good as Rift; but while that scored high on system, and low on story, this is more even, which is why I'm more interested in it. If anyone else tries it out, we're on the Dragon server (of course...).

The game is free-to-play with no subscription model. There is of course a store to buy things, with real money, but so far it's been unobtrusive, and prices look quite reasonable. It is based off of 4th Ed D&D, and the 4th ed version of Forgotten Realms. I can't say I'm happy with what I'm reading they did to the Realms in 4th, but map still looks familiar enough that it's not bugging me in-game. Also, being a Neverwinter title, you can make your own content, and go through other user's content, but we haven't tried that yet.

And finally, I should point out that Final Fantasy XIV: A Realm Reborn becomes available in a week. This is the completely re-done version 2.0 of the game after the first version turned into a complete crash and burn. There's plenty of nice things being said about the new version here though. While the game is a somewhat reasonable $30 purchase, it is on a pure subscription model (WoW and FF XI's per character subscription are the only other ones left that I know of), so while it looks tempting, I'm just looking right now.