While facing the incredibly arduous decision of either revising a paper for my English class (The Oil Imbroglio: America's Dependence on Foreign Oil), or doing something completely irrelevant...I succumbed to the latter. I'm uncertain what the point of this blog will be, so I have given myself some leeway by giving it a rather ambiguous title.
I recently had a discussion with a friend regarding a fun, simple online rpg. The name of it by now is quite well-known,
Kingdom of Loathing (KoL).
The first thing that strikes you when you visit their site is the graphics, or lack there of. The game is text-based, so you won't have any funky, recycled animations that you need to worry about. What you
do get are stick figures! There are innumberable variations of the basic pic: the hippy, ninja, pirate, and a hermit just to name a few. You'll also find yourself attacked by evil cans of asparagus, pixel baddies, and lamz0r n00bs who damage you with their bad spelling.
Another major attraction to the game is the player-driven economy. There are many odd items available in the game like the icy-hot katana, kentucky fried meat crossbow, lavender plastic oyster egg, and the relatively new
unrolling pin. These and the countless other items available in the game can be bought or sold in the flea market in town, or in the mall which includes 32,327 shops at the moment. With so many items and outlets to sell them, one cannot help but want to join in the fun. Luckily, KoL devotees have put together a fantastic site (KoL Coldfront) that includes, among other things, a marketplace area. Here a vast amount of information may be found concerning the current status (updated every 15 minutes!) of the KoL economy. You'll be able to find the top 5 most traded items, items that had the greatest price and percent increase/decrease. This area is topped off with a list of all items traded since the last update, their current sale price, volume traded, and price increase from the previous day (with percent change).
Yes, this game is very fun (parodies galore), but do not worry about getting too caught up in it. You'll have a default 40 adventures (40 turns) to play each day. So, you can simply play out your 40 turns to level up while you have your breakfast, or farm an area for a certain item between your 2pm and 3pm classes. Of course, if you also have the possibility to gain many more adventures through equipping certain items, eating well prepared food, and drinking some hearty ales. Any unused adventures will carry over day to day (to a max of 200). So if you have a busy week, you can always catch up on your adventuring on the weekend!
This game is definitely worth a try. Whether you decide to be an Accordion Thief, or a Disco Bandit, I'm sure you'll have plenty of fun.
Related links:
http://www.kingdomeofloathing.comhttp://kol.coldfront.net/
