Not to nitpick, but I just went to Sherwood and found that the plugin required was Shockwave. There is a difference between Flash and Shockwave for development and what each is capable of. Well, for one, Shockwave has a true 3D engine and Flash has only a fledgling one in Flash 10.

Still, developing Shockwave apps is not that much harder than Flash apps - but there is a difference.

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I played a couple of them, but in all the ones I've played you rarely got a sense of social interaction. You all had characters, and there was alot of customization, even cool artwork, but I just didn't get that social fix that makes MMO's better than the run of the mill single player games.

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I really want to get into one, but I feel on the whole I've been let down by some slightly amateurish games that lack some polish.

I feel that if a larger publisher got into this (a little like SOE's foray into Free Realms) but allowed the assets to be opened up to the community, that the content would get very sizable quickly (much like secondlife and metaplace), as a result the quality does tend to take a nosedive so maybe it's better to manage all the content in that respect.

Runescape is a nice concept, I just don't feel it's such a great game, I'll definitely check out Sherwood, so thanks for the heads up.

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Adventurequest Worlds by Artix Entertainment. It's decent, but I always felt they rush development of thier games. They are what could be called professional amatures. They make enough money to build thier games full time, which is great, but they have the most unprofessional system for production I have ever seen. It is actually a small miracle they have never got sued for all the parodies and refrences they make to alot of things.

As for the game itself, it is decent, but not quite as impressive as it could be. The art is toned down from the quality seen in thier other games, as to avoid hellish lag with many users on at once. That is not to say that it is bad, but it is far more cartoony and simple that the magnificent visuals you get in the original Adventurequest, or Dragon Fable. The gameplay is simmaler to a real time Dragonfable battle system, but much much simpler with fewer skills for all. They are constanly adding new fuctionality, and it is constantly shaping up to be a better game, with the same quirky quality you get from thier other games, but has a long way to go to live up to the story telling in AQ or DF, as well as the tactical feeling of combat in both.

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There are quite a few big browser based mmorpg's these days. Check out SwitchIn, which is actually larger than Sherwood

http://www.switchin.net

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Puzzle Pirates for me, a while ago. There were things I didn't like about the game play, too much focus on the islands and not enough on the ships for my taste, so I didn't stay, but other than that I loved it.

And there'll be a 6' tall 26" wide hole through you if you stand between me and Mechscape if or when it comes out.

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