To get ideas for what I want to do with The Land of Rhul, I’ve been playing with other people’s online games and forums. Some sites I play for a few months, get tired of it, and lose interest and only come back on to make sure that my “pets” keep living and I don’t go bankrupt in case I do get the time/energy/interest to go back again. Some have kept my interest for way longer because they always bring something new to the table.

My goals for TLoR is to have a game where there are many different “levels” for people to play. I want a beginner, intermediate, and advanced player goals. But also, I want the casual player to be able to come on maybe once or twice a week to play and still have fun with it and not get bored or feel like they will never “win” at the game. However, I also want to entertain more active players with things that happen by hour and keep them coming back day after day.

I have yet decided if I want to immediately classify accounts as specific “types” of players or just let the players decide themselves. I am going with the latter because I feel the “pick your own adventure” is just much more exciting for people, it is at least for me if I were playing the game.

I have also decided that my game is going to be free. It really ticks me off when these sites out there that make it impossible to do anything in the game unless you pay for it. Some sites do “pay to play” better than others but some make you pay exorbanent amounts of money for “customs” that really aren’t “customs” you’re just paying for the code of the site to make you a generation 1 animal with a few of your own chosen colors. To me, that’s worth $5 because the actual artist hasn’t made anything “custom” about it.

I have been toying with the idea of doing actual custom art for people if they want it and then loading those custom sprites into the game. But would I have the time? Probably not. Meh, maybe I could only offer very limited custom slots.

Anyway, the original point of this post was to list my favorite websites that do something that I would like to do, why the do it good, or why they do it “bad,” (all in my humble opinion.)

Dragon Adopters

Pros:

• Excellent graphics, both pixel (animated and non-animated) and vector.
• “Dragon Game” on each dragon page. Makes users want to visit other people’s pages and help their dragons grow by winning items.
• Very nice marketplace to sell items.
• Overall a very nice way to create items, use and sell them.
• I like how the dragon “produces” stuff. I wanted to implement something like this however was thinking more along the lines of the dragon going out and fetching it. (Like gold, jewels, etc, how classical dragons liked to “horde” things.)

Cons:

• Takes a long time to level your dragons unless your a post whore. Not exactly what I am going for in my game.

Furry Paws

Pros:

• Love how people submit art for the different breeds.
• Like that you have to have some level of care in order for the dogs to perform better in competitions.
• I believe there was a “newbie” tutorial for this site but I can’t remember because it has been a while.

Cons:

• For some reason I stopped playing this game after a few weeks. I think generally, the layout for the site is too difficult to keep people to stay within the site and drill down and discover everything. Instead, when I log in I am not sure where to start first because there isn’t really a launching point. I get bored and navigate away from the site even though I know there is a lot to do in the game.

Dragon Cave

Pros:

• Nice art.
• Good community
• Very simple interface, know exactly what you’re getting into and what you need to do.

Cons:

• Again, you have to spam message boards or join “fan sites” in order to get the needed amount of views to grow your dragon. I don’t think I want that to be a main focus of my game (maybe a small part of it though, might be fun)

Aramii

Pros:

• Lovely artwork.
• Includes “quests” for the aramii to do.
• Meeps!
• Theme contests for people to enter in.
• Breeding rounds that you earn.
• “Guilds” of players – helps the community
• Things like the treasure chest and game machine for “guilds” for guild members to get free stuff.
• Very good with updates, they update the main page and have a Twitter account.

Cons:

• This may have changed since the last time I was playing this game, but like Wajas and Tagas (see below) there isn’t as much desire for high generation pups/cubs/babies/whatever. So if you’re a newbie, it’s hard to sell and gain money if you were only able to get high level generations. I think Aramii does a better job at helping this though by having the adoption center and being able to do quests no matter what the level. They also have aforementioned theme contests which demands people to breed for the right theme.
• It costs $20 to get a custom and donate other monies for special items. I don’t want money to be a factor on how well someone does at a game. You have to deal with that in real life, you shouldn’t have to deal with it in fantasy.

Howrse

Pros:

• Wonderful artwork
• You keep track of your horses and your equestrian center
• Nice “Black Market” items but, see Cons.
• The list is pretty long, I’ve been playing this game for more than a year and a half now, so I like it a lot!

Cons:

• Like Aramii, has a way to pay money and the ones with the most money do best in the game (that’s just the way it is!)
• The creators aren’t English speakers.
• Have a suggestions board but still don’t seem to listen to real concerns. 🙁

Majestica Online

Pros:

• You are able to move around in the land and fight monsters and get “drops”
• Again… art is wonderful…
• Nice storyline

Cons:

• No updates for a while. They were planning a version 2 and kinda forgot about version 1. If I make a site and work on a “version 2” I have to make sure people don’t think the site is dead because updates aren’t happening in “version 1.”
• I got bored playing this game because it was mostly just leveling and quests about getting dropped items off of monsters I hadn’t got to yet. Not having regular updates may have affected my perception of this.

Tygras

Pros:

• Art! (I must only like sites with wonderful art XD)
• Have shops that you can work in to earn money
• Have “Activity Tokens” for chances at quests in the forest.

Cons:

• Also $20 for basic customs, however unlike Aramii no incentives for high generations of babies.
• Not sure where this game is going. Are they basically just trying to be like Wajas, but with large Cat breeds? (see below)

Wajas

Pros:

• Nice art
• Nice breeding program (old one was okay but the newest one actually makes me interested in breeding my Wajas again)

Cons:

• I think they have too many breeds… Makes it hard to get items to all look right when there are so many breeds to consider.
• This has tapered off a bit but the admin team were pretty rude and mean for a while. Very ungrateful for their users.
• Also, need to donate to do any of the “fun” stuff on the site. I donated once when I first joined but after that I never saw where my money was being put into. I think the site has gotten better about this but it’s important to understand that if you’re offering a service for money you need to keep your players up-to-date with what you’re doing with that money. I think the site gets away with this because they call it “donations.” It’s probably also a scheme so they don’t have to post taxes on the money they make from “donations” but of course I am only speculating.