Welcome back for another installment of Saturday Hobbies.  I write this as I drive down the road in the back of a car on a rainy Saturday.  So the last couple of Saturday Hobbies have been a bit … productive.  This weekend we are playing online game, nothing productive about that!  There are quite a few options in the online gaming world but we are going to take a look at three of them, World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and Ultima Online. 

Now this may seem a bit incomplete or a bit odd but I have my reasons.  Lets start with World of Warcraft, this is probably the most successful online game in the history of online gaming.  Blizzard reported reaching 10 million subscribers this year which is unparalled by any other online game.  What sets it apart? In my opinion, the thing that make WoW a cut above the mustard is excellent programing.  I played the game for a while a year or so ago and I cant ever remember it crashing or getting disconnected.  Not to mention a huge world to explore and balanced game play. 

Next lets take a look at Eve Online, I personally haven’t played Eve but I know some people who have.  Eve is the main space online game out there.  The main thing that sets Eve apart is their system of gaining skills while offline.  It is the only online game that the casual gamer has much of a chance at excelling at.  So if you have kids, a wife, or a girlfriend (or all three) Eve might be the game for you.

Finally I would like to bring it back to the old school.  Ultima Online.  Ultima is the first Massively Multiplayer Online game, they invented, they made it popular and amazingly enough they still have subscribers.  I am proud (sad/embarrassed) to say I was a subscriber to UO from the very first month.  I understand that it is probably unlikely that you are going to pay to play UO when you could be playing one of the other fancy Online Games out there right now but you could always try out a free server of UO.  It is still one of the most unique online games and there are a lot of strong free servers.  Give the runuo.com community (uodivinty.com) a try some time.

Last but not least I want to share with you what may be the next Space Online Game.  The game is unfortunately at the moment not finished but it has been a work in progress for the last several years.  That game is Infinity Online.  Check it out this project is coming along quite well and they can always use help with modeling and other things.