Played: Kingdom Of Loathing

This month began with Narraptor revealing his addiction to Leveling. It's only proper that it ends with my own tearful confession.

I've been playing Kingdom Of Loathing off and on for over a year now. It's a free web based game, where your tiny stickman adventurer boozes, eats, and kills their way across the kingdom. Eventually, you climb up to the naughty sorceress' tower, kill her, and jump into a portal leading to heaven. Then, you start the process all over again, but with one of your previous abilities permanently added to your new level one character. There are a few differences, but the second verse is pretty damn close to the first. Also, the thirteenth is pretty much the same as the last twelve, but my character is a lot better at making mixed drinks than he used to be.

There ought to be a sane reason I still play this. World Of Warcraft kept me around long after it had lost it's luster, just from the co-operative gameplay and it's financial simulation aspects. Meanwhile, Kingdom of Loathing is a very solitary experience if you don't hang out on the forums, and it's marketplace might be robust, but it is also painful to use.

Then again, they try to include new content every Tuesday, usually based around enriching the lives of lower level players. This certainly beats the content drops of WOW, which hit once every four to five months, and 90% of it is designed solely for the top 10% of the players.