What are you playing till May 15th?

After exploring the Diablo 3 beta I found myself casting around for something to do.

I usually spend a little time in Eve Online each day as I find that game fascinating. However at the moment I'm mostly generating income passively, storing it up for the next surge of pvping. I won't do so now because Eve is a game where everything takes absolutely ages. By the time I find an outfit I like, get my ships to their combat hub and fly a few fleets with them it would be almost Diablo 3 time. No point joining someone to go perma-afk after a few weeks.

Eve Online

I decided to go back to Everquest 2 and asked a friend if he wanted to give it another go with me. We got to about level 10, he swapped his new guy for an old character and mentored down and then pushed on a few more levels. I really like EQ2 and I'm very happy that I can casually drop in for free whenever I feel and have tons to do. There's a bewildering amount of content. I joined the dungeon finder tool and it popped up pretty quickly. It wasn't like that when they first introduced it because I think people were basically conservative. However it's gained considerable traction since I last played.

Everquest 2

We discovered that the virtual card game that is packaged with EQ2 had been quietly accumulating cards. On one of my accounts I had 102 boosters! I had been aware previously that EQ2 players got free boosters for this game but it had never worked before. Naturally since we had all these cards we had to try it.

Legends of Norrath is a very good collectible card game. It has significant twists on the basic framework that Magic: The Gathering created and the artwork is beautiful. It also has the somewhat quirky Everquest sense of humour. I always find their plotlines reminiscent of Piers Anthony's Xanth series.

Legends of Norrath

I'd certainly recommend anyone who likes card games and has ever played EQ or EQ2 to log in and see if there's boosters waiting for you. Even if you don't play for long it's great fun opening boosters and seeing all your cards. (They're locked so you can't trade them, at least the free ones are).

Now there's another free to play card game of course that SOE do (several actually but another that interests me). They have Magic The Gathering Tactics.

Magic the Gathering: Tactics

Magic The Gathering: Tactics is a delightful blend of Heroes Of Might & Magic 3 and Magic The Gathering. Your forces move across a board much like HOMM3 but the cards are all Magic cards. It has a lot of critics, particularly on the Wizards of the Coast board so whatever you do don't read that forum. This is because Tactics rewrites a lot of the classic MTG gameplay.

Heroes of Might and Magic 3

It is very attractive to me because I loved Magic I loved HOMM3 and I like to finesse free to play games. I had some Station Cash anyway so I spent some of it unlocking the 6 paid campaigns (1500 SC, about £12). I've built up a deck made of commons that is just starting to get some results. I beat a level 52 player (out of 55 max level) twice this morning so I must be close. I've also started flipping rares on the auction house, following Marcko's advice of Buy Low, Sell Normal. Unfortunately sales are slow. I'll probably sell a few at the weekend.

Magic The Gathering is a more interesting game for me because the cards were part of my gaming history. I am a former UK national champion and when I had my Magic phase I reckon I spent about £5000 on cards in that year.

There's a lot to recommend it for Diablo 3 fans. It's fast and furious. Tournament matches have a 15 minute chess clock that means you have to build a deck to win and win fast. I've already lost one game to the clock - that will teach me to play Blue! There's an interesting auction house and trading element to the game. And, because it's free to play, you can dip in and play it for 6 weeks then drop it to play Diablo 3 without losing the value of the time you spend progressing.

My character is Stabsey, say Hi if you give it a try.