Minions of Mirth: The good things

As I mentioned earlier, Minions of Mirth has it's problems and it's not for everyone. Some may be turned off by the graphics, some by the lack of initial customization, some by the fact that the game has no real tutorial other than one help screen.
It simply doesn't explain anything to you. There are no exclamation marks for you, if a quest is available for you, nor where the city is (as you spawn off outside it). The only thing, that will, help you get started is a small item in your inventory, that you must present to your trainer. The help mentioned tracker window so you open it, and it lists you the closest things to you and the distance, so you track the city (Trinst) and go there to find whom your supposed to find.

(Yes, this is the capital city)

Even though the tutorial is pretty non-existant, it's not a big deal, given that there is a help channel, where you can type your question, while obtaining an answer from other players (and I must say, they are a helpful bunch).
After surviving the birthing pains however, the games really opens up. The amount of content was put in the game is mind-boggling. You can craft items. Make poisons. Enchant equipment. Brew poisons. And of course, quest and fight stuff.
Quests are nice but suffer a little from the same formula as in other MMOs, i.e. kill X to receive Y, give item A to person B, and so on. The rewards are modest, and you will spend most time gathering experience via killing various animals and denizens living on the lands of Mirth. The main benefit of doing quests is getting presence (it upgrades your character, makes her more powerful) and receiving monster templates as rewards.
What is a monster template, you ask? Why, It's a playable character, that you can create, that looks like a monster from the game. Each monster has some set classes, like skeletons being warriors, liches being necromancers etc. , and the game allows you to create the creature with the exact starting level (and YES you can become a Dragon). This along with the unique way MoM handles classes makes it really excellent for making your builds the way you want. And that leads us to the biggest plus this game gets from me.... classes.
There's multiclass in this game. You pick your first class at character creation, the you get the option to dual class at level 5 and finally to get your third class at level 15. There are no restriciton (outside some classes being unusable by one faction and vice versa) as to what classes you choose. You want to start as a Warrior, then pick a Cleric to heal yourself and lastly, wizard for the big damaging spells while still using heaviest armor? You can. You can make any combination, and it will be playable. There are some classes that compliment each other better than another, but it's not that big problem as to render some characters unplayable.
There are classes that get pets, classes that can change their form to another, classes that give you abilities to fly, to control npcs, and much more.

FINAL THOUGHTS
As I said, the game is not for everyone. It has some problems, but those get soon overshadowed by the sheer volume of choices and content you can find. And the fact that it's free, and later unlocked with one time fee makes it all the more appealing.
I've certainly had more fun, and I've definitely got my money's worth out of this game.

Minions of Mirth: A quick look

I make it no secret that I like games.
Whether it be those board ones, PnP rpg stuff or the video game variety, the power to create, simulate and run (or pretend to run) worlds to take out the stress from the whole day is strangely compelling to me. There's many different genres that I like, but today, I want to talk about one small hidden gem of a game from a genre that I find intriguing.

Introducing: Minions of Mirth

Minions of Mirth (or MoM for short) is an MMORPG. It was released back in 2005 by an independent developer Prairie Games Inc. When I discovered it, sometimes in 2006, I was curious. This was not the first time I played an MMO (I played Knights Online for about a week), but it was the first one I found that has been Mac-friendly.
Oh, I didn't mention that I own a Mac? Well, there's a story for some other time then.

Okay, back to MoM.
So I found a game, from a genre I was mildly interested in, that I could run from home. And it was free (well technically, you had to pay a one time fee, like in Guild Wars, but it has a free trial up to level 15). Needless to say, I was pretty hyped. So I went and installed it, made myself an account, and finally run the game. This is wat will greet you upon opening the game:

(you can tell that this will be old school)

I've certainly seen worst menu screens, but those were around 1997. Mind you this came in 2005, a year after World of Warcraft, yet the initial impressions put it somewhere around Diablo 1 era. But I didn't stop, I went through two more menu screens and created a character. To be precise, you pick your race, starting class, assign spare points to your stats (or, if you're a wuss like me, use the default button) and pick your gender and decide whether you wanna be the good friendly guys, or the bad dastardly evil ones (but you have to have full version for those)

That's it. 

No other customization whatsoever. This is a little sad, yet I don't see it as a big minus, given what you can do with your character later on. On a positive side of things, you can pick from 12 races, and 16 classes. On start. It gets even better later on.

So I made my character and went to the realms of Mirth.

And this is the first scene that will open for you:

(neat huh?)

Not the prettiest sight in the world, but it's charming in it's own old fashioned way. At first, I was pretty unimpressed, but it began to grow on me. The graphics give a strong Everquest vibe, from the menus, to the overall aesthetics. The result is, bearable, but nothing to write home about (On the other hand your microwave can probably run it as a result.). It's neat, to the point, has a certain feel to it and at least you're not staring at ASCII.

So yeah, there you have it. The first part of my quick look was pretty "meh" so far, but join me next time, when I'll write about what I like about this game- a love letter so steamy and sparkly that will make Twilight saga fanfictionist weep.