17 Free MMORPG Trials

If you've ever wondered what it was like to play an MMORPG (or another if you're already playing one) well now's you chance. FilePlanet has put together a collection of Massively Multiplayer Game Trials - 17 in all.

Some of these are the usual big one: World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, Star War Galaxies, Everquest, and of course EVE Online. I might try WoW and DDO to see what they're like now and how much has changed since the BETA trials I did a few months ago. Well it only seems to be a few months ago to me.

But whatever you decide to do, if you've never played EVE Online, do yourself a favor and go through the 14-day trial! You'll be happy you've joined the greatest MMO Community in the universe.

I'm now qualified to pilot Gallente Battleships

After about a week of training the last 2 skills I needed, I now have the PPL qualifications to pilot Gallente Battleships. That's no small feat let me tell you! Just to give you an idea, this is the current list of skills that was needed to be trained to various levels.

Acceleration Control Afterburner Controlled Bursts Cruise Missiles Defender Missiles Drone Interfacing Drones Electronics Energy Grid Upgrades Energy Management Energy Pulse Weapons Energy Systems Operation Engineering Evasive Maneuvering FoF Missiles Fuel Conservation Gallente Battleship Gallente Cruiser Gallente Frigate Gunnery Heavy Drone Operation High Speed Maneuvering

Hull Upgrades Large Hybrid Turret Long Range Targeting Mechanic Missile Launcher Operation Motion Prediction Navigation Rapid Firing Repair Systems Science Sharpshooter Shield Management Shield Operation Shield Upgrades Signature Analysis Spaceship Command Surgical Strike Tactical Shield Manipulation TargetingScout Drone Operation Trajectory Analysis Warp Drive Operation Weapon Upgrades

It's a pretty exhaustive list as you can see, and quite a few of these skills need to be at level 4 or even 5. So there's a lot of time invested in training all these skills.

And Phoenix Propulsion Labs has a list of required skills for numerous qualification categories. Which is why I use these lists to plan my skill queue instead, and rarely use ECM or EVEMon anymore. The next qualification that I'm training is "Drone Commander" and "Long Range Ballistics Commander". For the former, I've completed the "Drone Operator" and "Drone Supervisor" qualifications, as for the later, I've completed the "Trainee Long Range Ballistics Operator", the "Long Range Ballistics Operator" and also the " Long Range Ballistics Supervisor". As you can see these are all combat oriented qualification, as I'm trying to become proficient as a Phalanx pilot.

The only thing that I can't train though is experience, that'll only come with time and practice. We'll just have to get out there and train with Phalanx Command.

Time to roll-up my sleeves and get to work. I'll let you know how things go.

Skyland Episodes 1 & 2, and lastest poll

A few weeks back, I ran a poll to know if any of you would be interested in buying the Skyland animation series if it ever came on DVD. Well it seems that quite a lot of you would, so you'll be happy to hear that the series is being released in France this fall, though there is no news on the North-American market or elsewhere. Guess we'll just have to wait for that. If you have any news on it, please let me know.

Back to the poll results now. So here are the results after running the poll over a 2 weeks period:

• What the hell is Skyland? - 13% (2)
• Maybe, if the price is right - 13% (2)
• Maybe, if the rest of the series is as good - 13% (2)
• Most likely - 13% (2)
• Definitely - 50% (8)

Looks like this would be a hot item! I do realize that I did not have the choice to say that you would not be buying the DVD series at all. What can I say, this whole polling thing is new to me! I will next time I promise.

Finally, I've had quite a lot of emails and posts asking me where one could get the first two episodes of the series. As I mentioned in this post a few months back, Nicktoons had made available the initial two episodes. But for some reason, they removed them. Lucky for me (and you), I downloaded both back then. And so, I was able to email them using Pando to a few of you. But, the demand has been so great that it no longer is convenient for me to use that utility.

Last week I came across Box.net, a great site that offer online storage. And so over the week-end I uploaded both episodes, and you can now download them yourselves! One thing though, I've to subscribed to the service ($5/month) in order to be able to upload the episodes which are about 130Mb each. The five bucks a month gives me 5Gb of space and 20Gb of bandwidth monthly. As write this, I have no clue as to how quickly I'll go though that. We''l just have to see. So here are the two links:

• Skyland Episode 1 (QuickTime - 127.3Mb)
• Skyland Episode 2 (QuickTime - 128.3Mb)

Please let me know if you run into any trouble trying to download either of them. You can also drop me a comment or an email to say thanks and Hi!

Hope you enjoy!