All About Free Online Interactive Games: How to Get Started

The Mana World As quoted on the website, The Mana World (TMW) is a serious effort to create an innovative free and open source MMORPG. TMW uses 2D graphics and aims to create a large and diverse interactive world."

Yes, it's free - no charge what so ever and to make things even better, it is a cross platfrom game. That means it can run on almost any computer.

I currently run Ubuntu 10.4 for AMD64 and before that many different versions of Linux and Windows, and The Mana World performed flawlessly on each and every one of them. For a while, I had to travel a bit and used the mobile version on a flash drive - that worked well also.

Even if you are not addicted to the game as I am, it is worth looking at. There are many versions out there, and I suggest you try them all until you find one that suits you. The official language is English, but most servers have players that speak many languages (I unfortunately am not one). The UFB server even has most of the text files in French.

It is a kind of "old fashioned" game that embodies most of today's current philosophy. Sure, there are many things that bug me, such as players who beg rather than work for the rewards, but most of the things are tailorable to the user.

In the Windows version, all the music and sound effects are included in the install, but with the Linux version these have to be installed as an addition. As someone once said to me "The music is a bit churchy", but I happen to like it. Having said that, I should point out that there are controls to turn the sounds off.

I believe it is possible to play player versus player although I have never tried this, nor do I ever wish to.
There is also a patch available with many extra tabs to work with. This allows the user to see who is on-line. The graphics are slightly different too, in that the items "dropped" by the monsters are highlighted so making it easier not to miss anything, also the pointer is changed, to a weapon for fighting and a hand to pick up stuff.

The game is constantly changing and it updates itself too. Many folk contribute freely including game developers, game masters, programmers etcetera.

There is also magic in the game - level 2 at the moment, although some servers are trying to implement level 3. This is controlled by NPCs (Non Playing Characters) and your magic abilities are distributed by these NPCs. The level of your magic depends on the skill you develop using these.

You can chat with other players in the chat window and there are many many folk who will help a new player (noobie) as well as NPCs set up for explaining the rules.

Much much more can be found out about The Mana World by searching on the Internet. Most of my characters begin with :Stoo.......", so look out for me and I am willing to help if you ask - just please, don't beg!