One of my friends the other day told me to check out Path of Exile which is free to play and is like Diablo and Torchlight, but different
www.pathofexile.com Downloaded the game and it is pretty good. Right at the get go having to kill zombies on the beach and the flashing lightning very realistic with shadows etc was more advanced than I at first expected this game to be. I created a witch in which I was able to kite around zombies and the boss monster to kill before entering the first city where you are finally given quests to do, and then I ran out of time to game further as it was getting late.
One big difference in this game from others like it is that there is no money in the game. Everything is traded for items of value that have limits to their stacking, so this Online RPG will never have an economic runaway caused by too much money farmed/looted which causes prices to climb to crazy amounts like Diablo III has a serious problem with for anyone ever visiting the auction house for the very first time with the 1300 gold you have and find out that you will need 10,000 gold to buy a single low level piece of gear that someone is selling because too much money was farmed and so the price of everything goes up because its inflated due to too much going around, however anyone new to the game at first feels rich after all the grinding until they see this fact and then its like "OMG THE ECONOMY IS OUT OF CONTROL".. This is one of the reasons why I quit playing Diablo III which I got free I guess you could say since I got it as part of a deal with Blizzard to keep paying for World of Warcraft for 1 year.
Although I like a money system better for feeling out what is good from a bad purchase, as in other games which use virtual money, to have a sense of in game wealth, I think I can learn to get use to this other non-monetary system of trade. However I still feel like I should be looting money in gold, silver, and copper coins as I go.
Talking with another player who has played this for a while he has said that it can start to feel like a constant grind, but dungeon crawlers whether online or offline single player have always felt like a grind anyways to get better gear, get more powerful in stats, and level up anyways, so the game grind of a game like this is not a problem unless it gets to a point that you have to spend real money to advance further because of in game drop limitations that cap you unless you spend real money. From what I have read online this game does not restrict you or cap you in any way between people playing for free such as myself and others who pay for items for their characters, so that is a big plus to this game to me that I am not wasting my time to get to a point in which I realize that I was pulled into the money trap like so many other games that are free to play have to be able to compete with other players who spend money to be all powerful.
So if you like Diablo and/or Torchlight, I'd check it out.
