Bay 12 Games Forum

Updated OP to reflect the new world. If ever a time you wanted to try out Haven and Hearth again, now is the best time.

I find the Portal:Current Events a decent way to stay up on news without actually having to visit any news sites.

Yeah, it's a shame that there is not better correlation between the "physical" economy and the "financial" economy.  They are different things, and it seems that the physical economy, which should lead the financial one, is instead often led by the financial one.  It's very backwards.

My basic example is of our most recent recession - it was wholly a financial bookkeeping thing.  The day after the crisis, we still had the same population, physical infrastructure, same education level, same number of people providing services, etc.  There was no "physical" reason why the downturn occurred - it was only a financial artifact that cascaded into real physical issues later.

I don't care if it was by happenstance or by design, the fact that essentially people just declared a disaster by changing some numbers in some databases is actually more disturbing to me than use of physical weapons.

Rick and Morty - changing 1 to 0
semi relevant

Last couple years have been relatively mild. This year has been the nicest in ~10 years. I feel like this most recent cold snap is going to be the nail in fall's coffin, however. Was 70 Monday, 50 Monday night, 35 Tuesday morning and hasn't budged much since.

The only predictable element of the midwest's weather is it's unpredictably, but then again they do say variety is the spice of life

because nothing is better than free games, here's a list of my favorite flash games from when i was a child:

http://armorgames.com/play/2407/karoshi-suicide-salaryman - kil urself
http://www.nitrome.com/games/icebreaker/               - this one has one of the most chill/ambient soundtracks ever. there's also an ice breakers 2
http://armorgames.com/play/2044/amorphous-plus  - kill slimes
http://armorgames.com/play/1920/bubble-tanks-2 - upgrade bubbles

i feel all flash games are inherently though.

as for real games:
two worlds + two worlds II due to their kind of crappy nature
EYE divine cybermancy was a ball of weird that i could never grasp

if your group has enough savvy and enough computers, The Hidden was a damn fun game when it was still popular
http://www.hidden-source.com/
in the same source mod vein, Suicide Survival is hilarious if you have enough players
http://www.moddb.com/mods/suicide-survival

Kadaban, I suggest finding a nice settlement of folks on the H&H forums. There arent many DF folks who play haven actively (at least no one will admit to it), and there certainly arent any DF settlements. We've had DF villages in the past, but they always ran afoul one way or another, and ultimately anyone who played in those villages left with a bad taste in their mouth.

If you're looking to learn the ropes and have fun with some friendly folks, there are many villages in the Northern Kingdom which look for new players. They're also pretty safe and relatively larpy, if you're into that scene.

Necro, sorry folks. I feel obligated as the OP to give it a quarterly update

Since my last post 4 months ago the highly anticipated push-out mechanic has been implemented, which means you wont get stuck on objects anymore. the devs have been working on a client rewrite for the past couple months. not a LOT of info on this, other than it will significantly update/change the client, hopefully to be more user friendly. weekly updates have added 100s of new items in the past few months. about 3x more animals than 2 years ago.

updated the OP as well. read it here or there:

One of the main reasons people often overlook this game is the negative views of the community and permadeath - Both of these have changes drastically in the last few years.

Permadeath is still a feature. It is however much harder to die due to recent changes. being KO'd will prompt the player with the option to log out or to teleport to their hearthfire. In this fashion being ganked is basically impossible. being killed takes much more effort, but is still possible.

With the introduction of kingdoms, finding a safe, active community is very easy. several mechanics have been put in place to encourage communities to thrive, such as visitor buffs, barter stands, and in depth permission settings.

All in all, Haven isnt as hardcore as it was 5 years ago, but it is now much more accessible. Some will see this as a bad thing, some will see it as good. there are currently dozens of towns and communities which have active members and host weekly events. If you havent played Haven in the past few years due to a sour experience, The game is wholly different now than in the past. It might be worth taking another look.