Skyrates

[Dani]

I've been branching out a bit, looking for other casual games. One I found that seems pretty good is a game called Skyrates. It's basically a trading game similar to Caravaneer only it takes place in a vaguely steampunk setting with anthropomorphic animals, pirates, propeller-airplanes, hot air balloons, blimps, that sort of thing. Combat takes the form of aerial dogfights. They have combat/trade/escort missions, that kind of stuff, and the map is pretty big.

Things I like:

-It's a beautiful looking game, great atmosphere and animation.
-It's easy to get started and it doesn't require a lot of hands-on maintenance.
-Open story-line but still more story structure than shartak.
-Subscriptions are cheap and unnecessary; they don't seem to give you an advantage over other players.
-Upgrades!

Things I don't like:
-Not much into the whole furry animal thing.
-Combat can be frustrating especially when most of the pirate ships are faster than your starting ship.
-No pvp combat.
-They have a tutorial but the controls aren't very intuitive.
-Declining playerbase just like Shartak.

Anyway, check it out if you want. You can search for me as 'Jonni Ghazali', flying the 'Durham Hegira'.

[Muad Dib]

Dogfighting! I'm in!

EDIT: yeah, the furries were a turn off for me too /:
EDIT: It won't stop loading  
EDIT: "At the moment, the game is having trouble sending emails out. This includes emails for account registration. We are investigating the issue.  - Lord Gilbert" 

[Dani]

I've noticed it has a tendency to freeze/lag. Not often enough to be unplayable or even immediately noticeable, but it's definitely there. Possibly my computer just isnt very good.

Amusingly, their forum also had some kind of issue with a slavery RP a while ago. They handled it by having one of the devs say that slavery isn't 'canon' and therefore unacceptable. Dorks.

So as far as roleplay goes, it's rather more limited than Shartak. Perhaps its the furry animal thing, I dunno. I still like the trading/combat part of the game though.

Edit @ Maude: It took an hour or two for me to get the registration email, and it was buried in my junk mail. For some reason it's impossible to log on to their forum, but you can still lurk.

[Johnny Hobo]

I guess I'm a walrus and my plane is named The Soggy Biscuit. Okay. Oh, and the combat in this game is frustrating. My plane maneuvers like a shopping cart, I'm either going too fast or too slow, there really is no middle ground.

[Muad Dib]

I think I'm back to Il-2 Sturmovik, this game is stuck at ~30%

And I still don't have that email...

[Josiah Winthrop]

I can't get the game to work right now, guess they are having issues from what they are saying. Looks pretty awesome though. Can we team up with each other?

[Dani]

I guess I'm a walrus and my plane is named The Soggy Biscuit. Okay. Oh, and the combat in this game is frustrating. My plane maneuvers like a shopping cart, I'm either going too fast or too slow, there really is no middle ground.

The combat is horrible until you start getting the combat-oriented planes, which means you need to build up your cash by trading. I just bought a 'Chapparal' which looks like an old-fashioned bi-plane. It's small so its hard to hit, it's got good speed and front and back guns, and ive been experimenting with better guns to get the right combo. Makes things totally different, and it's not even built for combat.

@surcouf: I dunno. I don't think so. I think combat is just one-on-one. they have clans called 'Wings' but I don't think they actually organize into squadrons, which would be awesome.

All in all, it's got limited value, but I still kind of enjoy what there is to do.