“The beta ends…and the revolution begins.”

By November 1, the Pirates of the Caribbean Online MMORPG will be live for all to play. You can play for free, but paying “premium” members get more (of course). The downloadable client will be available in Mac and PC formats, so sharpen your cutlasses and all that. Get ready for some serious fun.

The pricing scheme for Pirates of the Caribbean Online has been announced. According to the released information, the Premium accounts, which offer more features than their free counterparts, will cost $9.95/month.

According to Disney, Premium accounts will feature “bigger and better ships,” the ability to create guilds, “expanded PVP combat,” and “expanded quests.” Just how much will free player get? What ship classes will be locked to free accounts? What quests won’t be available?

Hopefully Disney won’t be overly-cheap on the freeplay feature set. Too often free users are totally neglected in MMORPGS, rarely seeing anything new, or not having much to do at all.

Jagex LTD has expanded the RuneScape Clan Chat system today. Now you can set-up your clan to share drops earned in multi-combat zones among nearby clan members. Whenever a monster is beat, the loot will be semi-randomly given to a clan member within 16 “squares” of the monster. If you’re not lucky enough to get the loot, the game will remember and try to improve your probability the next time around. You can read more in the RuneScape Knowledge Base.

Here’s an interesting idea that merits experimentation: What if you attack the lesser demon in the Wizards’ Tower with your clan? Will someone get the loot without having to use Telekinetic Grab?

In Desktop Tower Defense, your objective is to stop the lines of “Creeps” from crossing the desk. They go from one side to the other, though in some difficulty levels, there is more than one line of enemies.

To stop them from crossing the board, you place “towers” with various abilities to zap them before they get to their destination. For every creep that you miss, you lose one of your lives. For every Creep you zap, you get points and gold. Gold is used for buying/upgrading towers.

The tower types are

• The Pellet Tower, which is the cheapest of the towers. It fires reasonably fast, and it’s damage levels are okay. It’s cheap, so start with this one.
• The Squirt Tower fires real fast, but doesn’t damage the creeps much.
• The Dart Tower is the heavy artillery. It’s not exactly cheap, and it fires slowly, but it packs a punch.
• The Swarm Tower fires a group of four tracer missiles to take out flying creeps.
• The Frost Tower slows your opponents so your other towers can do their work.
• The Bash Tower repeatedly emits a shockwave to seriously reduce the health of nearby creeps.

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