Old, quirky, fun, free.

If you're looking to judge Clan Lord against traditional MMORPG merits, prepare to be disappointed.

The graphics are low-rez, the frame rate is slow and the community is fairly small.

You can't fire bolts of lightning or ride around on a bear armored to the teeth, but you can sit in the mud.

As a fighter in clan lord, your task is to protect the town from hoards of monsters that the GMs spawn on you using an innovative combat system with a simple to learn, yet difficult to master interface. You weave and dodge as monsters lunge at you from all sides, striking quickly simply by bumping into monsters. You have to conserve your balance to strike effectively, while timing your swings to abuse opportunities where monsters themselves are off balance. You can build forts from kudzu, trade strategies with the masters, write macros to perform complicated tasks (even to dance), watch performances by skilled in-character players in the theater, write and perform music and become a bard, design and dye your own clothing, bake, sew, brew and much more. Fighters can also become one of three sub-classes which open up a whole new world of possibility to the player.

Healers must be skillful players, as many lives depend on them. There are many tools at a healers disposal, including staves which can heal at a distance, items which heal in large bursts and items that heal in a radius. You carefully plan out out strategy for healing and work toward that goal in a sometimes overlooked meta-game. Healers can make and use potions, if they train in that skill, with many applications from healing, raising the fallen, curing poisons or for turning people humorous colors.

Becoming a mystic is a hard road, and one that is frequently unrewarded. As a mystic you must give up your life for the study of the arcane. Mystics know many secrets which are hidden to the rest of us, and delve deep into the lore of clan lord. A lore which is extremely well hidden from the rest of us. You'll converse with and summon monsters from other planes of existence, conduct experiments and frankly, do a bunch of stuff I can't tell you about. Mystics know things. A lot of things. Secret things.

Clan lord is an extremely immersive constantly updating world with a simple click-and-drag interface. The amount of content is massive. I've been playing for 5 years now and have only explored a small portion of what's available. The GMs take a hands-on approach and the community is tight-knit with frequently less than 60 players online at any one time. There's no roof with clan lord. People who have been playing from the very start are still progressing.

Clan lord isn't one of those games when you get rewarded simply for showing up. The amount you get out of clan lord is equal to the amount you put in. When you achieve something in clan lord, you really feel satisfied.

So it takes effort, yes. but you can also afford to play the game more casually, as many do. You can rest in a library while not playing to gain experience while offline, which provides a not-insignificant portion of your experience to make sure you don't fall too far behind your friends.