I was recently sucked into the awesome world of “Torn City”, a text-based MMO. Now, I know you’re most likely thinking “A text-based MMO?”. It does sound crazy, but it works, and it’s extremely addictive. The best part? It takes only a few minutes of your time each day. I’m normally on five minutes a day, max.

The game is based on crime. Now, you can play as a “good” person, but as we all know, that’s not what it’s all about. That’s akin to playing a pirate game and being a trader or a fisherman. Being evil is so much more profitable! But, besides crimes, there are also jobs (that give you daily income and “stats”; more on jobs later), education courses (that increase your working stats), a gym (that increases your battle stats), and a huge city to explore (with shops, a casino, a dock to buy “imported” cars, etc.). Now on to the specifics.

Stats are divided into two categories, as explained above: battle stats and job stats. Both are pretty self explanatory. Battle is a subject I don’t know a lot about, as I’ve never done it. I do know that you can attack other players, but I don’t know what the rules for initiating a fight are. Should you lose a fight, you will be sent to the Hospital to recover (likewise, if you are caught doing a crime, you must wait out in the jail, in real time; the amount depends on the crime). Jobs however, are easier, and require no action every day. After your stats are high enough, and you have enough “job points” , you will be able to get a promotion which pays more money and gives more stats increase each day. You can also use the points to get certain bonuses off-job, but they’re normally rather expensive.

Now, you might just be thinking “That sounds pretty cool, but where does the MMO come in?”. Well, it actually seeps in most of the aspects of the game. There is a market where players can freely sell items (for the prices they set); there are jobs that users can begin, and other users can join; there are factions (think gangs) which can war with each other, and many, many more things to do. Like I said, though, you can easily spend only a few minutes a day on this game and it’s still one of the most engaging things to do on the ‘net. However, should you deign to do so, there’s enough stuff to do to spend an hour or more each day, depending on your social-ability.

If you’ve not played the game yet, get on it at “http://www.torncity.com”, and send me a line, we can get togther in game.