Legends of Norrath

Ooops, I nearly missed this one: SOE announced Legends of Norrath this weekend. Didn't anyone tell Smedley that this might not be the best weekend to announce a new online game? Legends of Norrath is an online trading card game. At first I thought somebody had finally taken up my trading card MMO idea, but in fact Legends of Norrath is just an ordinary online trading card game, just like Magic the Gathering Online. What it does have is a link to EQ and EQ2, so your character in one of these games can sit down in a tavern in Azeroth Norrath and play a round of that card game, by having the card game client included in the EQ/EQ2 client. You even get a free starter.

What you don't get, as far as I read the announcement and website, is trading card games found when adventuring in EQ/EQ2. [EDIT: I read that wrong. John Smedley said there would be card packs dropping in EQ/EQ2.] It's the other way round, if you buy booters in Legends of Norrath for real money, you get some free virtual items in EQ/EQ2.

Well, I'm certainly going to have a look at this one when it is released, which will be in one month. Downloading the client and doing the tutorial is going to be free. As I said, if you already play EQ/EQ2 you'll get a free starter deck. Everybody else will have to pay $10 for a starter, and $3 for boosters. That is 20 cents per card. At 375 cards, probably a need to have cards more than once, and in all likelyhood some rarity distribution of common to rare cards, it would cost you a bundle to get a good collection going. Well, as I said, just like MtGO. Having sunk thousands of dollars into MtG and later MtGO, I don't think I'll bite. But the idea is a good one, and I'll certainly give it a chance.