First, I must reveal a distinct bias -
I loves me some soloing -
so when I can’t solo a game most of the way through,
I’m e’er so slightly pissed.

Second, I shouldn’t be disappointed that
a RPG at a social networking site
wind up being so friggin’ dependendent on society building.

But what really grinds my gears,
and not in a good way,
is the way the monetization of mana, or mana-tization,
has messed up a perfectly good soloable set of games.

Anyways…

I got introduced to this group of web based games
by a friend who is marrying another friend who played (in a stage play)
the interest of a Latino thug who gets religion.

Note: I played the Latino thug.
(Leo pauses whilst those who know what he really looks like are ROFLing)

World of Blood [Elven Blood, Blood Lust, Skies of Blood, and City of Blood]
is a group of Facebook RPG applications -
thus requiring no additional software download.

Normal RPG concepts apply -
a dashboard shows Life, Stamina, Character Level, XP, and Gold.

A horizontal navbar allows access to the main game functions:

• Quests (varying names are used)
• Shop (buy and sell items for fixed amounts of gold)
• Group (info on your party, with a chance to recruit more)
• War (PvP by any other name)
• Character (stats and point allocation on level up)
• Mana (called Blessings, Favors, etc )
• Scoreboard (gamewide player rankings)

Quests -
Dog simple -
Fixed Stamina cost,
1-click results (varying damages and gold gain)
Too few artefact-only restricted quests,
almost no user level restricted quests,
far too many party size restricted quests.

Shop
and I do mean shop -
not auction house.
fixed price sale of items,
fixed price resale (50% of value)
potions are used instantly.

Group
Here you can see your “party”
and send invites to other FB people
(read spamming) to increase your party’s size -
which is critical to have access to quest above a certain level.

Can you do it without spamming your friends?
Sure – but it’ll cost you some serious mana….

War
PvP by any other name -
fight directly,
get XP and gold,
but no mana….

Character
Here’s where you allot your level up points (3 per level).

Stamina, Strength, and Dexterity
level up at 1 point each.

Life only levels up
at 5 points each.

Mana
Aye, here’s the rub….

If you want mana,
(and you’ll need it to increase party size
without spamming your friends)
you either

buy mana directly
[1 party member = 8 mana = $2.00 via Spare Change (via PayPal)]
or
go the “win a free ipod” route by signing up for
pay per lead offers or Netflix
for varying amounts of mana
(the more the offer pays the app owners, the more mana you get)

That can get old really fast.

Scoreboard
Self-explanatory. Really.

Other Weaknesses
No game gold for mana (doesn’t fit the business model, I guess)

No auction house action

But what do I want for free, right?

I’d give World of Blood

gear

[caption id="attachment_28" align="alignnone" width="40" caption="gear"][/caption]
2 Gears out of 5

an OK site, but the baseball cap’s on a smidge too tight….

BTW, mashable has an article on this as well