Wonderland Online, published by IGG, is a game that brings the old-school RPG game-play to the world of the Internet – creating a very weird hybrid-type of MMORPG. Just so we’re straight, IGG is known to publish some rather unique or ‘cute’ looking MMOs and Wonderland Online (WLO) is no exception. This game is filled with cute little characters that you encounter or that you can choose to play yourself. Looking and playing this game can be a unique experience altogether; for some, good and others, bad. It’s one of those games that are ‘in between’ at all times and it takes the subjective mind to distinguish what one feels as good or bad.    Smackdown Style!          Starting out with some of the more simple features of the game, we have customizable characters. Each character has his or her own special tactics and techniques; but, to make things more interesting, WLO allows you to change the colour of your character’s hair, eyes, and skin (using Red, Blue, Green sliders – so there is such a thing as customization!). You only have this option during character creation, so you best take your time to decide what colours and character you want. Character creation is a breeze; though, it’s logical to assume that newer players (who haven’t taken the time to read the guides on IGG’s WLO website) would be intimidated by the different stats [only slightly different than most other games]. That’s good though, considering that IGG has gone out of their way to make sure that they have a rather intensive guide database so players can navigate the game with as much ease as humanly possible.                 For the record, I must state that it was a pleasure being able to read so much information about a game without having to pull up Google and hope for the best. Albeit, I did so out of curiosity and found that there weren’t many websites out there that had information about WLO. Why? This is probably because those who were English-speaking found that the WLO homepage is comforting enough to get along with. You cannot go on that webpage, read it, and leave it without having a pretty full deck of cards when it comes to playing Wonderland Online... it’s impossible. So far, we’re two for two – the character creation is a breeze and anything you want to know is already in the ‘manual’ for the game (the homepage).                 The first thing you’re confronted with once you’ve made your character is a very brief storyline-type of environment that would easily remind you of those 2D Role-playing Games of the mid-1990. You know where there’s a moment of pause after speaking to the same NPC several times and..... the next thing you know you’re on a stranded island. This is no jokes folks, it felt like I had just dug my SNES out of the closet and started playing it. Not only do you find that your character has been stranded there – but just about every other person you saw onboard was stranded with you. To top it off, you have some weird guy there who’s been stuck there for a number of years. I have to tell you, the storyline reminded me of Lost [the NBC show] and at the time, I felt like the whole game was going to follow the lead of the actual series.                 The controls are rather routine, but routine for what? The controls are routine for a console game (SNES/Genesis). Your mouse controls where your character moves, and you choose the options you want PvP Anyone? Oh Gosh! the graphical interface surrounding the ‘visualization’ of your character. I’m not going to get into the battle system just yet, because it’s something all by itself. Either way you want to visualize this game, you find that there’s always something moving around you. If it’s not the little puny monsters leaping around like frogs on steroids, it’s the people who are moving around that are in parties. One of the things that leaped out at me with this game is the ease of understanding the interface is to anyone [even one who hasn’t read the website – like I had originally]. There isn’t too many “menus hidden within menus”, even though there are enough to drive you mad until you get used to it. That’s why I plugged/advertised the website so readily; it does have just about every little bit of information you could really require about the game. This includes those ‘menus within menus’ that you’re probably wondering around aimlessly as soon as you log into the game. Other than that, you should be ready to jump into the game and play by now.                 Lets be frank, Wonderland Online is a crafter’s game. There isn’t much you do without crafting something. You can build houses, materials to go into the house, upgrade your weapons or armour, build a car or other type of transportation device, and the list goes on. As a rule for thought, you should never drop or sell anything that you get from monsters or treasure chests if you’re planning on doing anything later on down the road. Of course, the rule is bogus because you can always just go and waste more time camping/drilling the ores and materials you need from monsters or ‘environments’. Hey, IGG was nice enough to actually give those who had Alpha accounts activated a Beetle Car to zoom around in. The whole thought of transportation gets a bit overwhelming – considering you can carry more and more players with you as the difficulty of making the transportation increases. The UFO can even leap around and move at an incredible speed; and it’ll probably be the number one object on most WLO player’s wish list as they get higher in levels.                 There are several options that make this game, dare I say, unique. The graphical aspects of the game appeal to the younger gamers who had a brief encounter with the 16-bit Era of Gaming. Objectively, it’s obvious that the game is focused towards a 13-18 year old age demographic. As you can tell by some of the screenshots and videos, it is basically a multiplayer Super Nintendo/Genesis RPG. This can get exhausting because other people can jump into your battles. It’s nice when you’re trying to battle enemies you cannot handle (nor escape from, for whatever reason); while, on the other hand, it’s bothersome when you just want to get another level or two (it can progressively get worse as you find yourself in more populated maps). IGG’s solution was this was to come out with another server, which was reasonable enough. It was just that they underestimated how populated the servers would get – because even with the extra ‘leaf’ to the server, there’s simply too many players populating both right now.                 With this in mind, it brings to the point that there are a lot of people playing this game and it’s quite noticeable. You find people out in the caves vacuuming ores and fishing, almost overcrowding the pond or the best source of ore-mining. The reason you find players doing this is simply so they can get their materials to craft whatever they desire. The game seems to always go back to the whole crafting aspect. You fish to get the stuff you need to craft something else. You kill monsters for experience and items that you can use to craft. The cycle seems to go on and on. If you like games that take time and focus on creating items Wonderland Online is definitely, in the least, worth a try. If you’re one of those types of people who would rather just grind and get yourself going by purchasing NPC-weapons and armours and finding rare items, then you might want to steer away from it. Wonderland Online isn’t a very NPC-Focused game and most of the ‘rare-items’ are crafted by the player him/herself.                 There are various items that you get rewarded with due to quests you’ve completed. There’s really only one item that makes things remotely interesting: The Remote Control. This is practically a way for you to ‘bot’ your character to whatever level you want – sort of, anyways. You can leave the Remote Control running to allow your character to navigate and battle without any interaction with the game itself. You can even have it control any of your pets while in battle as well. It seems as though these types of features are getting more popular in the MMO industry. As the ‘botting scene’ has become over-bearing in other games, several games seem to enforce their own style of ‘leveling without being at your computer’. It’s quite handy, just that (like all similar programs and situations) it isn’t all that bright about moving the character around. Animated or not, it does feel a little cheap to use this little toy from my perspective.                 Player versus Player is rather ‘in your face’, simply because you can click on a “PK” button and then click on another player to ‘challenge’ them to a duel. One of the bits that made me chuckle was the ability to fight NPCs. Granted, every time I fought them they would either destroy me in one hit (Guards) or ran away before I had a chance to do much damage. There’s also the pairing ability, which allows the NPC to pair up two [or more] players in a battle to the death. It is fun to sit around and wait for unsuspecting people to come around and PK them. I know that sounds a bit harsh, but it isn’t as though it’s a complete ambush. Some people joined for the sakes of trying their luck and others joined just to crush my hopes and dreams of being the Number One Super Guy (*joke*). It was nice to see that some people could take a joke, or take it to the point of smashing me into a thousand bits.                 The community is pretty corrugated, in the sense that there will be players who rush around kill-stealing the newer players and then there will be those who are actually helping the lower-levels by taking them to slightly higher dungeons to train in a party with them. It’s pretty much come and go in that area, mainly due to the demographic (as aforementioned). Overall, I would have to say that the community is rather give or take; as you lose some, you’re bound to gain some eventually. I met a handful of friends that are pretty dedicated to Wonderland Online. It’s nice to encounter people who have a strong sense of community in an MMORPG these days; it’s like a breath of fresh air. While the nice side of the community makes playing this game pretty interesting, those who aren’t too worried about pilfering your battles from you tend to make you want to close the client for a good few hours while you take a break from the ‘stressful’ environment. It’s just one of those games that you will grab and fall in love with, or you’ll find it to be the most boring game on the face of the Earth.    Riding off into the sunset..              At the end of the day, that’s what it boils down to: Personal Preference. It’s a somewhat tolerable game for almost everyone that tries to touch it – but the community will make you or break you. If you liked games like Luminary (GoonZu Online), this is probably straight up your alley. You still have the fixed camera angles and you do a lot of crafting. Almost everything useful in the game is crafted. Like I’ve said: If you plan on playing Wonderland Online, never drop or sell anything without researching what it’s used for because you’ll find yourself weeping about not having the materials you had sold about 4 levels ago.         This is Splices, signing out (or ...just chilling for now). Take care and happy gaming, folks!