Anyone have kids playing Toontown?

Ok so Toontown is only barely an mmorpg, but still...

My kids have been begging to let them play this, and I think I will finally relent and let them do so, now that I have a spare PC. Curious if anyone has small children playing this, or experience with the game at all. Seems silly to burn the free month with me checking the game out when it could be used to see if they even like it.

I''ve heard good things from parent with younger kids. I think it''s actually a fairly fun game so you won''t be bored to tears if you want to play with them and get some quality time in. I say give it a shot!

I knew someone was talking about playing it with their kids here on the boards so I used search and apparently it''s supertanker

I have an account for me and one for the kids so we can play together. I have three girls, 9, 7, and 4, and they each get two Toons of the six allowed on an account. My middle daughter plays the most, as her best friend from school also plays, and they often beg me to come help them since I''ve built my main toon up pretty far. In fact, last time I picked her up from school, her friend saw me and said, ""Hello Mister Buford Nuttyton.""

Game-wise, it is pretty simple. Lots of FedEx quests and killing of foozles, and pretty grindy when you hit about 3/4 maximum. It is very co-op intensive, which I like. The players are a pretty good group, except for the power levelers you meet at the highest levels. On the other hand, I''ve had plenty of 100+ Laff Point Toons (112 Laff Points is the absolute maximum power of a Toon - only a couple dozen of those exist) help me out on difficult instances or bail me out of fights I was losing. Elevators are the entrances to instances, so if someone keeps jumping off when you get on, just let them go and wait for a better group. Powerful Toons get assignments that require them to help out new Toons, so you see a lot of 50-100LP Toons hanging around the lower areas.

The kids had fun exploring, too. As long as you stay on the sidewalks, you can go anywhere except the Cog HQ building (to get in there you have to build a Cog disguise like I have on in that picture). They like the fishing and the minigames, too. You can also buy stuff to decorate your house, which definitely has an Animal Crossing vibe.

I think the first month is still only $5, and there is no box to buy, so it is a pretty cheap experiment.

Sounds decent. I would be making this for my 9 and 7 year olds, more for the 9yr old though as the younger one finds the PS2 to be far more interesting than the PC (something I am still trying to change...).

The chat interface sounds very good (read: child safe), in the fact you can pretty much only say specific phrases. I like that, but I''ve been told that I am a bit over-protective. The animal crossing tie in is a good thing - they sit absolutely riveted when I play that. I may have to give it a try myself first. Would be fun as heck to play a game online with my daughter though.

Thanks!

Ok, so we (read: I played, and they watched for now) played the trial last night. It''s a very small client, looks like they basically keep everything server side to prevent...well anything. It downloaded on my DSL in about 3 minutes, which was a bit distressing considering I went to Target and bought a CD with a 1 month pass for 10 bucks. Anyhoo...

From a few hour trial of it, I''d have to say this is a great kid-level game. The chat interface is just as restrictive as I''d hoped, and the action, while simplistic to me, was great for the early gamer. Death recieves a great treatment in the game, and I was impressed - what happens is you turn around and sulk off, and are that way for a few minutes. There were a few things I didn''t like, like the second quest forces you to make a friend to continue with the game - this should be optional imo - but on the whole it seemed well made for the demographic.

If you have little gamers (Gamers In School? New website idea!), couldn''t hurt to give it a try. You get a 3 day free pass by downloading it, and then it looks like they give you a half rate deal or something after that.

"Ozzie" wrote:

If you have little gamers (Gamers In School? New website idea!), couldn''t hurt to give it a try.

Not sure if you were here back then, but Elysium introduced GWJ to the GamerDad website awhile back. If you haven''t already, you might want to check it out.

I''ve seen the site a few times, and enjoyed it. Like my finding of this site, I found it while looking for something else =)

No ToonTown review there though. Although, with the sheer mass of stuff for kids there is to review, it''s not humanly possible to review it all.

"Ozzie" wrote:

No ToonTown review there though.

That''s kind of my fault. About six months ago Mr. Bub asked me once if I''d be interested in writing a review, since I was discussing the game in the forums. I agreed, but haven''t had the time to get through all of the game content. Many of the players heading into the Cog HQ building only want Toons that are 80+ LP and have three or four gags at or near max. I''m at 79LP with one maxed gag, so I''m pretty close.

It''s not like I have dibs on the review though. If someone wants to power through & put something together, I''m sure GD would be happy to have it.

All - I CANNOT recommend this game highly enough - 5 out of 5 joysticks. An absolute joy that all three of my kids loved. I played with them online over teamspeak, we shared catalogs together, tried on clothes, rearranged furniture in out house, destroyed cogs en mass, and had a blast playing the games on the trolley for gumballs.

If you have kids, and are looking for the perfect fun game for boys and girls...this is it.

[note, I just stopped this recently - had to make the hard $$ decisions, and WOW for my son and I, plus COH for my son and I - took precedence since the daughters have hit other pursuits and only played sporadically -- does not detract from my recommendation as a MUST HAVE if you have kids between 5 - 10! ]

I began to get a bit bored with it already, but the kids are loving it. I''ll have to play it with them for a little bit if nothing else just to watch them.

Last night, in an uncrowded area, I purposely tried to do/be vulgar. If it''s possible, I don''t know how. The few emotes there are cannot possibly be taken the wrong way. Abotu the only thing you could do is stand behind another toon and do the ""Hooray"" emote over and over o make you jump. It worries me greatly that someone might find that even remotely erotic...

Very child safe. I like that a lot.

I''ve tried to figure out if any griefing can occur, but it is very difficult and minor. About all you can do is abuse emotes like you tried, or jump off elevators at the last second. That usually resets the elevator timer, but if there is a little lag it will work. If people are then in the Factory with too few Toons, all they have to do is teleport back to the Playground. You can also steal the healing things from Playgrounds, but a few revisions ago they made them stay if a fully healed Toon picks them up, so that annoyance is gone too.

Griefing was minimal in my experience, and thats ok...the key is no profanity or super obnoxiousness from kids bugging you....you just pop to your house or go somewhere else. There is no more kid friendly game on the planet from an online perspective.