I had some good times playing the game formerly known as PMOG and I will miss it, to be sure. What’s the Nethernet? It was an MMO that we played all over the web. The Internet was our game board and a toolbar on Firefox was how we interacted. The game developers are turning out the lights and moving on to other projects.

I started playing around the same time that I joined Twitter. Last night during a chat with a close friend from The Nethernet on IRC,  we realized that PMOG/TNN was the first time we took a chance and joined a social game. We let our walls down and made some real connections. I remember several months ago, the developers posted in the forum asking what parts of the game the players really enjoyed. I would guess, 99% of us said, “The community.”

Bean counters & marketing gurus are all about numbers. If you get the players/users, then you have a base number which you can use to estimate your all mighty profits from ads, subscriptions and the like. The formula is practically a law in the Internet business world. So, the developers of The Nethernet did what any start up company would do, they went out looking for numbers. Instead of numbers, they got us. We are a community.

We may not have a home, but I have hope to keep the connections that I have made. I humbly offer a refugee camp for those of you interested in remaining in contact. Snocrsh has also made a Ning for lost souls. You can also find many of us on freenode. You can connect through the web using their webchat or you can download xchat, pidgin, colloquy and a number of other free IRC clients. You’ll find your Nethernet friends in the channels #pmog, #thenethernet.com.

Share your own experiences, ideas for a new home or questions about IRC in the comments or the refugee camp. We’ll do our best to keep on jaunting.

Mickipedia recently announced an update to CompetetoConserve.com which looks like a very good idea.  Straight from the site:

Compete to Conserve provides you with the tools you need to set personal conservation goals and track your progress. Share your goals with the community and help each other reach them!

I’m a big proponent of sustainability so the idea of promoting small goals for individuals to practice seems pretty awesome.  I just found it, so I haven’t signed up yet so I don’t have a ton of information for you.  However, I’d like you to know that being green and caring for the environment is about saving lives, yours, your children and your children’s children.  Forget the planet, it was here for a long time before we got here and it will be here long after we screwed up.

When I first started PMOG Link Monday, I intended to share links I found during missions.  Of course that first post, was about some of the sites players could visit to be awarded badges  during the game, and had nothing to do with missions.  However, the underlying concept of sharing my PMOG experience with you, blog visitors, whether you be players or not, remained intact.

This week, I will share some thing that I found through the community of players and not necessarily directly through the missions.

Toast

Though bacon holds much praise in the world of PMOG, mmmpi gave us a mission about toast. As players, we have the ability to comment on missions and there were many followers of the delightful delicacy who added their favorite Toast related sites. This gem is from spikeyboy, it would seem these gents missed the plane labeled British Invasion, because I have never heard the tune until now. Enjoy.

nosoproject

User sitar’s mission brought me to sites that I wanted to further explore. During that exploration, I found a link to the nosoproject. Do you get the feeling that some people would probably leave a party just to go home and check their Facebook or Myspace? Social networking seems to take more of a precedent over face-to-face encounters these days. From the site:
NOSO is a real-world platform for temporary disengagement from social networking environments. The NOSO experience offers a unique opportunity to create NO Connections by scheduling NO Events with other NO Friends.
These “NO” events, called NOSOs, take place in designated cafés, parks, libraries, bookstores, and other public spaces. Participants whose identities remain unknown to one another agree to arrive at an assigned time and remain alone, quiet and un-connected, while at the same time knowing that another “Friend” is present in the space.

The Dapperstache

PMOG has an “events” page which will give you the latest info on what players have been doing. This page is a great resource if you want see who’s being naughty and nice. When I was a less mature user I used to troll the page trying to find out where people stashed crates and go loot them to earn more DeePs to level up. Old habits are hard to break, the first event listed the other day was a crate being stashed by user bling_shabadoo at Dapperstache. Here’s a sample of something cool over at the site, The Periodic Table of Awesoments.

Community

The community of PMOG continues to amaze me. I find myself playing the game less and reading the forums more. I can’t believe that there was actually a lengthy topic of religion in the forums where many different faiths were represented and yet it was completely civil and pleasant to read. That has to be the best example I can give you when I say that the community of PMOG is like none I have ever seen. Anyway, all that said, cruising around the forums I found a great joke that uselessness posted. Instead of a link, I give you a great joke.

Have you heard about those new corduroy pillowcases? They’re making headlines everywhere!

Well, I thought it was funny.