Top Free to Play MMORPG Sites I wanted to delve into a topic today that is not touched on much. The top free to play MMORPG Sites. We all want to talk about the top free to play MMOs and why this one is better than that one, and why MMO A kicks MMO B's ass, but we never talk about the sites that actually give us the fodder for these arguments.
So here it is, the top free to play MMORPG Sites by me, The Top 10 Gamer. 5. MMO Huts. MMO Huts, or formerly MMO Hut which most likely changed due to bulk backlink buying! Just kidding, I have no idea why they changed. MMO Huts has a great list of giveaways and a huge list of MMORPG Games. As soon as a game is announced, they will have a page for it https://emzigames.com/.
They have OK video content, not the best, not the worst, and they have a decent community with ONRPG, so the forums are a hit. Decent MMORPG Editorials and previews and a sister pinterest type site add to its charm. Cons, the main page looks like one large advertisement wall, you have to hunt for any of their content. 4. MMO Bomb. MMO Bomb is another site that inundates you with ads, but hey, it's a business. They are one of the least updated sites on this list, with posts coming typically every other day. They have great video content with their First Looks, podcast and weekly MMORPG News, but nothing beyond that. They do have an extensive list of Free to Play Games, which makes it one of the better sites to do some research on your next game and they have a decent amount of giveaways going on at any one time.
The community is there, but careful of posting anything spam related or you'll get banned! Lame. Cons, most of their top 10 lists are super old, and the site has looked the same forever. 3. MMO Attack. This one is probably one of the least known, but it's hard to understand why. They have daily MMO news posted on the site, and follow it up with a daily video. They have a few other MMO shows with a slew of hosts that really put a face to the otherwise bland world of 'admin' posts on many other sites in the genre. Of all the sites on this list, they are the best in terms of Video content, they have consistent giveaways going on, and the site is easy to navigate. Cons, the community is lacking in most areas, and their MMORPG list is a bit lower than most the other sites. 2. MMORPG.com. MMORPG.com has been around forever, and while that is great news in many aspects, it also kind of shows on their website, it's got ALOT going on, and it can be confusing. But let's look past that and pretend you know what you're looking for. They have it all. In-depth reviews on all MMORPG games, a huge community on the forums, great blogs by both their members and developers who willingly post on their site consistantly, and it's one of the best places to go for ratings of games, as the huge community base really gives a consistent showing by voting.
Cons, the site is a mess to look at, which i mentioned before. 1. Massively. While Massively is not technically only for Free to Play MMORPGs, they cover ALL MMORPGs, so they definitely belong on this list. Why are they number one? Well, a few reasons. They cover a ton of games, the page is clean and easy to navigate, they don't just do news, but do reviews, and walkthroughs and have really in-depth coverage of most of the top games in the genre. They have a large community, a host of live-streamers and great writers. You'll find them at all the top events and why wouldn't you? They are owned by Joystiq, which is owned by AOL Tech which is owned by AOL. So yeah, they've got a lot of money. Cons, they have almost no video presence at all.
So there's my list. If you have any that you'd like to add, you can let me know in the comments below. But other than that, be sure to like and subscribe to me, the top ten gamer, for more top ten lists. 

In closing, I'd like to share with you one of my favorite scenes from the movie, which I think really hits home. For the opposing view, Mr. Baum. I gotta stand for this. Okay, hi. My firm's thesis is pretty simple, Wall St. took a good idea, Lewis Renierie's mortgage bond, and turned it into an atomic bomb of fraud and stupidity that is on his way to decimating the world economy.
- How do you really feel? - I'm glad you still have a sense of humor. I wouldn't if I were you.
Now, anyone who knows me knows that I have no problem telling someone they're wrong. But for the first time in my life, it's not so enjoyable. We live in an era of fraud in America casinoslots sa.
Not just in banking, but in government, education, religion, food, even baseball. What bothers me isn't that fraud is not nice or that fraud is mean. It's that, for fifteen thousand years, fraud and short-sighting thinking have never ever worked. Not once. Eventually, people get caught.
Things go south. When the hell did we forget all of that? I thought we were better than this, I really did. And the fact that we're not doesn't make me feel alright and superior. It makes me feel sad.
And as fun as it is to watch pompus, dumb Wall Streeters be wildly wrong - and you are wrong, sir - I just know that at the end of the day, average people are going to be the ones that are gonna have to pay for all of this. Because they always, always do. That's my two cents. Thank-you. Does our bull have a response?
Only that in the entire history of Wall St, no investment bank has ever failed unless caught in criminal activities. So, yes, I stand by my Bear Stearns optimism. - Mr. Miller, I'm sorry, quick question.
From the time you guys started talking, Bear Stearns' stock has fallen more than 38%. Would you still buy more? (Nervously) Yeah, sure, of course I'd buy more, why not? - Boom.

This availability caused housing prices to go up because the house was virtually certain to be paid for by the bank issuing the mortgage. And you might be thinking, "well, so what? Wouldn't the S&P or other rating agencies still give those tranches a 'C' rating?" In a perfect world that's exactly how it would work.
But not in the world of investment banking. Initially, the bonds would be ascribed a 'C' rating and wouldn't sell. So what do the banks do?
They take the bonds that don't sell and they pile them up in a portfolio that rating agencies deemed to be diversified enough to receive a AAA-rated rating. See where the problem lied? In 2007 alone, $500b in housing bonds were sold. As these mortgages continued being issued to people who were unable to afford the premiums, the default rates increased.
In 2006, the default rate was 1%. In 2007, it was 4%. The default rate only had to reach 8% for the entire housing market in the United States to collapse in a chain reaction. And in 2008, that's exactly what happened.
So what did our protagonists do? They shorted the bonds. A short position, or short, is a sale of a borrowed security, commodity, or currency, with the expectation of the asset falling in value. In the Big Short, Michael Burry does this with mortgage-backed securities. Michael goes into a series of banks and ask to borrow a billion dollars in mortgage bonds with a short position, asserting that he believes that the bond is going to decline in value - meaning that the housing market is going to stumble or collapse. How a short position works, is that party a borrows a billion dollars worth of bonds from party B and sells them immediately on the market.
In the future, Michael is expected to return the borrowed bonds by repurchasing them at the future value which is expected to be lower. When this happens, Michael keeps the difference. The common consensus is that the housing market has been the strongest investment for the past 30 years, and it is beyond foolish to bet against. However, Wall St is greedy and will take advantage of "foolishness" when given the chance. To sweeten the deal, Michael requests a contract in payment in the form of a credit default swap.
A credit default swap is a financial tool available for those who want to purchase insurance on an investment. How it works is that party A buys a bond issued by party B. Party A, feeling uncertain about whether party B will default on the payment of the bond or not, can offer to buy a credit default swap from an insurance company, party C. So Michael takes all of the investment pool he owns and puts it into purchasing mortgage-backed securities and corresponding credit default swaps. From 2006 to 2008, when millions upon millions of Americans defaulted on their mortgages, this caused the tranches to subsequently default on their payments of the bonds. As you remember from earlier, these were awesome investments at the time.
And trillions of dollars, trillions, went into the purchase of these bonds and their derivatives. So in 2008, when the roof caved in, Michael Burry walked away with a personal profit of $100m. Well everyone, I hope you enjoyed this explanation of The Big Short and I hope it makes a little bit more sense to you now.

Listen, open the darn Fed window. He has no idea how bad it is out there, he has no idea! He has no idea! -Cramer... I have talked to the heads of almost every single one of these firms in the last 72 hours and he has no idea what it's like out there, none!
And Bill Poole has no idea what it's like out there! My people have been in this game for 25 years! And they are losing their jobs and these firms are gonna go out of business And he's nuts, they're nuts! They know nothing!
You may be old enough to remember exactly how bad fiscal year 2008 was for America. If so, you were probably one of eight million people that lost their jobs as a result. But if you're like me and you were too young at the time to understand what was going on, allow me to explain exactly what happened and why.
A little finance 101 to get us started. When an organization needs to raise money, one of the ways it does so is by issuing bonds to investors. Bonds are a lot like their title infers, they are a contract to pay a lump sum at a predetermined date, along with any and all recurring interest or coupon payments over the life of the bond. Unlike stocks, the value of your bond does not decrease based on the value of the company.
The bond is exactly that - a bond between two parties. Because of this, bonds are generally seen as safer investments. So in the late nineteen seventies, Lewis Ranieri came up with the idea of a mortgage-backed security. But what is a mortgage-backed security? Well, let's dissect this quick. So the bank issues mortgages but these mortgages have a perceived risk of the customers defaulting on the payments.
The bank doesn't want to take on the risk involved in these mortgages, so it gathers up hundreds of mortgages and sells them to a trenche. A tranche is essentially a pool of like-investments. So this tranche takes in all of these mortgage loan payments and is in business. The tranche in turn issues bonds leveraged against the income provided by the mortgage payments.
So you and I and even the banks can buy these bonds that are sold by the trenche. In fact, a lot of pensions bought into these bonds because they have a high return with relatively low risk because it's.. a mortgage.. who the hell doesn't pay their mortgage? However, the banks doubled down on these bonds because they received a commission for not only selling the mortgages to the trances, but they also received the benefit of buying the bonds leveraged off of these same mortgages. The banks won big time and took on none of the risk because if some of the mortgages didn't get paid - the bond still got paid. But if the bond still gets paid, how did these mortgage-backed securities cause the economy to go into a deep recession?
Well, because the company can go out of business and default on its creditors, there is some risk involved. To measure the degree of risk involved in the purchase of a certain bond, there are rating agencies such as the Standard and Poor's and Moody's. Each of these agencies rate the amount of risk involved in each investment based on an alphabetical system, where a AAA-rated bond is a significantly safer investment than a C-rated bond - which is commonly known as a junk bond.
So, because these huge banks were incentivized issue more mortgages to in turn sell to trenches and buy securities off of, they started unscrupulously issuing more mortgages - mortgages that were issued in great numbers to people with shitty to no credit scores. Mortgages that were unlikely to be paid. At this point, anyone could get a mortgage. Even the high school dropout living off of welfare.

Sometimes my complacency with living in the 21st century makes me forget certain facts that were somewhat important back in the day. Butter provides an excellent example of this. I buy butter, I take butter home, I place said butter in the refrigerator for later use.

Back in the time before refrigerators, butter was a product that had to be used sooner than later, as it tends to turn rancid after a set period of time. Because of this, butter, as we know it, never really took off in areas of Mediterranean Europe. This, even though the butter making process had been known since as far back as perhaps 8000 or 9000 BCE. Butter did take off in areas of the world where either...

...had a cooler climate which prohibited butter from become rancid at an advanced rate, or...
...developed a process/technology that removed the water content from butter, essentially removing any risk of spoilage.
This simple difference in climate and technologies helped shaped a great many food cultures we take for granted today. Southern Italian, Greek and Mexican cuisines get their facts from places other than butter. German, Northern French, and a great majority of Indian cuisines (in the form of Ghee) have a great many dishes where the fats come from butter. I love this kind of "cuisine etymology", where the type of food one eats is dependant upon such a minute variable as the ability to store butter for an extended period of time.

Speaking of Ghee (and how many times have you heard THAT segue? None, I bet), when talking about butter in history, ghee has to be mentioned. It was recognized early as a very important component of life in what is now present day India and Pakistan. So much so, that it made it into various religious rituals. Sound familiar? That's because the Catholics ascribed the same level of significance to olive oil. You can say a lot about human nature, but one thing is for certain - We humans love our fats.

Expect more on butter (including a few select recipes) over the next few weeks.

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2001 Erdener Treppchen Riesling Auslese

Once again, I have the fine opportunity to indulge myself in a Riesling while I am playing my favourite online casino games. I tell ya' doing these tasting notes is a tough business.

We're on the second bottle of our Riesling experience, and I have to say I'm a happily surprised. Well, I probably shouldn't be, as there were some items on the wine label that let me know that this wine had some potential...Auslese, for example, is a good sign for me, as I like my Rieslings a tad sweet. Auslese generally indicates more attention had been paid attention to the grape, having been picked at the peak of ripeness, or at least we hope. Same could be said for the "Qualittswein mit Prdikat", which of course goes to follow, as a German wine can only be deemed "Auslese" if it is "Qualittswein mit Prdikat". Okay, that may not make any sense...read this for more on these titles.

Eyes: Golden yellow with a distinct tint of green. It has a soft rim, meaning it's nearly translucent where the wine meets the glass. Giving the wine a quick twirl shows a thinner Riesling from what I'm used to. Walls of the wine hold the wall of the glass, but they very quickly dissipate, with thick...well I hesitate to call them "legs". On sight it looks to be a sweet but thin wine.

Nose: Okay, I know this is going to sound peculiar, but the wine smelled musty and has a bit of a cat-pee aroma. I've read that a "cat-pee" aroma can mean either good or bad.

Taste: Very good. Sweet, a little like pineapples, but also a little drier than what I've had in other Rieslings. It holds the tongue fairly well, and trails off quickly but nicely.

Overall? The aroma is admittedly off putting, but it tastes wonderful. Not the best Riesling I've ever had, but I wouldn't pour it down the sink.
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