This Thursday at 9:30 Eastern we’ll be priming the LOTRO-symposium pump with a foray onto the bleeding edge of “Free” to Play! Spiral Knights can be downloaded for free of the spiralknights.com website. It is free to download and free to play–up to a certain amount.

It’s important when beginning Spiral Knights to get through the tutorial section, through the first tutorial town (the crash site), and enter the city of Haven. Haven is where the shared content really begins. Moreover, it is very important that you get past those beginning portions 24 hours before Thursday’s play session. Otherwise you’ll be out of the metered energy that the F2P model runs on, and you’ll either not be able to play, or you will have to pay real money to regain access. This limited-access style gaming is part of the reason we’re interested in the game, so be aware of it or you will be a victim of it.

On the other hand, I’ve volunteered to buy time for anyone who needs it, because according to what guest host Patrick Holleman of thegamedesignforum.com says, the process of buying such time is utterly fascinating. So take all that into account, and make your decisions!

We’ll have discussion on Ventrilo, which is a free program that you can download and install in something like two minutes. Once you have it downloaded and installed, set up a server as follows: Name: vent108.light-speed.com; Port: 4383. Then email me at Roger Travis Jr (no spaces) at gmail dot you-know for the password. With Patrick’s help, and perhaps a few DM’s on Twitter, we should be all set.