I've got a rather interesting dilemma here. I just moved across the ocean to the great continent of Europa. Meanwhile, my family is back in the USA. My mom wants to keep in touch with me, but there's only so much you can talk about in a chat program. I suggested that we play an online game together, and she immediately agreed. The problem is finding a good one.
First off, it has to be free, or at least cost no more than a few dollars. This is going to be an "in our spare time" kind of thing, not worth investing money into (NO subscription fees). My mother is also not what you would call a gamer. She's far from computer inept, but anything involving lots of grinding is going to bore her to tears even before it bores me to tears, and that's pretty fast. Graphics don't need to be state of the art by any means, but I can't imagine her playing an ASCII or text-only game.
So far I haven't had much luck. The options I've come up with are:
Haven & Hearth - Probably too grindy for my mom (and for me).
Archlord - I haven't tried this one yet. Used to be pay to play. Seems a bit dark, probably heavily grindy as well.
Puzzle Pirates - Not really much interaction between players.
Anarchy Online - Again, kind of dark and awfully grindy.
Voyage Century - Haven't actually tried it, but seems to be heavily sea-combat oriented, would get boring quickly.
Maple Story - I grew to dislike this game long ago, would only play it if my mom was interested and then only for the sake of doing something with her.
So the prospects aren't looking great at the moment. Does anyone have any suggestions? Family-type games are probably the best bet, since this is my mother we're talking about, but I'm not familiar with many of them. The key is that we can play the game *together*, and that it's not ridiculously repetitive.