MMORPGs are fun. You pay a monthly service fee to be part of a vast fantasy world, create a new look and personality for yourself, forget that there's a real world and potentially make new virtual friends that you'll probably never actually meet - outside of Facebook at least. There's also a lot of fun to be had questing and fighting off legions of viscous monsters to save the day or make a profit off of ruination. For many, time spent in MMORPGs is equivelent to a standard 9 to 5 job. So, naturally, there's only going to be a niche audience that has the patience and dedication to engaging in these fantasy worlds. Sony Online Entertainment recently released Fortune League, a bare bones offshoot of its popular Everquest II franchise. While the game is designed as a means of boosting your Everquest II character profile, non-MMORPG gamers can get a dose of MMORPG fun without spending a dollar or dedicating more than an hour a day to play.

Fortune League works much like a sports manager game or a fantasy sports league. Instead of questing through a virtual world, gamers join a league or create their own. Each league can be public or private so if you want to challenge a group of friends without any interlopers you can. Once you're in a league, you select six character types to be in your party. Character classes include fighter, mage, scout and cleric. The object of the game is to pick out the best party members for the weekly quest. One week you may try to defend the ancient city of Kaladim that is under siege and the next you'll take out revenge for the murderers who slaughtered the village of Thundermist.

Each day the scenario for the week's mission changes slightly. Notifications pop up at the start of every day that may cause you to change your party (or roster if this were fantasy sports) to deal with your injured or lackluster performing characters. Cold weather may take a fierce toll on your healers (the clerics) or a particular class of characters - say the Froglock Paladin Fighters - may get a dose of adrenaline that will give them performance boosts. So every day you have to return to your party and make sure that they are a good fit for the events ahead. Also every week has boosts that guide you as to which characters to select. When the mission involves attacking, you'll probably be better off with direct magical and physical attackers, while if you're under siege defensive stats work better.

The interface is extremely bare bones. It's identical to what you'd see in any fantasy sports league. You start with an empty party, then you will purchase six characters from the marketplace based off of the week's quest. Gamers are given 30,000 coins and must use them to purchase six players. The interface will show which characters have increased or decreased in value based on the prior day's events. If you're unfamiliar with fantasy sports and trade stocks, the interface also looks similar to a stock portfolio. You can look at your roster, analyze your best performers and check out how you stack up against other members of your league. Parties are locked just before midnight every day so it gives you the same excitement as fantasy sports when it comes to checking out your roster and making sure that you're set for the next day. At the end of every day, gamers are awarded hero points depending on how their party performed.

Gamers are given three free trades every Sunday night to start off that week's quest. You can also buy more trades with Station Cash. However, you'll get your fun mostly from buying and selling characters. As you go on missions, each character's value will either increase or decrease. So you can also profit from building up characters and selling them back. Fortune League takes a small commission on the sale so it may not be worth day trading characters, but instead waiting to sell after an entire week of play.

Although the game takes place outside of Everquest II, each week has an exclusive set of prizes attached to it. Everquest II gamers can link Fortune League to their main account and use the prizes obtained on Facebook in the full MMORPG.

The only downfall of the game is the lack of visuals. Since it compares so much to fantasy sports, you almost want to see things happen. It would be nice if some sort of story, even text based, were uploaded each night along with the results of the battle.

Fortune League definitely adds a nice spin on MMORPG gaming. There's something fun about trading darkelf shadowknights the same way you trade homerun hitters, quarterbacks and power forwards. However, it could benefit with some more story telling elements to keep non-MMORPG gamers engaged and coming back daily.