did you guys know about this? it's a medieval mmo with rts and simulation elements, the graphics are based on the first stronghold but there's some gameplay from the second stronghold game too. it's free to play with a downloadable client and a lot of bonuses available if you pay some money. I'm surprised I didn't hear about it before. it's in beta, but there's no plan to reset the worlds after beta. it's kind of a browser game, much faster than CN but still slow enough to be a low maintenance background game. there's a gap between those who play for free and those who pay, but it seems like the whole game is accessible to free2players and they are probably the majority.
webpage:
http://www.strongholdkingdoms.com/wiki:
http://help.strongholdkingdoms.com/index.php/Main_PageI mentioned it in IRC and some dude said he played it too. there don't seem to be a lot of players (a few thousand?) but the maps are filling up because you can acquire multiple villages (rules say you cannot have multiple accounts, 1 account per server) and they just launched a new server (world 2)
maybe you guys should look into it. I'm in ireland, leitrim county. running around with scouts getting honor by being the first to raid stashes. I'm not sure how good of a game it is yet but it's a lot more interesting than CN and could be a lot of fun if we get a lot of RIAers playing it together.