From Erik Arneson,
Your Guide to Board / Card Games.
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Atari.com

Link: http://games.atari.com/playgames/home.jsp

UPDATE: As of April 2006, Games.com was acquired by AOL and no longer offers Monopoly online. However, the game is now available at Atari.com. Some of the following information may need to be updated; if so, that will happen soon.

Atari.com offers an official site to play Monopoly online. The interface is fairly smooth, although users on dialup connections will have some significant waits while pages load.

Because Atari.com uses Java, once the game is loaded onto your computer, things should flow pretty smoothly no matter what type of connection you have.

Step-by-Step Instructions to play Monopoly online via Atari.com

On the Atari.com home page, click on the phrase "Click here" in the sentence "Click here to play the fun games at Games.com."

Under the tab "Play Games" and in the box marked "Board and Word Games," click on the link for Monopoly.

The next screen lists various Monopoly "game lobbies" (e.g. Boardwalk, Park Place, Reading Railroad). Select one, making sure it has an adequate number of active players -- a minimum of 20 is my recommendation. There is no functional difference between game lobbies.

Logging In

Now you'll be asked to log in.

• If you've registered with Atari.com, enter your username and password and click "Submit."

• If you've never registered with Atari.com, you have a choice to make. You can either register (by clicking "register for free" in the text to the left of the login box or the "Register" button below the login box) or enter as a guest (by clicking the "Guest" button below the login box).

• NOTE: By registering, you'll be able to access all of Atari.com's features, including the ability to chat with other players and to see your skill rating go up or down over time. Playing as a guest will prevent from accessing some features, but you'll still be able to play.

After logging in, you may receive a message which says the page that's loading includes both secure and non-secure items, asking if you want to display both. I've always said yes and it doesn't seem to cause any problems. Depending on your Internet connection speed, the next page -- the Monopoly game lobby you chose -- could take several minutes to load.

The Game Lobbies

When the lobby finishes loading, you'll see three distinct areas:

• The Rank/Name box shows the players in this lobby, and their ratings. The list is sorted by rating.

• The Join/Watch box is where you can go to either join someone else's game, or watch a game in progress.

• The chat box to the right side of the screen has three buttons on top of it, "New Table," "Options" and "People."