After playing Free Realms for about an hour, I realized that SOE had somehow pulled off a turnaround from approaching irrelevance to sitting in the middle of mountains of money.  They’ve gone from quaint nostalgia to a serious player, even if they took an entirely different route.   Instead of trying to “kill WoW” they focused on dominating a particular, but huge, market segment and veered far from the traditional playstyle and business model they built their name on.

I’ve only played Free Realms for about four hours total so this isn’t a review - just a post to sort of let you know Free Realms is open for business.  It’s aimed at a younger demographic, so if you have kids, they’ll probably enjoy it and it could be fun to play it with them.  We’re not talking hardcore raiding and PvP bloodbaths here.  But you just might get a kick out of it too.  I’ll be playing more,  but even in that first few hours, without paying attention to the meaningless account stats they released - I could tell this was a Big Deal.  I’ve never been much into these free-to-play games with micro-transactions, but I think for a significant age group Free Realms will crush the competition in that realm.

Free Realms is, shockingly, free to play. I’m still not crazy about the name…we get it - it’s free.  They get your cash in two ways.  One, you can pay $4.99 a month to become a member and get two additional character slots (you get one), access to five more jobs, new quests, new items and so on.  Two, you can hit up the marketplace in-game to spend your StationCash (purchased with Reality Cash) on various items.

I had doubts about just how free Free Realms would be…but, wow - there is a lot to do without paying a dime, all in a great looking setting with a cool character.  Crazy amount of stuff I’ve done after the jump:

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