Free Realms

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:

• Matching game to gather ingredients
• Demolition Derby - turbo boosting into other cars and jumping over them
• Kart Racing - with all the usual power-ups
• Typical “EQ/WOW” combat against bears, wolves and “Robgoblins”
• Pet Minigames - washing and cleaning, teaching your pet tricks by tracing lines on the screen
• Quests - Lots of Fed-Ex but it’s pretty funny, they actually have a “Postman” job
• Cooking minigames - stuff like chopping carrots, flipping things over before they burn
• Running around trying to catch chicken with speed boost arrows on the ground
• Playing a Collectible Card Game (just started with this)

All that was free and fun and I feel like there’s plenty more to do out there.  I know there’s whole jobs available to me that I haven’t even tried yet and I’ve barely progressed in the ones I have tried.  And I know they’ll be having events all the time.  I didn’t feel “left out of the fun” because I was playing for free.  Honestly, there’s not anything in the marketplace I even feel the need to buy at this time.  If you do feel the need, StationCash is purchased with real money…I’m checking the rates now: $5 for 500, $20 for 2,000, etc.  So basically 100SC per dollar.  Hmm…because you don’t know how much stuff costs - that doesn’t help does it?

I’m going to log on right now (it’s so quick and easy to log on and off) and see how much stuff costs so you can get a better idea.  Okay, various robes are about 300 to 400, pets (big sellers I’m sure) go from 250 to 400, a necklace that increases your abilities in one of your jobs is 350, a new Kart is 400 to 500, a Card Booster Pack is 400 (that seems too pricy), and a potion that increases your stars earned for a period of time is 200.  Oh, I almost forgot - the pricey Hot Dog Suit outfit clocks in at 600 SC.  But I saw someone wearing one and, damn, it’s hilarious.

I’m more tempted by the membership than by anything in the marketplace because I want access to those other jobs and the bixie/penguin defense minigames I was locked out of.  But I don’t feel any rush to do that now.  The game beats you over the head with the marketplace/membership stuff, but at an acceptable level I think, considering the game is free and ad-free (except ads for itself).  Every loading screen is an ad for either the marketplace or member upgrade.  That doesn’t bother me at all but I have to say, they could use a lot more just to add some variety, even if still for member/marketplace.  I don’t care, but I thought these ads could have been a lot better quality.  Let’s see…there’s a button always on the lower right of your screen that kind of glimmers to upgrade and a marketplace icon in your UI.  You see featured marketplace items when you log in.

The one time I thought they went a little far was as part of the tutorial (once you warp out of the initial zone) the game forces you through a fake marketplace transaction so “you know how it works.”  But at least you do get a free item out of it.  

I think it’s the pets more than anything that will have parents opening their wallets for younger children.  After doing the quest to wash and feed a dog and teach it tricks…forget it.  But older kids will want cool or funny gear, badass weapons and sweet armor.  Kids who want to be competitive will want the power-leveling stuff.  Whatever job is a kid’s favorite, they’ll want the nice stuff for that job.  And everyone will want to be a member. 

I keep saying kids, but I’ve seen tons of adults posting about playing Free Realms on various forums.  And I think that even without buying anything, people will have fun with Free Realms.  I think you can really accomplish a lot and have a great character without paying a dime.  You might get bored with it after a while -that depends partly on what SOE does with this cash machine and the quality and amount of new content they unleash.  But I think that many, many people will play Free Realms and many of those people will pay money.

Free Realms is the essence of casual.  You can play for a short or long time.  You can focus on one thing or try a little of everything.  I even found it easy to register, log on and get playing. Oh, and the whole Jobs thing is genius and implemented beautifully.  You don’t have to decide what “class” your character will be.  You just learn various jobs like Chef, Brawler, Pet Trainer and Ninja.  You switch between these with a click and you actually see your character spin around and pop back with the clothes/equipment for that specific job on.  Very cool. You can level whatever job, or multiple jobs, you feel like leveling that particular day.

For each quest or minigame you do for each job, you gain xp towards leveling up that job.  You also gain stars which can be placed into special abilities for the job you earned them with (not for all jobs yet).  There are also coin rewards which can be used to buy stuff for any job.  Then there are treasure tickets which you can turn in for a prize.  Plenty of carrots, eh?

Now, the criticism is that Free Realms is just a collection of mini-games.  What do you think Club Penguin or Neopets is?  They just provided a kind of wrapper that connected the mini-games into a coherent whole.  But the “wrapper” in Free Realms is just way better.  You can really see your avatar on the screen with 3-D graphics doing awesome emotes and hanging out with other people.  It feels like a real world with fantastic scenery and top-notch animation. Kids will love getting pets and dressing them up in cute outfits and watching those pets follow them around.  And look, for me…it’s nice not to have to sit down for hours to play an MMO and the variety is so pleasant.

Oh, this is weird so I thought I would throw it out there. It doesn’t seem like there’s any inventory limit.   Whaa?  I mean I used to hate dealing with making room when I had a full inventory - hate it.  So part of me is glad.  But won’t the inventory get insane and unmanageable if you build up a ton of stuff?  They have filters in place already but they’re going to need a lot more.

I encountered a few problems so far (and I’m sure I’ll find many more). The UI should be more customizable. Currently, after learning the Kart Driver or Demolition Derby Driver jobs, you can’t advance any further. The basic combat system for the brawler seems really simple and lame…pretty much just pressing 1 and occasionally 2.  I don’t think how the item belt works is explained adequately.  There’s gotta be some way to assign hotkeys to the items in your item belt, right?  Am I just an idiot?  Since so much of the world is instanced and there seems to be no need for a group or even duo - it does seem rather quiet and solitary.  I did run into a bunch of players outside Sanctuary who were standing around doing emotes and blind inviting me to cool guilds like “spida ninjaz” and then I was missing the solitude.  But I’m not sure how the social aspect will play out.

Other games have a headstart in this market but they don’t seem to compare.  The production values in Free Realms are just nuts.  It’s all very polished and slick, and more importantly - fun.  I enjoyed every minigame I played.  Like I said a long, long time ago…even something as simple as playing Match 3 to craft is better than clicking the same 2 buttons over and over and over as you did in “adult” MMO’s. The tutorial is pretty perfect, as even learning how to move has an actual purpose in the game world.  The graphics are incredible and the sheer amounts of clothing, pets, equipment, jobs, quests and minigames is surprising. There’s just items everywhere and it’s amazing how different your character can look with different gear or even how many other forms your character can take. I experienced no lag and the game is remarkably fast to log into and out of.

If you’re already playing Free Realms, I’d love to hear what you thought about it.  Oh, and if you are playing or planning to play, this site has codes for a bunch of free items.  They sound nonsensical but there are some fun ones in there that let your character transform for a time into a variety of animals.

When I play more I might find tons of flaws, I might get bored, or I might think the game is great.  But I think that no matter what I think about it, SOE will kill financially with this game.  Now, they’re crowing about four million registered accounts but that doesn’t tell us that much.  It tells us they did a good job getting the word out there and people were very interested in giving it a try.  But we have no idea how many active accounts there are.  How many people registered, tried it once and never played again?  And also, what’s the average cash spent in the marketplace per active account?  How many subscribers?  When in town, I did see some players with marketplace stuff and a few in “member job” outfits, but that’s hardly a statistical analysis.

I just feel that compared to other options and seeing the polish and quality of Free Realms, many people will be very interested.   My only doubt is whether they nailed the right age range.  Are some parts too “kiddy” for older players?  Are some parts too hard for younger players?  Will kids start to think the game is childish as they age?  I mean - is a fourteen year old really going to want to brush a cat?  Can a nine year old play a strategic collectible card game?  I honestly have no idea.  I guess they provide a range of stuff for different ages.  I think the game skews older than Club Penguin or Neopets…maybe in the range of Gaia Online?  Like I said…no idea here.

But just the sheer amount of quality free content with the proven success of the whole micro-transaction thing makes me think they have a golden goose here.   Oh, and more profit - they are selling SC cards in places like Target, 7-11 and CVS.  Even though I haven’t really explored the game yet or seen any real data, I just have a strong hunch that Free Realms is going to be around for a long time to come and do very well from a business sense.  I still think they could have come up with a better name for it though.