SOE Free Realms

[Sutro]

I'll give this a shot to see if there's any launch day hijinks, but when's the page going to say something other than "LAUNCHING TODAY!" ? Any ideas?

[Sky]

Sky, a van should be parking near you soon.

Hey, schild's the one with all the CP! 

[Lantyssa]

I'll give this a shot to see if there's any launch day hijinks, but when's the page going to say something other than "LAUNCHING TODAY!" ? Any ideas?

I haven't been paying attention to the boards.  I didn't know this until you posted it.

[Sutro]

It's launching tonight around 10 EST, per Smedley Twitter.

Probably a good move. "Technically" still hitting launch day and gives the registration servers a break.

[Lantyssa]

Looking more like 10 PST...

[Sutro]

LOL. Yeah. For some reason, I just had an urge to give this a shot on launch day... I'm EST. 

[schild]

Heh. Siobhan is one of the pregenerated names.

Ahem.

My character name...

is

Jocelyn Sparkleblossom

hur hur

[Sutro]

Can't remember what my pregen name is, but custom is Sutro Salgier.

Too late for me to do much more than log in and run around learning... but as a level 2 brawler, I looted a level 20-required item. -That's- a little weird.

Some very, very initial impressions:

* Graphics are wonky. There's a lighting bug that causes some very strange patterns at the entrance to the cave. In the cave/swamp area, I'm swimming where there's no water. Quite frequently, quest visual cues are cut off; this appears to be graphical instead of functional because sometimes half of the quest cue is visible, sometimes by rotating the camera, it pops in.

* I know it's levels 1 and 2, but combat is dreadful dull. It's 1 1 1 1 1 1 against any solo enemy, 1 1 2 1 1 2 against more than one.  Giving just *one* more skill would be way, way better.

* Speaking of combat, for a game for tweens/teens, aggro is pretty dang sensitive. There's a significant aggro radius, there's a big aggro link radius, and it appears that there's facing perception. Getting solo pulls requires patience of saints.

* In the one solo dungeon I went inside (in the cave area, brawler quest line), there's an incredibly  mechanic where you have to click on tiny, tiny skulls (which the quest popup gives -no- guidance about) to spawn critters for the bonus award. At least on my end, when I do click on them, the ghost thing or whatever it's supposed to be (lost spirit) doesn't even become visible in any form or fashion - I only know it's there because I have a target circle and I'm getting whacked. And the big boss monster? It didn't even hit me once. I mean, it appeared to be attacking me... and I had/have yet to "dodge" a single hit in this game (not sure if that's even a mechanic?) so this must be a spectacularly bugged critter.

It's a neat looking world, but I find it curious that it didn't have more time in the beta oven, considering I found all this stuff in the space of an hour and a half's play along a job line (brawler) that a significant portion of the playerbase will be using as it's one of the only two that you get fresh out of the tutorial.

[schild]

Some of the for-pay item descriptions are great.

Also, I was disconnected on the server when I was going to do something-or-rather.

[Sutro]

I got a real kick out of Freerealms' adjective for its button collection: http://www.freerealms.com/collections.vm

I doubt it's intentional.

"Go on. Touch it."

[schild]

I'm pretty sure everything here is intentional.

I just did a random brawler quest where a guy named Bruce was on a rock singing while playing a guitar and thugawug sneaks were holding him hostage and his dialogue was "It's my life I can do what I want...help me they won't let me stop singing this song."

Some designer is very happy about that quest. Also, I've read more quests in this game than I think every other MMOG combined.

Edit: Someone who needs towels named Downy and a yeti named Umari who was very obviously Umaro's gay cousin who listens to some sort of yeti smooth jazz instead of chiptune drum & bass. If I was a young child, this game would have made me a damned recluse.

[schild]

also, and this deserves its own post:

In-Game Tower Defense?

Shouldn't this have popped up in WoW first? Oh, and it's pretty well-done too!

[schild]

also deserving of it's own post.

There's a post-man class in this game.

A class that, at its core, is totally devoted to FedEx quests.

This is either brilliant or terrible, but I'm pretty sure either way it's an idea that I need to destroy with fire.

Edit: Oh, looks like I'm ranked #1 on 4 (crappy) leaderboards. Probably due to the low number of people that do this weird odds and ends stuff. Also, my addiction to Bejeweled carries over to this game.


People will remember the name Jocelyn Sparklysomethingaratherglitterandstuff.

[Sky]

lolschildsuxxorz@soup

[Signe]

I used to be ranked 8 in harvesting.  And I was still ranked that even after I didn't log in for days and days. 

Also, my real name is Twee Paramore.  Tell me you see what I did there.  My temp name is the same as before.  Gina (rhymes with Dinah) Sandyface. 

[tazelbain]

Is there anything like guilds in this game?

I am surprised people who didn't get into the beta didn't receive an announcement.

[schild]

I am surprised people who didn't get into the beta didn't receive an announcement.

My other SOE account got an email this morning. Seems it was timed. Came in around 9AM-ish EST.

[Lantyssa]

Heh. Siobhan is one of the pregenerated names.

Yeah.  I noticed. Used it in the beta and for my name while waiting approval.  Now properly known as Lantyssa.

[Zira]

* Graphics are wonky. There's a lighting bug that causes some very strange patterns at the entrance to the cave. In the cave/swamp area, I'm swimming where there's no water. Quite frequently, quest visual cues are cut off; this appears to be graphical instead of functional because sometimes half of the quest cue is visible, sometimes by rotating the camera, it pops in.

I had that problem.  It is caused by trying to force AA onto freerealms using the nvidia control panel overrides.  Turn off the AA force and the problems go away.

[Xerapis]

This is totally adorable. I'm in as "Dalton Swiftmind". I have an odd affection for crazy name generators. I was briefly tempted to go the Schild route with a name like "Happybubbles" or something.

I'll have to hunt some of y'all down...the "You have 0 friends" message is taunting me. On the flip side...I haven't noticed any advantage to having friends yet. :P

[schild]

It's true, for whatever reason, Free Realms is totally unfriendly. I don't even see people chatting when there's a shitload of people standing around.

[Hawkbit]

That's the anti- measures in place.  wai

[Jobu]

There seems to be a bug where almost nobody can chat. Or add friends. Hence the silence.

[Tmon]

Yeah, I've been playing since the first day of open beta and I don't think I've ever seen any player chat in the message box.  BTW I'm Oliver Browncliff in game

[schild]

There seems to be a bug where almost nobody can chat. Or add friends. Hence the silence.

Is this bug, by any chance, called "Bejeweled?" Because that's what I've been doing.

[Xerapis]

I heard elsewhere that you can only add friends if that friend is currently playing :S

[Ingmar]

I heard elsewhere that you can only add friends if that friend is currently playing :S

It certainly wouldn't be the first game to have that problem.

[Rendakor]

I can't believe SOE is ripping off the best feature of Hellgate: London.

[Venkman]

Been in the beta for a bit. Some thoughts:

• World vibe is good, even heavily instantiated as it is. Has an appropriate tween look and feel with enough subtle humor for veterans.
• The Puzzle Pirates types of mini-game things are a nice add. I particularly like the resource collecting and cooking stuff, and think the pet training is a nice nod to gesture-base gaming. But adding in the race track/demolition derby was a nice touch. I imagine there's more of that later in other forms (maybe a flying game? Never found it if so). Never had a character that got high enough before a wipe.
• Combat is yea/whatever. I get a definite Ultima III vibe from encountering bandits in the woods that then spawns an instance that's the same no matter the bandit in that zone. Otherwise, 1 1 1 2 1 1 1 2. Can't complain though, not as a WoW Fire Mage.
• And yea, the world is silent. Been that way for awhile. I think most people are defaulting to menu-based chat, and that's such a pita in general most people aren't bothering. Which is fine because so far, outside of TCG matches, there hasn't really been any reason to play with others anyway.

Only thing I don't get is the card game. Oh, I get the concept of it as a TCG. But I see no reason that it's in this game other than they have a division now that does nothing but TCGs. "Bolted on" would imply some bidirectional connection between the TCG and the game world. But except that you can use Station Cash to buy Coins that then let you buy booster decks in the MMO marketplace, I haven't seen anything.

You can launch the card game from anywhere in the world. The game itself is entirely self contained (except the cards you bought or traded). The 3D virtual world has no bearing on the TCG. Winning a match has no bearing on the 3D world. Your opponents are just like yourself: whoever decided to launch the card game at that point. And I've never seen more than probably a single digit percentage of the concurrent logins playing.

It's not a bad game, in a light Pokemon sorta way I guess (not an expert, so only have two points of reference and this game doesn't feel complicated enough to compare to the other one). But the only reason I can see them bothering to put it here is because they feel like it's easier to market the TCG game to folks who show up for the MMO instead of trying to market a virtual TCG on its own. Plus, as an almost completely autonomous module, it can be managed almost completely independently of the usual MMO stuff.

But I feel like I'm missing something, so am very curious what others think.

[Lantyssa]

I heard elsewhere that you can only add friends if that friend is currently playing :S

Right now you can't even do that.  Keep getting the friend server is down message.  That probably is impacting chat, too.

The benefit to friends?  They always show on your map and you can teleport to them instantly anywhere in the game world, except for instances.

[Xerapis]

That's STALKERIFFIC! 

[Drubear]

That's STALKERIFFIC!

And on that note, if you see Mathir Oakstone fumbling with the chat system at you, that'd be me.

I'm having a blast, but the chat is nonexistant (and sorta small on my screen - not sure how to make the font bigger so I'd, you know, actually watch it.) And it's kinda snarky that you are presented with pet stuff almost immediately, which is probably one of the big $ sinks.

I do like how even if you "lose" the harvesting game(s) you still get some materials, so unlike fishing in That Other Game where you might get nothing (or more recently, vendor trash) you might actually do a minigame just for one of the baskets of stuff that's >>not<< the Goal. Having bonus goals right in the Quest/Daily/Repeatable is Double Plus Good as well. Looks like they've implemented Heroic Questing (at least on the repeatables.)

And Brawler "missions" (the walk-by-and-fight-me ones) do appear (so far) to be very repetitive. But maybe that's ok as the harvesting ones are too, frankly. I just expect it with the latter and not the former (however much I recall AO and CoH.)

[Tmon]

One thing that I didn't notice right away that I really like is the complete lack of annoying names.  It seems like the name generator and human review for non-generated names is working to keep out the Fr0d0z and Dr1zzztz and the like.  I do wonder what the wait time is for custom name approval is, I suspect the target audience uses the name generator while the old farts submit the character names they have used over time in other games.

[Sunbury]

I wonder what the hourly pay rate of the "custom name approver" is?

Also how long do they last until they go insane or lose all hope for humanity?

[Sutro]

Amazon Mechanical Turk workers do a lot of content approval work like MySpace and such, it's possible it's being done there for a penny apiece.