SOE Free Realms

[Grimwell]

It's being done by our staff in San Diego. We don't have any outsourced CS at all these days.

[tazelbain]

Played a few hours and was pretty impressed.  Can characters move to any server they wish?

[Numtini]

I think it's interesting that after hearing for years that there's no way a company could ever approve names on a roleplaying server because it would prohibitively expensive, that we now have a game that requires every name to be pre-approved and does not even have a subscription fee.

[Sutro]

It's being done by our staff in San Diego. We don't have any outsourced CS at all these days.

Just as an aside, I think using MTurk might be a way, if this really takes off, to reduce some costs or workload there. From what I've seen, it delivers fairly solid results. You're definitely not hitting six sigma, but you're not forcing your (relative to MTurk) highly paid CS staff to perform what would seem to me to be a pretty dull task.

[AcidCat]

Gavin Strangedale here.

I wonder how long it will take for some of the "coming soon" areas to go live.

[Signe]

It's fun and very cute but if I were looking for a game to play with my imaginary family, or trying to find a game that would have my kids playing cooperatively with other kids, this wouldn't be it.  At least not as it is right now.  There doesn't seem to be anything set up for socialising at all.  Why not?  It's not the buggered up adding friends thing, either.  Most of the games and quests seem to be solo.  It doesn't seem to have been well thought out in that respect or am I just missing everything? 

[Grimwell]

BTW, I'm in the office for the first time in a week (travel sometimes stinks!) and I think I have an answer on why the game seemed so silent: Chat server was down for a bit. :D

All better now to my understanding.

[Signe]

Stay home!  Don't travel!  Don't make love to a pig in a confined space!

[Jobu]

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

I noticed the miners and blacksmiths around the Snowhill mines were far more chatty than the normal grind-grind-grind population elsewhere in the game. Maybe it's an early-adopting, heavily skewed Achiever playerbase that I keep running into out in the rest of the world. They just put their heads down and plow through their quests. I think someone forgot to tell them there's no raids at the end.

[Bzalthek]

Hoboken Boxsleeper rides again!

[squirrel]

Just tried this out - it's really polished, love some of the mini games. My 6 year old loves it - doesn't really understand everything but just likes running around clicking on the quest givers, dressing up and bashing the robos.

Certainly doesn't have any legs for me, but I can easily imagine a sub for the kid - price is right.

Also impressive client, 50 MB dload & streaming was painless. I hope it does well, although I'm a little wary of it being a training ground teaching kids to grind/fedex.

[Xanthippe]

I think it's interesting that after hearing for years that there's no way a company could ever approve names on a roleplaying server because it would prohibitively expensive, that we now have a game that requires every name to be pre-approved and does not even have a subscription fee.

Toontown has that feature as well.

[UnSub]

I think it's interesting that after hearing for years that there's no way a company could ever approve names on a roleplaying server because it would prohibitively expensive, that we now have a game that requires every name to be pre-approved and does not even have a subscription fee.

Toontown has that feature as well.

Who knew having multi-million dollar, well-established entertainment company backers could help out a MMO? 

[Rendakor]

I think it's interesting that after hearing for years that there's no way a company could ever approve names on a roleplaying server because it would prohibitively expensive, that we now have a game that requires every name to be pre-approved and does not even have a subscription fee.

Someone using an inappropriate name on an RP server results in nerdrage. Someone using an inappropriate name on a kid's game results in parental rage. Guess which of the two have a greater impact on the bottom line?

[tazelbain]

Tazelbain is Tazelbain.

Every game should have this:
1> can play on any game server
2> character can switch to any classs without penality(although FR needs to work on the inventory)
3> minigame for resource gathering

Whats with tower defense? no reward for playing?  Or Member Only Job?

[Grimwell]

Whats with tower defense? no reward for playing?  Or Member Only Job?

Dude, the reward is playing. Honestly. Go up to Snowhill and try penguin defense. That was the first warp stone I grabbed after every wipe in beta because penguin defense is my favorite mini-game.

There could be rewards for it, but I don't even notice because I'm just playing it repeatedly when I have the time.

[schild]

Grimwell beat me to it. It's worth the $5 for a month just to play the MANY tower defense games. There's different themed ones in every region.

For adults, they're better than the game surrounding it. For children, not so much.

* schild hopes this makes SOE buckets of cash.

[tazelbain]

LOL.  Well everything else in the game has a progress bar attached to it, it odd to see something that doesn't.

[Jamiko]

Are the tower defense games better than the free ones available all over the internet?

[schild]

Are the tower defense games better than the free ones available all over the internet?

Eh. Depends on which one. They're good enough that I've gone out of the way to play all the ones I could find.

[Lantyssa]

My favorite is the Bixie tower defense.

Also, for those who haven't yet, do some of the quests in Merry Vale.  It's pretty creepy.  Though I did some of these in beta I forgot to mention it, I'm really surprised by some of the things they've put in.

[Jobu]

My favorite area is Seaside. I love the beachy vibe, and the Octopus restaurant is just fun as hell.

[Quinton]

Giving this a look tonight.

They've definitely got the "how to play" intro thing down.  Walks you through all the basic MMO interactions with a bit more forced hand-holding than WoW.  It did annoy me that I can't hit a key to cut the voice acting short in the intro.  I can read about 10x faster than the tutorial character talks...

The light-from above PLUS the !/? marker PLUS the dotted path on the ground PLUS the markers on the mini-map make it pretty damn hard to get lost on a quest.  Feels a bit over the top ^^

Production quality seems quite nice, and the art looks a bit blizzardy but still has its own character.

YOU WIN!  I beat the cooking minigame thing.  Cute.

I like the job system where you can flip between jobs at any time.

Is there a way to run?  The walk speed is a little slow.

[Tale]

They've definitely got the "how to play" intro thing down.

I kept seeing gaps. One moment it's great and the voiceover leads you through an action, the next you've got to understand a text instruction and click an "OK" button for something the voiceover could explain. I'm talking about the starting tutorial, but the "how to play card game" tutorial was especially baffling. I thought the "run to waypoint" visual cues should be brighter and the tutorial mentioned the map too much.

There are some things we as gamers have come to regard as common knowledge that aren't. The constant stream of comments from adults that "this will be great for kids" worries me. But good luck to SOE

[Signe]

I just did most of the card game tutorial for the first time a few minutes ago and I agree.  It's not very good.  I didn't make it to the end because kitty cat yanked me from the internet suddenly.  Dammit.  I would say this is a fun game for families but they didn't bother to have the family subscription ready for launch.   

I bet this game will be adorable during holidays!

[Xerapis]

ARGH!

Evil under construction page is mocking my weekend free time!!!!

[schild]

The card game is the worst thing about Free Realms :( It's really dreadful.

[Bzalthek]

Amen to that.  It's like 15 bad ideas all rolled into one clusterfuck abomination. 

But I will happily waste hours on tower defense and the mining/foraging things.  So I may be broken.

[Quinton]

I need to try the tower defense stuff.  I've been doing some brawler quest stuff and find the combat a little mindless.  I found the minigames in the first cooking tutorial kinda cute, but don't think they'd keep me engaged long-term.  Do they ever do combat in the main world zones or is it always instanced?

Have tried adding some of you folks to my friendlist, but there's no feedback.  I assume people only show up if they've mutually added each other?  Or is there some additional hoop to jump through?

[Dtrain]

The constant stream of comments from adults that "this will be great for kids" worries me. But good luck to SOE

FreeRealms is obviously hoping that kids find it enjoyable enough to beg their parents for subscriptions. If it doesn't have that, I don't think it has anything. Not being a kid myself, I can't tell you what the game does or does not do for them.

Most of us seem to be enjoying it as a hub for mini-games, and its pretty good for that - but honestly -  who's tempted to pay for this? Actually, I think I'm over it. I'll probably fire it up now and then for a mini-game or two. There's no stickiness for me, other than having fun in mini-games (which only carries you so far.) Also, we hit on it earlier, but it bears repeating: there's no reason to play it with other people. What does having another person in the game do for you? The game may as well be a single player title.

Maybe it will find it's way to the PS3 and pick up a good following there as well.

[Mrbloodworth]

I wanted a kitty, you have to pay SC for a kitty. Why did you show me the kitty, then not let me have a kitty? WHY!






Bastards.

[UnSub]

I wanted a kitty, you have to pay SC for a kitty. Why did you show me the kitty, then not let me have a kitty? WHY!

You don't give the kitty away on the first date for free, or else they won't respect you.

[Tmon]

Given how popular the mini-games seem to be with adults, I wonder if a game like Warhammer would be better off replacing their PVE grinds with mini-games.

[Xanthippe]

FreeRealms is obviously hoping that kids find it enjoyable enough to beg their parents for subscriptions. If it doesn't have that, I don't think it has anything. Not being a kid myself, I can't tell you what the game does or does not do for them.

Most of us seem to be enjoying it as a hub for mini-games, and its pretty good for that - but honestly -  who's tempted to pay for this? Actually, I think I'm over it. I'll probably fire it up now and then for a mini-game or two. There's no stickiness for me, other than having fun in mini-games (which only carries you so far.) Also, we hit on it earlier, but it bears repeating: there's no reason to play it with other people. What does having another person in the game do for you? The game may as well be a single player title.

Maybe it will find it's way to the PS3 and pick up a good following there as well.

My daughter played for all of 15 minutes before she was asking for a subscription because she wants to be a pet trainer.  I told her to get to level 10 and then I'll get her a sub.  (Then she said, level 10 in what?  I said, anything - cumulative levels for all jobs.)

My impression after playing for 3 or so hours - I'm impressed.  I love the ability to switch jobs whenever.  The minigames are fun - reminds me of Puzzle Pirates.  Seems really stable.  Teleporting - very nice.

I can see this appealing to people who never played mmos before.

Whether it grabs the Club Penguin audience, I think, will depend upon how customizable it is.  Big draw of Club Penguin for my daughter (age 10) is having an igloo to decorate however she wants (some people make classrooms to play school in, some make restaurants, etc.), collecting stuff like special clothing and so on.  It seems like it would appeal more toward goal-oriented people so maybe an older crowd than Club Penguin (which my daughter's been playing for almost 3 years, since she was 7).

(Right now for me, it beats WoW - I'm so over the Argent Tourney and achievement grinding.)

[Lantyssa]

For a brief spell there was a housing and furniture tab.  I would not be surprised to see it added in the future.

Given how popular the mini-games seem to be with adults, I wonder if a game like Warhammer would be better off replacing their PVE grinds with mini-games.

As the sole replacement, no.  As a way to give people alternate advancement or other things to do almost any game would benefit from it.