(SOE) Free Realms - An E3 Look at Free Realms

[Mrbloodworth]

Free Realms is SoE's entry into the children's MMORPG market. It has a whimsical, modern look that hearkens back to Anime style graphics and is a unique look created by SoE artists, and based on numerous focus tests with age appropriate children. The title reflects the design philosophy behind the game, that children will be free to play the game any way they like. Every game play style is valid and you do not need to level your character in any prescribed way.
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So what is there to do in Free Realms? There is combat, mini-games, simulation, such as pets and housing - similar to Animal Crossing play, and social play which involves community participation via a website with an interface similar to Facebook's look.

Two different types of characters can be played, humans and sprites - which are basically winged, smaller humanoids, which hover rather than walk. Players start out as adventurers and gain outfits when they take on tasks for NPCs. Outfits represent the jobs that characters can do and mini-game screens will show which jobs can be used to complete the game. Completion of games and tasks gains gold stars for the character, and these gold stars can be used to improve the abilities associated with the outfit. As players level, they gain better and fancier outfits.

"A character is basically a walking leader board," said Lead Designer Laralyn McWilliams, "however your outfit doesn't affect your skills."

That is to say, you could go into tough challenging combat in newbie armor, because it's your abilities that really count. Weapons though can have different ratings assigned to them, and there will be some non-visible slots such as jewelery slots for those stat enhancing items.

Jobs in game are diverse and include roles such as Explorer, Baker, Warrior, Ninja, Wizard, Knight, Postman, Miner, Blacksmith, Medic and the like. Jobs are also tiered, and advanced jobs may be unlocked. "Perhaps," mused Laralyn, "If you take both Warrior and Blacksmith to level 5, you unlock the Warrior Blacksmith which will be a new job altogether!"

"The world of Free Realms is really like a theme park," said Developer Sebastian Strzalkowski. Combat is always a choice. It is essentially a mini-game that you choose to play, and as you enter a combat scenario through a gate marked dangerous, you'll get the same opening screen as all tasks and mini games which show stats and objectives that you have to accept."

Group games are also available, including soccer and kart racing, which is Mariokart style with exaggerated physics. Players can take these cars home with them and park them in their garage. Cars can be decorated and customized like houses can be. These features however will be in the latter part of the game. At launch, players will receive a single room which to make their own. How houses will be obtained has yet to be finalized, although the car will be provided as it is part of a mini-game.

A trading card game will also be available online and physical cards can also be purchased. Pets have characters and qualities, and you make that choice when you choose the pet. They are autonomous creatures and can be trained. For example, you pick a dog based on it's characteristics and then you train it. a dog could be shy or playful. It make bark a lot or very little, and you can train your pet by praising it and petting it when it performs the actions you want to reinforce, and scold it by telling it "Bad Dog!"

The SoE designers understand that children's time are not their own, and a child could be hauled off to dinner in the middle of a quest. Thusly, all encounters are under 15 minutes, and there are no death penalties, nor do you actually die. Creatures are stunned and stars revolve around their heads. Players simply lose an encounter and get kicked out of it with all the xp and loot they've gained to date. Other child friendly features include the ability to teleport to friends. There are also teleport stones (waypoints) all over the world and once players encounter them, will be able to teleport back to, from other teleport stone.

Inventory is unlimited so you can never lose an item because your inventory is full, or with any other problems related to having a full inventory. Members in a group will receive the same rewards for completing a quest.

The game is free to play and has a two tier paying business model. 60% of their content is available to players for free. Subscriptions are not expensive at $4.99 a month for one account, or $9.99 for five.

The game gets players playing immediately once they register, as character creation is done on the website while content streams in the background. The subscription will also net an amount in the micro-transaction wallet. That amount has not been determined yet, but may as as high as the cost of the subscription itself. Wallet dollars can be spent in the market place where players will find a mixture of cosmetic items and consumables such as potions of health and mana. The manner in which items may be obtained vary greatly. For example. a +5 sword of fire may be a quest reward, but the +5 sword of ice may be player forged, the +5 sword of earth may bought from a vendor.

As we got toward the end of the demo, we passed the park with the performance stage again. "We plan to feature artists in Live Concerts," Laralyn said. But would say no further. So, that is Free Realms from SoE. As with most online games for children, parental controls are available for in-game chat as well as information displayed on the child's profile. Closed beta will be open for application soon and launch planned for early 2009.

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Found some images over at IGN, for thoes interisted in its graphical look.

[Draegan]

The art style remind me of WOW but more updated.

[Trippy]

Where are the horses?

[Cyrrex]

The art style remind me of WOW but NOT updated, not even one tiny bit.

Slight correction to your post.

[sam, an eggplant]

Looks pretty sharp, although I question the marketing calling it "free realms" and then charging an optional subscription fee. I expected more of a microtransactional business model, with parents giving their kids a monthly allowance, etc.

[Mrbloodworth]

Looks pretty sharp, although I question the marketing calling it "free realms" and then charging an optional subscription fee. I expected more of a microtransactional business model, with parents giving their kids a monthly allowance, etc.

I believe it's free as in, your free to do what you want, in the realm. Not free as in, its free.

If the title had something to do with price, i bet it would be "Cheap realms" and that would open up a whole new marketing question. lol.

Reading it it sounds like its all three major models:

• Free to play with restrictions.
• Subscription optional.
• Item shop.

[LK]

That last screenshot looks an awful lot like Zangarmarsh, right down to Cenarion Circle-esque building.

[CharlieMopps]

When I heard they were making this, I was thinking it would be a flash webpage thingy... those screen-caps look pretty friggen nice. I don't want to play it, but I'm impressed with the FX quality for sure.

And that's coming from a rabid SOE Hater.

[HaemishM]

I am reminded of Horizons. Since it's meant to be a kid's game, I fully expect there to be a sign pointing to "Fun."

[Signe]

I think it looks terrible but, then, I'm not 10 years old.  Item mall for kids?  Yikes!

[Sky]

[Draegan]

The art style remind me of WOW but NOT updated, not even one tiny bit.

Slight correction to your post.

Look at the shadows.

[Lantyssa]

You know what's sad?  It's probably going to be better than most of the drek out there.

[Simond]

The art style remind me of WOW but NOT updated, not even one tiny bit.

Slight correction to your post.

Look at the shadows.

What about the shadows? 

[Mrbloodworth]

You know what's sad?  It's probably going to be better than most of the drek out there.

I had thought the same thing.

[Yegolev]

Hell, I'm ready to play it myself.  Sounds cool.  However, I love item collections and am often called away from the PC, as those of you who have played a MOG with me can attest.

[Signe]

I'm sure I'll give it a go, too, regardless of how naff I think it looks.  Still, I'd probably give a go via sub.  I certainly won't be tempting my poor children with an item mall - who wants to hear their whining?  Well, if I had any children, that is.  Which I don't.  Thank God.  (no offense to people with children!)

[Jerrith]

Inventory is unlimited so you can never lose an item because your inventory is full, or with any other problems related to having a full inventory.

Interesting to see how they pull that off.  Having to deal with a full inventory is a pain, but I've always considered it a necessary one, because otherwise you end up with those players who try and get multiple copies of every single item in the game causing too much load on the server. 

[Lantyssa]

Interesting to see how they pull that off.  Having to deal with a full inventory is a pain, but I've always considered it a necessary one, because otherwise you end up with those players who try and get multiple copies of every single item in the game causing too much load on the server. 

What can I say?  I'm a pack rat.  And I like having little trinkets for decoration and memories.

[Soln]

you should try SWG again -- that's all it is, collecting stuff.  Seriously.  Gah.

[Simond]

You spelt 'Gaia Online' wrong. 

[Lantyssa]

you should try SWG again -- that's all it is, collecting stuff.  Seriously.  Gah.

I did.  Unfortunately it's an even worse game than when I left it, at least for my tastes.  (Deleting all the professions I liked doesn't help.)

[Alkiera]

Inventory is unlimited so you can never lose an item because your inventory is full, or with any other problems related to having a full inventory.

Interesting to see how they pull that off.  Having to deal with a full inventory is a pain, but I've always considered it a necessary one, because otherwise you end up with those players who try and get multiple copies of every single item in the game causing too much load on the server. 

I don't buy this.  Many games limit you a LOT... EQ gives you 8 slots on character, and another 12ish in the bank.  10 slot bags are common, so call it 200 item slots per character.

200?  I probably have more than 200 items on my desk at the moment, and that's even if you count identical ones as 'stacking' in one slot.  Most MMOs (not SWG, nor SB, but most) have static items, so my Axe of the Dorfs is exactly the same as every other one, so all that the inventory needs is player X has item Y in slot Z.  If you allow stacking, there's a 4th column, for quantity.  This is not a lot of data.  Not to store, not to query, not to transmit over the internet.  Eventually, an unlimited inventory will cause slowdowns in display, or whatever.  This will often cause players to clean up their inventory until it's fast again; alternatively, set up the UI so it's never loading the entire list at once.

Even the biggest game to date, WoW, has 2.5 million NA users, and 225 US servers; an even split is 11,112 accounts per server, times what, 6 characters per server?  I forget, haven't played WoW in awhile.  Even 100,000 characters per server is not a huge amount of data, in database terms; given that only 2500-3500 or so will be online at any one time, especially.

Games have limited inventories due to UI concerns, or 'inventory management is a mini-game' thinking (Diablo); 'How are we going to store all this stuff?' is a problem solved many times over.  Heck, Wal-Mart tracks what has sold when and where in every store nationwide in real-time; many terabytes of database, increases to the tune of a terabyte every couple/few months or something.  An MMO data server should be trivial.

--
Alkiera

[Merusk]

Inventory is unlimited so you can never lose an item because your inventory is full, or with any other problems related to having a full inventory.

Interesting to see how they pull that off.  Having to deal with a full inventory is a pain, but I've always considered it a necessary one, because otherwise you end up with those players who try and get multiple copies of every single item in the game causing too much load on the server. 

I don't buy this.  Many games limit you a LOT... EQ gives you 8 slots on character, and another 12ish in the bank.  10 slot bags are common, so call it 200 item slots per character.

200?  I probably have more than 200 items on my desk at the moment, and that's even if you count identical ones as 'stacking' in one slot.  Most MMOs (not SWG, nor SB, but most) have static items, so my Axe of the Dorfs is exactly the same as every other one, so all that the inventory needs is player X has item Y in slot Z.  If you allow stacking, there's a 4th column, for quantity.  This is not a lot of data.  Not to store, not to query, not to transmit over the internet.  Eventually, an unlimited inventory will cause slowdowns in display, or whatever.  This will often cause players to clean up their inventory until it's fast again; alternatively, set up the UI so it's never loading the entire list at once.

Even the biggest game to date, WoW, has 2.5 million NA users, and 225 US servers; an even split is 11,112 accounts per server, times what, 6 characters per server?  I forget, haven't played WoW in awhile.  Even 100,000 characters per server is not a huge amount of data, in database terms; given that only 2500-3500 or so will be online at any one time, especially.

Games have limited inventories due to UI concerns, or 'inventory management is a mini-game' thinking (Diablo); 'How are we going to store all this stuff?' is a problem solved many times over.  Heck, Wal-Mart tracks what has sold when and where in every store nationwide in real-time; many terabytes of database, increases to the tune of a terabyte every couple/few months or something.  An MMO data server should be trivial.

--
Alkiera

You've never crashed a system because of all the crap you had in your inventory before.. I have.  Ah, mudding.  Pack Rat players will accrue more than you possibly think they ever will.  It's often a surprise to even the pack rat that they had that much crap.

I thought that since players are stored as DB entries these days, rather than flat-files, inventories became limited.   In a flat file when someone accrues another item, you just add it as a line at the end of the .txt file.  In a DB, you have the "player" template and it has X slots alloted for inventory. Increasing these means increasing them for all templates, increasing your storage space by # of slots*(#of players).  Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding this.

Maybe they're doing flat files.. or got clever and there's a way to do the "inventory" DB slot as "reference this flat file."  I'm not a DB designer by any stretch, so I don't know.

[Lantyssa]

As we're discussing on a thread in the Game Design forum, having a DB doesn't necessarily mean it's being used efficiently.  Considering how it's implimentation often takes a back seat in development, it's not surprising there needs to be limits.

It's an even bigger issue with MUDs since a fully copy of the item is appended to a text file.  MUDs which don't use a database, or emulate one, simply devour memory.  15k items existing in the world was the difference between smooth play and the server running like a turtle due to paging memory to disk, and was why I coded a clean-up function.  (Easier to handle with larger memory these days, but the design is still flawed if it can happen. [One I admittedly didn't address.])

[sam, an eggplant]

Generally speaking, you want to offload as much data and processing as possible to the appservers rather than the database. The DB is primarily used for authentication, billing, data warehousing/mining, and real-time in-game services like mail, trades, auction houses, etc. You'd be surprised how little is done in the DB in many modern MMOs.

[Count Nerfedalot]

I thought that since players are stored as DB entries these days, rather than flat-files, inventories became limited.   In a flat file when someone accrues another item, you just add it as a line at the end of the .txt file.  In a DB, you have the "player" template and it has X slots alloted for inventory. Increasing these means increasing them for all templates, increasing your storage space by # of slots*(#of players).  Please correct me if I'm misunderstanding this.

Erm, a simplified description for the sake of not putting everyone to sleep:  A relational DB, even relatively denormalized for speed, would (should) have some kind of set up with a table for character items, each record in that table having fields that point to the character id, item id, and any additional info like quantity for stackables, damage for items which take damage, etc, plus hopefully a couple of fields for linking to an audit system such as last transaction Id and such.  All the other info about each type of item is stored in separate tables, so each time a new version of that item is created in the world, the only memory required is a new entry in that table linking the character who has it with the type of item it is.

This provides for an unlimited number of types of items, unlimited number of characters and unlimited number of items per character.  Disk space permitting of course!  Adding a character with no items uses NO additional space for item storage.

It's an even bigger issue with MUDs since a fully copy of the item is appended to a text file.  MUDs which don't use a database, or emulate one, simply devour memory.  15k items existing in the world was the difference between smooth play and the server running like a turtle due to paging memory to disk, and was why I coded a clean-up function. 

With a DB, items in a character's inventory should spend very very little time in the server memory.  They should be on disk, of course, and the data would be transmitted to the player's client when he loads his character.  When the player equips/uses/drops/sells/whatever an item, the server checks it's disk record to be sure the character actually HAS that item, then proceeds to act on it according to whatever rules pertain to the player's chosen action.  That's it.  The item doesn't stay in core memory unless it's active, and even then only the variables defining that particular instance of that item are in memory.  All the static stuff, descriptions and whatnot, stay on disk and are only pulled up when needed to be transmitted to another client. 

Items on the ground, on the other hand, need to be in system memory (or at least some representation of that item) as long as that section of ground is, and thus they ARE memory hogs.  This is why pretty much all 3D MMO's delete items when you drop them.  Otherwise some enterprising 13 yr old smartass with no life will use eleventybazillion copper pieces placed on the ground to make a dot-matrix pr0n image, and your server will melt into a slag heap from trying to juggle all the memory it takes to represent that one little piece of the world.

I say 3D specifically, because tile-based systems can have it easy by limiting things to one item on the ground per tile, thereby enforcing a limit on how many things can be left on the ground in the entire world.  Diablo, while not an MMO, worked like that.  People still spelled out dirty words with gold piles of course, as well as paving the streets of Tristram with gold, but they probably couldn't crash the game by doing so because there were only a limited number of places to drop things.

[photek]

That last screenshot looks an awful lot like Zangarmarsh, right down to Cenarion Circle-esque building.

Stole the words out of my mouth. However I think it looks good, nice initiative. I'll give it a go.

[Venkman]

Still the same stuff, just this time, for kids.

Still also looks like a client download/install though in an age when the target market is playing in browsers. They mention streaming but only in the context of getting content while creating a character in the browser. So basically, like the Nexon stuff... except that's not really stuff for kids.

[Lakov_Sanite]

Still the same stuff, just this time, for kids.

Still also looks like a client download/install though in an age when the target market is playing in browsers. They mention streaming but only in the context of getting content while creating a character in the browser. So basically, like the Nexon stuff... except that's not really stuff for kids.

Someone at work but it best "Why make a wow for kids? Kids are already playing wow" I know one of my guildmates is 13 and he tanks BT

[sam, an eggplant]

Ouch. I can't stand playing with kids. I hear that shrill little pre-pubescent voice or see the typos and texting shorthand in chat and I'm outta there right quick. Annoying little bastards should be on different servers, preferably fenced-off with razor wire.

So umm yeah, I'll probably be skipping free realms, but it's still an interesting subject.

[Venkman]

Still the same stuff, just this time, for kids.

Still also looks like a client download/install though in an age when the target market is playing in browsers. They mention streaming but only in the context of getting content while creating a character in the browser. So basically, like the Nexon stuff... except that's not really stuff for kids.

Someone at work but it best "Why make a wow for kids? Kids are already playing wow" I know one of my guildmates is 13 and he tanks BT

It depends on how you define "kids". 12+ have a higher probability imho. <8 not at all. 8-12 year old tweens are mostly not playing WoW, off elsewhere playing browser stuff, or playing them a lot more than whatever subset of that group may be playing WoW.

And before anyone brings out the credit card barrier, there's a lot of folks who play WoW with their kids. And we've all played with people who've turned out to be kids even though they don't act with that 5-and-up excitement squeal/foot-stomping pissed-off-ed-ness.