FreeRealms NOW OPEN

Some of you will be thrilled to know that FreeRealms is out of Beta and now LIVE.

I have not kept up to date on FreeRealms since its splashy debut at FanFaire ’08, but it certainly showed a lot of promise in the initial demo and playthrough. There are a gazillion things you can do once you login. You can race cars, buy and care for a pet, go out adventuring, questing, and exploring, craft, play minigames (checkers, chess, cards, puzzle games, etc.) chat with friends, put on a concert, etc. It’s The Sims meets Guitar Hero meets Petz plus a whole world to explore. There is even a built-in LoN type game if you are into card games.

Some of the big selling points of the game (other than being free) are that there is no complicated character creation system. You choose an appearance, type a name, and you are in. During the game, you can switch character classes or “roles” instantly and level them up. You can switch from driving race cars to mining to questing in dungeons. Another point is that there is no huge download before you get to see anything. The game downloads in the background while you are running through the tutorial and simple character creation screen.

As we were told at FanFaire, FreeRealms gets most of its funding from purchasing in-game items through microtransactions through the StationCash system which was revealed in November.

But I will admit I was a little surprised to see that some of the primary character classes in the game, and the ability to create more than 1 character, also require a monthly subscription. Most importantly, it seems that Adventuring is impossible without a monthly subscription. Wizard, Warrior, Medic, Archer, and Blacksmith are all premium classes. I really hate to be negative about the launch of a game, but requiring a monthly subscription for one type of gameplay seems shortsighted.

It is a nice touch that the monthly subscription can be funded with StationCash, from your Station account, or with gamecards purchased from Wal-Mart (avoiding the whole credit card situation).

Presumably SoE will monitor how much funding they get from hundreds of in-game items purchaseable through StationCash (certain pets, clothes, games, etc.), and how much they get from the monthly upgrades and make adjustments. They may find that folks prefer to spend $10-20 a month in items through SC but don’t want the monthly subscription.

http://www.freerealms.com/