Free Realms out in two months

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According to Massively, Free Realms, SOE’s kid-friendly game, will be out in April for the PC and some time in the fall for the PS3.
I would love to be more excited about this game. I looked at it at the Fan Faire and it is beautiful with fantastically whimsical art direction. What I didn’t see was a story. Now, maybe they have a story to pull everything together and make Free Realms less of a 3D MMO-ish minigame portal and more of a destination for adventure that I didn’t see — and for darn sure I’ll be trying out the beta if I get in, because I’m always looking for new ideas in MMO play.
I felt Neopets had astoundingly deep play for what seems on the outside to be a Flash game portal. Wizard 101, another kid friendly MMO, I recommend without hesitation to anyone looking for an MMO which has nothing to do with WoW at all but also comes with challenging and strategic play — and tells a very strong story as well.
I’m not one to dismiss a MMO just because it is aimed at children, but I do ask for a reason to be in that world and to advance through it. All I ask of any MMO is a story that I can be part of.

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4 thoughts on “Free Realms out in two months”

  1. FusionFall also has done a considerably better job in respect to being kid oriented AND having a story and with some great graphics in a Flash based game.
    Also, the whole Cartoon Network stars being grown up (Dexter, Ben 10, Powder Puff girls , Samurai Jack as teens) added to this aspect and gave a new feel to old characters.
    All I saw when I looked at Free Realms was “I wanna be WoW for kids…”, even going to the extent of looking almost exactly the same (How Creative is SOE – January 10th)
    No thanks

  2. Some sort of story is typically necessary for me too. However, what if it is sandbox like The Sims? That might be interesting as well depending on your ability to control your pursuits and build your own identity. I guess we won’t really know until we can get in there. My motivation is having an MMO where my friends who won’t kill things to advance in a game can join me in some gaming fun. I won’t however, be interested in a mini-game portal.

  3. I’d imagine that the “questing” part of the game will have stories at least to the extent that WoW or EQ II do. I mean, surely the quest givers will have some excuse for sending you out to kill bunnies or whatever. In any case, I’m hoping that it will be more along the lines of a sandbox that is easy to get going in than a mini-game portal.
    For some reason the idea of being able to become a high level mailman has me slightly excited. Of course your also looking at someone that wanted to choose “homeless guy” for his character class in an old PnP MMO, so my tastes may not be typical . . .
    And I can’t for the life of me remember what RPG that was. It had doctors, nurses, construction workers and all sorts of amazingly pedestrian classes listed right alongside the useful ones.

  4. But… aren’t minigames one of the alternate advancement routes? That’s the essence of Puzzle Pirates; you can just go play the puzzle games (and earn currency and improve your personal skill), or you can muck around on the market and try your hand at being a player in the economy. True, PP is more of a sandbox where the “story” consists of events where NPCs do something nifty, or players get all political and start blockading each other, so it doesn’t really have a “narrative”. Still, there’s a “world” there if you want to go explore it.

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