Rock, Paper, Shotgun

There’s a trailer out for Free Realms, showing off their ponies, both walking and flying. I’m posting it first, because it made me think of I’m On A Boat. And second, because it made me think of I Love Horses. And believe me, they’re below. But then I went to the game’s site to check stuff out, and it sort of needed me to be a NEW USER to continue, and then it had me create a character, and by that point sticking an email and password in didn’t seem a big deal, by which point it was downloading the game for me, because… because the squirrel kept telling me to.

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The chaps at SOE must be rather pleased with themselves. Their free-to-play-except-with-micropay-stuff MMO Free Realms has had three million registrations in just seven weeks. Not bad going, even by free-to-play standards. “We are pleased to be able to provide such a vast, in-depth and, most importantly, fun world to an average of 500,000 new gamers per week,” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. I bet you are, John. Those are the big numbers.

The game seems to have attracted folks with neat cartoon presentation and its kid-friendly demeanor, but it’ll be interesting to see how many of those millions stick around over time. I’m assuming some of you guys are included in that colossal figure? Anyone care to share their impressions? Any thoughts on long term appeal?

Firing up the server-engines today is Sony Online’s teenager-targeting, micropayment-funded MMO Free Realms. The sign-up site‘s currently battened down the hatches in preparation for the coming storm, but in a few hours you’ll be able to create a cutsey avatar and dabble in a bunch of cheerful mini-games comprising stabbing, driving, collecting and match-3ing, amongst others.
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Imagine a greatest hits of all the games that have found success with non-gamers. The compulsive sight-puzzles of Bejewelled, the dress-up roleplaying of The Sims, the cartoon brawling of World of Warcraft, the micropayment hats of Maple Story, the bumper car silliness of Mario Kart, the customisable animals of Neopets, the ancillary merchandise of Pokemon…

Free Realms, the kid-orienated MMO that Sony clearly hopes will restore its troubled online fortunes, is all things to all children. It has been focused group-trialled to boys and girls alike, and it shows. If your child can’t find something in FR’s long list of mini-games and gimmicks to capture its attention, it’ll probably grow up to be a serial killer.
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SOE’s new MMO, Free Realms, opens its public beta this weekend. The concept is that this is the free MMO for children, so expect to run a gamut of cute if you’re heading in its direction. It seems relatively simplistic with a Wow-but-more-cartoony-by-half game world, and absurdly sugary character creation. There’s also the MMO standard of quest-based monster-monstering, and a whole bunch of mini-games that can be played solo, or with chums. There’s a bunch of video-based FAQs here and you (or your offspring) can sign up to the beta here.

[Thanks to extreme tiredness, I didn’t manage to write up all of my impressions from E3. Over the next couple of days I’ll clean house and post up my leftover thoughts.]

So if the Sony Online Entertainment game that you are looking forward to is DC Universe Online, well, E3 wasn’t for you. Because cleverly, SOE are going to reveal all of the details of the game at the San Diego Comic Con (which, in retrospect, I should have stayed for) in front of the slavering hordes of nerds that they want to impress the most, instead of wasting the details on the slavering (but smaller) hordes of nerds at E3. What did I learn from my brief chat with the developers? Well, that it’s going to be a heavily physics based MMO where characters be able to “use the environment as a weapon” – and they made a pretty big deal about how hard it is to put proper physics into an MMO.
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