My review of FreeRealms

For me, this is year 11 of being an avid MMORPGer. After walking away from Vanguard: Saga of Heroes after the RMT fiasco, I didn't have anything to play. I tried Runes of Magic and Chronicles of Spellborn, but neither held me past two weeks. After a few months of watching a lot more TV, I decided to try FreeRealms. I was attracted to FreeRealms mostly because of its collectible card game, but I've come to really enjoy this game after three weeks of play. I am finally able to cogently express my thoughts on why I like this game, so in no particular order . . .

• FreeRealms encourages exploration. The activity I enjoy most in this game is the Adventurer job, where you explore different cities and regions and are rewarded for being good at it. At first, I didn't get it. I got dropped into a starter-ish city (Crossroads) and the exploration tasks were simplistic. Find the pet park. "Ok, it's right there where all those dogs and cats are." Find the Party Area. "Ok, look, there are lots of balloons and a boom box playing. This is stupid." But then I got to my first major town, Snowhill, and two things happened: the basic exploration line had 8 POIs, and it took me three days to find them all; and in searching for them all, I looked where I wouldn't normally look, and it kicked off a "rare" exploration line, which was WAY fun. I had to use 2-word clues to find a hidden nook in a large city or region. The game was rewarding me for exercising my natural exploration instinct, and doing it in a fun, engaging way.
• The collectible card game is good. The learning curve is gentle, the games short, and the replayability is high. Moreover, this is Sony Online Entertainment we're talking about here -- makers of Legends of Norrath and purchasers of two other major TCGs (Star Chamber and Stargate). They have a lot of TCG expertise on-staff, and over time, we'll see many generations of cards which will improve the overall gameplay experience. It's an expensive hobby (I've spent $60 on cards so far, and have to spend $100-200 more to get the cards I want; and that's just for this generation). The collectible card game has two major aspects: quest-based/job-based play, and a lobby for playing other real people just like Magic: The Gathering and other collectible card games. There's an entire job line (Card Duelist) built around the card game, so you organically advance as you win matches vs. some very, VERY smart NPC card players. There's a thread on the official fora about the end-game MOB who is incredibly difficult to beat. After you beat all the NPCs and max out your levels, all that's left is to try yourself against real people, which for card players, should be enticing.
• Go-kart driving is awesome. If you ever found yourself playing MarioKart and laughing gleefully, you'll love the FreeRealms version, which includes both racing and demolition derbies.
• The minigames are delightful. Some are just average fun (many of the minigames are built from the Bejeweled model), some are innovative (there's a set of minigames centered around being an orchestra conductor), and some are intensely creative (a tiered set of "quests" involve strategy games that I can't succinctly describe here; the games are about building fortifications and armies designed to protect against waves of incoming enemies; all done in a way that works for 10 year-olds, yet can be very challenging for me, a 35 year-old).
• The game is designed to be expanded. After constructing the geography, building all the towns and cities and regions, populating the world, itemizing the world, setting up thousands of quests, and creating all the associated art work, the developers decided to keep in mind that expansions should be proactively accounted for. So the next expansion will have no less than three major geographic areas, all of which are already plotted, and quests to get you there are all ready to go when the time comes. I am so impressed with the pre-planning that went into this game's design.
• The game has over 3,000,000 unique accounts, and an accompanying high level of support from Sony Online Entertainment. Like EQ2 before it, SOE has put a lot of manpower behind this game. With its explosion out of the gate, SOE is devoting even more resources to it. I believe FreeRealms is already their most profitable product (margin-wise) and the future is looking very WoW-ish. Imagine how good Vanguard: Saga of Heroes would have been with a few hundreds staffers devoted to it. That's what Free Realms has right now, and the staff will continue to grow as the income blows the budget projections out of the water.

At first blush, I think most adult gamers will be turned off by FreeRealms. The graphics are cartoony, the mandatory tutorial and the starter areas are simplistic to the extreme. The emphasis on cooking and pets and other things traditional MMORPGers would consider fluff gives the game a feel of being for children. But given time, I've found the depth in this game, and I'm finding it perfect for me. I play for an hour or two at a time, but I can choose to play for 20 minutes, accomplish a goal, and walk away satisfied.

If you don't play the collectible card game competitively, the game costs all of $5 a month. You don't need to spend any other real money to get the most out of the game playing experience, I think. (Technically, the game can be played completely for free, but a real gamer wouldn't do that; you'd miss out on too much stuff that's obviously fun and worth a measly 5 bucks.)

There are certainly some down sides to this game. Its first impression isn't good for adults, I think, as mentioned above. I'm unhappy that to succeed completely as an Adventurer (explorer), I have to be good at combat (which I had hoped to avoid in this game; it's not my thing). There's a bit of a twitch element to many of the minigames and to the combat (I love the "be a conductor of an orchestra!" game, but I stink at it because my hand-eye coordination has deteriorated over the years and the game is very sensitive). The chat system is designed to protect children, and I think its restrictions discourage communication.

But overall, it has me hooked. I don't know for how long, but I don't see an obvious end in sight yet. And I'm optimistic the first expansion will come quickly ("milk that cash cow, Sony!!") and the collectible card game will gets its second generation of cards in 2009.