Comments on: Free Realms: First Impressions

By: /AFK – May 17 « Bio Break

/AFK – May 17 « Bio Break — Sun, 17 May 2009 12:02:21 +0000

[...] Realms hurts poor Roggie’s eyes… aww. He’s not a fan of Candyland, either. Tipa likes it, however, because she’s a being of pure light and [...]

By: Saylah

Saylah — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:31:54 +0000

oops, adults do NOT log into games….

By: Saylah

Saylah — Wed, 13 May 2009 17:31:30 +0000

You’d think it would be easy but it’s not. We had the same drama trying to meet up in W101. Adults do log into games immediately after work like kids might do. I think we’re more random about what days and times we can play certain games. And not everyone does all the other social stuff like Facebook, Twitter, bleh. I certainly don’t. MMO and blogging is as much effort I want to put into socializing over the interwebs. :-) I had to post dates and times on my blog to even get the few people I managed to get into my Friends List in W101. That seems like way too much effort to expending hooking up in MMOs.

By: Tipa

Tipa — Wed, 13 May 2009 09:37:28 +0000

You’d think…. actually the people I have successfully friended were because of Xfire and Twitter, but most of these require people to be online at the same time, which seems to only be rarely. When FR first opened, people were posting their character names and every time, I would try to add them, only to fail.

By: Vlcan

Vlcan — Wed, 13 May 2009 08:50:25 +0000

I dunno it seems like it should be possible as adults with access to XFire, Facebook, Twitter, E-mail, Forums, Blogs, Cell phone, etc. to say “Hey meet me on server(#) at (insert time here) and add a friend.”

The way my kids added there friends was ” Log on when you get home from school on server # and meet at the race track we can become friends and then race Lol. Or they called each other on land line phones.

Kind of like when you can’t get the lid off medicine because of that child proof cap so you give it to them and say open it and they do hehe.

By: Saylah

Saylah — Tue, 12 May 2009 21:43:46 +0000

It lost me at all the instancing and completely silent/solo existence. I solo no doubt but FR feels dead because you don’t even see others doing what they are off doing alone since it’s all instanced. And I can’t stand heavy instancing. i. just. can’t. do. it. For me it’s like GW which is lobby for MMO but everything else you do is in a private space. I wasn’t a fan of if there so coupled with mini games this doesn’t work for me. I’m glad for the people who are having a good time. there’s nothing like the new adventures in a fun MMO.

By: Anjin

Anjin — Tue, 12 May 2009 17:40:51 +0000

Very interesting post, Tipa. I’ve been blogging my way through Free Realms recently and game to similar conclusions. I don’t mind the lack of friends so much since I’m pretty antisocial. It will be a deal breaker, though, for a lot of people.

@Openedge1 – I can’t help but suggest you at least fire it up and give it a try. It does skew more cartoony, but I rather this stylized fantasy than the “Brown + Light Bloom = Realism” school of MMO graphics.

By: openedge1

openedge1 — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:19:16 +0000

So this is basically WoW, W101 and Magic the Gathering all rolled into a game? No major grouping, and a lot of instanced combat? Mini games a plenty!

Who knows. I may actually like this (if it was not for the cartoony look, which I just cannot get into)

Thanks for the review

By: Spinks

Spinks — Tue, 12 May 2009 15:03:50 +0000

I can’t help feeling that it’s only designed to be social if you’re actually in the same room physically as the people you’re playing with. I wonder if that was by design. Maybe it was honestly designed to be played together by families who were in the same room.

But yeah, I’ve felt the same thing. The game doesn’t feel silent but people don’t talk, there’s no way to find others to look for groups, actually getting people onto your friends list is an exercise in futility but random people who run past you can friend you instantly. I’m having fun but there’s no social network in there that I can see, and that’s one of the things that hooks me into an MMO.

By: Ramon

Ramon — Tue, 12 May 2009 13:48:06 +0000

I just wanted to write a post at Dalayan Diary that talks about how an MMO isn’t really all that fun unless you have all those other people to play with, but what you write here essentially says the same thing :)

I started playing Runes of Magic recently, and while it’s full of people, most of them are soloing (at least at the level I am, 13 knight). It’s about the same I’ve witnessed in WoW and what drove me out of there completely. The game world is busy with people and resembles a beehive, but everyone is just busy on their own agenda.

In Shards of Dalaya, this is different. You probably remember from EverQuest how everyone was terrified of even walking two steps alone. That’s gone in SoD because of the clever death mechanics — you can essentially explore everywhere you want without fear of delevelling. And yet you find people grouping a lot, and it’s easy to find pickup groups. That’s what makes MMOs worth playing for me (and that’s what my posting would be about in a bit more detail). It’s the people, and the ease of finding people to play with.

If Free Realms’ minigames make people even less available, that’s certainly bad.