Free Realms – the kids will love it

On August 15 last year, I wrote about a game SOE had just demoed at its annual FanFaire. Called Free Realms, the game was promoted as a free MMO for 9-14 year olds, where they could engage in any manner of activities, from adventuring and fighting (typical MMO activity), to cooking and playing with pets (reasonably common MMO activity), to driving go-karts and playing soccer (rare MMO activity). Oh, and did I mention the free part? It intrigued us all — and it was made by SOE, no less.

At the time I said the demo looked quite amazing and it struck me that a lot of people, adult gamers included, could make great use of the environment as a place where they could all meet, either to game with each other or to social network, especially if they were friends who are otherwise playing different games to one another.

And you know what? Despite some comments I will make in a moment, I think that might just come true. This is a very polished gameworld to be able to engage in for free and I think it will appeal to both sexes; and probably even more to female gamers.

It sounds like I must have been playing Free Realms recently to make that sort of call and, yes, I have been. A little while ago, I made a bearded avatar I called “George Imperialsaga” (I used the in-game name generator to come up with that), and due to his likeness to a certain bearded director of space fantasy movies, petitioned that his real name should be George Lucas which, bizarrely, SOE approved. So if you’ve seen George Lucas running around in-game lately, yes, that was me. Guilty as charged.

So what’s the game like? Well, at the risk of disappointing people, it’s like every other MMO out there. You run around a game world; you do quests; you can talk to people; you can explore; etc, etc. Surprisingly, based on everything I had thought it would be, I found it to be very grindy. Very, very grindy, actually. While it’s a cool concept that one character can be multiple professions and, in turn, it’s very easy to unlock the first level of each profession for your character, like ninja, postman, medic, blacksmith, warrior, treasure hunter, wizard, kart driver, chef, brawler and explorer (phew, and that’s not even all of them), it actually takes quite a bit of running around and “doing stuff” to get to level two. I haven’t even gone beyond level two as I set about playing the opening level of as many professions as possible, but if the game follows regular MMO conventions and makes level three harder to achieve than level two… well, it’s a good thing the game’s free, as kids might need to spend years leveling in it.

Of course, the company line would be that the game’s not about leveling, but rather the fun experiences you can have along the way but, I’m not really sure about that. Seeing other players with cooler equipment, I felt this played out like any other MMO and I wanted to level my guy up so I could be like the cool kids, more than anything else.

All in all, Free Realms looks and feels like an overly cutesy, yet still grindy, version of WoW with perhaps a dash of sandbox insofar as being able to go anywhere and do anything with the same character, rather than re-rolling, re-speccing or having multiple characters. And you know what? Despite my personal aversion to grinding, I think the kids might like it. This is definitely one MMO to download (a surprisingly small download, too), and have a play with, especially if you have young children or even younger brothers and sisters or nieces and nephews coming around to your house. Try it.

Free Realms launches Tuesday, April 28.