Gamescom 09: Discussing Free Realms With Sony Online Entertainment

OneLastContinue got to sit down with the folks at Sony Online Entertainment to discuss their free to play MMO Free Realms, which saw its European release back in April.

The game has already proven popular in the United States, having over four million users since release before it even hit this side of the pond.  Free Realms had managed to attract one million users in just eighteen days – which means it’s not doing too badly for itself is it?  It’s not official, but we can safely assume that the game has already passed five million users now that it has been released in Europe.

Free Realms is a free to play MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) designed towards a younger audience,  yet there is a significant amount of adults playing the game too.  It’s more a casual MMO with an emphasis on social interaction, and being more “lightweight” allows it to target those who want to be able to pick up a game and play it for shorter sessions at a time.  One feature to encourage these sessions is the ability to teleport around the world, including straight to the people on your friends list.  Read on for more details.

So, why a family friendly MMO?

The question is, why not a family friendly MMO?  The choice was pretty logical.  The MMO market is filled with games aimed at the hardcore player and there isn’t one geared towards the more casual player.  We were actually surprised that nobody had thought of making a casual MMO before, so instead we decided to do it ourselves.

In a short few months the game is nearing five million users.  How do you feel about this performance?

It has been five months since the US release now, and we’re nearing five million users.  That’s a million users a month – the growth of Free Realms has been absolutely phenomenal.  Hell, we’ve probably already surpassed five million, now that we’ve launched in Europe too.  We don’t know officially, but if we were nearing five million from just the US release, it’s logical to assume we’ve already hit that milestone.  Honestly, there is no way we can be disappointed with this kind of performance.  We can, however, hope that it continues!

When the game comes to PlayStation 3, will it all be under one umbrella?

Ah, this is the touchy part.  We haven’t fully confirmed that the game is coming to PlayStation 3, but we are indeed working on how we can bring Free Realms to the console.  We’re still working on server infrastructure and the possibility of cross platform play, but our intention is to have everyone playing with each other.

Due to the social networking nature of the game, are players free to interact with their contacts worldwide?  Or are there region restrictions?

We can safely say that there are no region restrictions.  We want players to interact with anyone they want to, wherever they are.  You have the ability to filter out other languages if you wish, so you may interact with only English speaking players from other countries if that is your will.  This option is in the menu to the bottom left where you can select filters.

Is the integrated video capture ability, and direct YouTube uploading, possible due to the game being browser based?

The simple answer is no.  Free Realms is not actually browser based, but client based.  The client starts off very small so it is assumed that the game is browser based.  However, as you play, the game downloads more information as you explore more areas and discover more things.  This way the client starts small, but gets progressively larger as you play, resulting in little to no load times and no wait.  Ultimately, the game is a client, not browser based.

Will the PlayStation 3 version incorporate the same features?

We are still unsure on the PlayStation 3 side of things, as we are still working on it.  However, we’d like to think that it is possible for the same if not similar features associated with Playstation Network to be on the console version of the game.

Will Free Realms be truly “free” on the Playstation 3?

We called the game Free Realms for a reason.  Our intention is to keep the same or a similar business model where anyone can play for free, and then pay for stuff if they want more.  We’re still working on how this will work on the PlayStation 3 because it uses PlayStation Network for it’s transactions whereas on the PC we use Station Cash to allow people to buy stuff.

Will the premium membership and micro-transactions be existent on the Playstation 3 too?

We intend to keep the same business model on the console version of the game, as we aim to have players interact worldwide and cross platform if possible.  However, since the PlayStation 3 uses PlayStation Network for transactions, we need to figure out how our method of micro-transactions will work properly on it.  We use a different method on the PC and we would like to keep the same method on console, so there are no issues with transactions on accounts.

I understand that there is a comic based on the game.  Does it follow the story of the game somewhat, or is it a standalone tale?

The Free Realms comic is a twelve issue series with each issue exploring a tale of a different character.  They aren’t any specific characters from the game, but instead characters based upon the different jobs that you can have.  The overall story of the comics does follow the general story of the game.

The team working on the game liked the characters from the comic books so much that they decided to make them real characters in the game, playing various cameo roles as they do in the different comics.

Were certain aspects of the game influenced by Fable II? Such as jobs training.

When you see and play Free Realms, many feel that the game was influenced by the likes of Fable II, and jobs are one of the features that are most obvious.  We can honestly tell you that the jobs were not influenced by Fable II at all, but some other things were.  The pets are the main thing that was influenced by the title.  The pets in Free Realms now have similar features to Fable II in the sense that they will now find stuff for you as well as path-find, and so on.

I got to see a short preview of the game, such as the “raining meatballs” event that was going on in a certain area, and also the mini racing game.  The latter looked like a fully fledged kart racing game in an MMO.  They could have completely made a new game with that, but I was informed by the developers that there are more games like that in Free Realms also.  They didn’t want to put little mini-games in, but rather games within a game.

In my personal opinion the game looks not only beautiful, but I was able to play it well with relative ease too.  Being casual-friendly, that being the developer’s intentions from the beginning, means it was never aimed at the hardcore MMO player but surprisingly enough there is a considerable amount of substance to the game.  It’s free-to-play, so anyone can go ahead and try it out.  If you’re looking for a bit more of a mature experience, though, this isn’t one for you so the choice as always is yours.

Check out our gallery of Free Realms images below.