Free Realms

I really missed writing about these guys. But we’re all hoping Free Realms will be a hit!

BREAKING NEW: 2:31 AM EDT – Free Realms is live! They almost ran out of Tuesday in San Diego but managed to pull it off! BREAKING NEWS: 1:44 AM EDT – Playing GEMS on EVERQUEST… BREAKING NEWS: 12:50 AM EDT – Oh, actually it’s still Tuesday here in Connecticut, too. But SOE is cutting the FR launch pretty close, and that’s if they bring it up right now. ...

I’ve renamed the Web Log to the Daily Blogroll, just because I like the name better. Also, in the Shameless Self Promotion dept, look for the last Adventures in Monopoly scheduled for later today. There’ll be more adventures with Dire Bear, Scottie and Car, when they have another story to tell. It’s server merge time in EQ2 again. This time, the US PvP servers Nagafen and Venekor (RP) will merge after Fan Faire in June. Most PvP players seem okay with it, but some are taking it really hard. ...

Welcome to Monday! We had a gorgeous weekend here in Connecticut. The cat loved sunning herself in every patch of light, shorts weather for sure, and everything is in bloom. Free Realms is also in bloom. FR’s beta ended yesterday with a huge bash in the port town of Seaside. Oz of Kill Ten Rats isn’t feeling the love, and cites deceptive practices in game among reasons why he doesn’t feel FR is ready for prime time. Tobold responds by pointing out the collectible card game was not nearly as expensive as Oz opines, or that beta testers were required to pay to test member-only content, and offers his own thoughts on the Free Realms beta. ...

The servers are coming down this morning, all beta characters are being deleted (answering a question of mine), and tomorrow, you’ll be able to start cooking, racing, shooting, mining and everything else. Here’s the full announcement: Some of you have seen the signs. The NDA being lifted. Cryptic twitters from developers. Unexpected fan site announcements. Some have speculated that the next stage of Free Realms is here…they are right. Since our initial closed beta announcement, we have been flagging more and more beta sign ups for access to the game. We have also been working with an affiliate site, Miniclip.com. The Free Realms beta has been open to the millions of players from that site as well as any new registrations made on our home page. While we did not announce it, we are already well into our open beta period. ...

Welcome to the weekend! It’s fantastic weather, so gonna keep this short. More news about the ex-Mythos developers’ new game, Torchlight? The Runic Games Fansite has a FAQ complete with everything they know about the fantasy Action RPG and its followup MMO, and Runic Games Insider’s Taylor Balbi has really long interviews with a few of the devs with the nittiest, grittiest details. Keen at Keen and Graev has a rather positive look at Free Realms. It’s a fun game, but will it appeal enough to kids to become a success? ...

Penny Arcade starts off Freeday Friday with a little bit of snark about the Chronicles of Spellborn payment plan. While it’s true that you can now use a credit card like for every other game… I think trying to figure out their Coins-based plan is a fun game all on its own, don’t you? Reported everywhere is Lord of the Rings Online’s second anniversary promotion. Free to try again, 25% experience bonus on kills that stacks with all other bonuses, tokens you can trade in for cool stuff, etc etc. The xp boost is very nice, anyway. I haven’t seen what the tokens trade in for, but I have my suspicions I have a lot of Blueberry Tart recipes in my future. ...

The two characters I set for transfer from Windfola to Landroval a couple of weeks ago, my 36 Captain and my 21 Champion, finally arrived safely in their new server yesterday. I’m still not sure which of the three characters I have on Landroval I want to focus on. I have hope that I can join my Captain with those in Casualties of War who are about her level. Stargrace and Kasul largely adventure during days I work, so aside from boring soloing, there might not be much available for my two lower level characters. ...

Time to put on your shades, spin the name wheels and step into your time machine, because it’s 2004 and SOE has just released World of Warcraft: Kids Edition. This isn’t a criticism. WoW is a great game, but the similarities are unmistakable. It looks JUST like WoW, the game is HIGHLY polished, consistent look everywhere. You are in a cartoon, but it’s a fun cartoon. Character creation is meant to be easy and simple. The small number of choices will be instantly familiar to anyone who plays WoW or Wizard 101 because in Free Realms, as in those others, you are recognized by your gear. Fifteen different outfits for fifteen different jobs. The name wheel will also be familiar to Wizard 101 players, though you can request a custom name which, if approved, will replace your name wheel name. ...

Wednesday? Seriously? All these MMO companies, at the same time, said, we’re gonna have some big news, and it’s gonna come out on a Wednesday? What’d I do to them? Last night, I was going to do a new one panel comic, and then sit down and game for awhile. That little test I linked to yesterday that where they wanted to know how MMOs were destroying your life? I wanted to pencil in, want time to play MORE. ...