Free Realms

You can talk about it now! Expect an article about it for tomorrow, but if you’ve been playing – how did you like it?

Day 2 of the Wizard 101 Name the Turtles contest! My site stats show that well over a THOUSAND wizards have come to this site to choose a name for the Marleybone turtle. I think we all know the turtles are going to end up being named Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo, Donatello and Master Splinter. Soon-to-be-shuttered, PvP-centric MMO Shadowbane is Wizard 101’s ancestor in spirit. MMO Gamer has the story of how the Wizard 101 devs went from designing a no-holds-barred, kill-or-be-killed MMO to the kid friendly, brightly colored MMO of wands and wizards we play today. ...

As near as I can tell, nearly 900 people came to this blog yesterday just to name the Marleybone builder turtle in Wizard 101. That’s fantastic! There’s still a bunch of time left, and as long as the contest is going, there’s going to be a big button over there on the right leading to the post since, this being a blog, stuff scrolls off the front page almost immediately, and the Name the Turtles contest is already buried under THIS post, and a long, long comic about two hobbits discussing how cool a X Files MMO would totally be. ...

These are the games I’ve played at least a little in the past week. I’m going to end up with Chronicles of Spellborn, because I haven’t talked about it in awhile. First up: I’ve been spending quite a lot of time in Free Realms and as much time as I’m allowed in another which I can’t even name. What I can say is that I predicted awhile back that 2009 could be the best year ever for MMOs, and I’m sticking to that. There is some incredible stuff coming this year. ...

Welcome to the Sunday Web Log! When’s the new EverQuest server coming? The rumor mill has it that the 51/50 server – new characters start off at level 51 with 50 AAs – is in the bag. Others assume that SOE will be opening a new progression server, and have reactivated their accounts in order to start over. As near as I can tell, nothing has been announced yet, but it seems likely that we’ll be able to play on the new server, whatever kind it is, in June. Oh, and EQ players? You voted two frogs in as Mr. and Miss Norrath of 2009? I mean, grats to Kannak and Molleah but … frogs? ...

Interested in playing a little game called Free Realms? They’re letting ANYONE in. They let ME in, right? If you haven’t gotten a key, and want to try out the Next Big Thing, head on over to http://www.freerealms.com/index.vm?cid=1054126 and sign up, first thousand get in (via @freerealms). Odds not good enough for you? USA Today has 20 thousand keys to give away (via Grimwell). Why exactly can’t we talk about this game? This sounds so much like an OPEN beta. ...

Well, if Gabe loves Free Realms, it’s got to be good, right? Counting the days until I can write about my own experiences in the game :(

The NDA prevents me from going into any detail at all about Free Realms, but Massively has more Free Realms info than you can read, so I don’t really have to provide detail. I do have lots of screenies and reactions saved up, though. My highest level job is five, so I can’t claim to have seen much of the game, but what I have seen is amazingly high quality. The minigames are integrated well into the world (in much the same way I expect they will be in Gatheryn), and the adventure instances are funny and a lot of fun. ...