Welcome to Free-Realms-Gamer.com, a fan based community where we hope to share our exciting experiences in the amazing new virtual world by Sony Games. This site is in no way directly affiliated with Sony, Disney or any of their consituents; it is just a place for people who love MMORPGs, mini games and trading card games to get together and share their stories, ideas, experiences and excitement.
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Whether it is to boost sales or just because the model of upselling players on virtual in-game items, Sony Online Entertainment has made a pretty extraordinary offer. Rather than pay $5 per month for a premium membership to their otherwise free online MMORPG Free Realms, players can now purchase a lifetime membership for only $29.95.
Here are the details per the company’s official site:
“From July 16th, 2010 (at Noon PDT) until August 2nd, 2010 (at Noon PDT) you can get a lifetime membership for about the same price as paying month to month for 6 months!
With a Lifetime Membership you’ll have access to all the great Member content without having to worry about your subscription running out!
If you have previously purchased a 12 month subscription, we have you covered. You will automatically be converted to a Lifetime Membership at no extra charge.
If you are currently a Member with a 1, 3 or 6 month membership, the Lifetime Membership and charges will take effect at the END of your current membership cycle. You’ll get an email reminding you of how it works when you sign up.”
So regardless of whether you are a very occasional visitor to the land of Free Realms or if you play all of the time, this offer is a great deal as you will never have to worry about subscribing for a whole month, just to be able to play certain character classes, level caps, limited item selection, and to enjoy the full spectrum of features the game has to offer.
It will be interesting to see the numbers for subscribers by the time this deal comes to an end.
“Deep inside Bristlewood is the Mother Lode Quarry. The mine is notoriously difficult to get to and only the best miners can dig here.
Located along the path northeast from the Vale of the Ancients, the area outside the quarry may be more dangerous than inside. The woods, which some claim to be haunted, keep all but the most dedicated miners from even trying to find their way to the mine.”
This is the kind of interesting content we have been hoping for: not just easy access to areas where you grind away at a task to build up a skillset that leads nowhere but more grinding, no – we want action, adventure, excitement, risk, atmosphere, storytelling.
With the new Mother Lode Quarry, the land of Free Realms gives reason to strap on your adventure gear, unsheath your weapon, and set out with your mining gear for greater prospects, to bring home the bacon and redecorate the old homestead into a swish new hangout where you can share tales of your exploits.
Check out the new Free Realms “It’s Your World” video by California pop rockers The Dares. It sort of looks like what an exec at Disney Channel might think could be kinda cool?
For all of its lack of depth, Free Realms really does make up for it in plain old fun. It’s like walking through a giant candy store while your parents are locked in a car outside; the Free Realms team just love to throw everything gooey and delicious at its players and Pirate’s Plunder, the new mini game expansion going live today March 19th 2010 – is no exception. I mean – everyone love’s to play a pirate right? Well, maybe with the exception of ninjas.
Pirate’s Plunder puts you in charge of your own pirate ship in an action-packed race to collect treasure. Your color-coded island hideout is where you offload treasure or change ships. The watery battlefield features obstacles like whirlpools and other sea effects like currents that can affect how you move around the map.
This welcome addition to the world of Free Realms was spearheaded by longtime Sony Game Developer and now the new Sr. Producer for Free Realms, David Georgeson (aka Mister_Qixter) who has been making games for over 20 years including the Everquest space cousin PlanetSide. He was also involved in the development of other cool RPG and RTS games that include the popular Mechwarrior II series, Heavy Gear 2, Crusaders of Might & Magic, Mage Knight: Apocalypse, zOMG!, Absolute Zero and interestingly enough Pools of Darkness – one of the very first Advanced Dungeons and Dragons video games ever. Cool!
Along with the mini-game, paid FR members will also be able to purchase new pirate-oriented clothing and housing items, perhaps even a pirate ship for outside their in-game home?
Other tasty treats include a new tiger pet, and “Pet Pals”, which are “cute little mini pets that follow you around the world and keep you company.” Like everything else that is cool in Free Realms, Pet Pals can be bought for coin or cold hard Station Cash.
That aside, we are very excited about the addition of Pirate’s Plunder AND Mister_Qixter because it means things can only get better as Free Realms approaches its first birthday.
Free Realms has stepped the paid members experience substantially by adding mounts allowing players to bomb around the fantastical landscape at speeds up to a hundred and fifty times faster than when traveling on foot.
With all the teleportation options one may wonder why they would want a mount (much like one may have wondered what the point was of having a house if the game is all about venturing out on quests) – well consider all the cool hidden nooks and crannies you will be far more willing to explore when you know you don’t have to trek on foot from the nearest teleport hub. In a way this makes the game far richer, but ONLY if the FR team continues to make the world bigger and deeper and more full of surprises, because otherwise it’s going to seem pretty small, pretty fast.
A mount will cost a paid member (approx $5 monthly) an additional 450 station cash points (roughly US$5.00) and they come in up to five colors.
Here is the official blurb from the people at SOE:
“Have you seen players riding around Free Realms on the back of a T-Rex or maybe hovering over the road while riding a winged Dragon called a Wyvern? You aren’t dreaming. These are the first Rides available in Free Realms and they are currently available only to Members.
You can hop on the back of these awesome creatures and ride them anywhere in the overland areas and also at your house! Rides have special swimming animations and can also leap into the air from Launch Pads located around the world.”
You know we at FRG can be a little harsh on Free Realms at times, but that’s only because we care. And when props are merited we are glad to give them. So here is our big thumbs up to this welcome addition to the game. Wyverns, ho!
In addition to being nominated for the 2010 Best New Social/Online Game award at the Game Developers Choice Awards in San Francisco March 11th, Free Realms, the massively multi-player online game from Sony Online Entertainment announced that it has reached 8 million registered users. Although it is difficult to say how many of these registrations equal active or paying users on the game, it does indicate a slight decline in the monthly average, down to 500,000 per month from 900,000 after its initial launch period.
Nonetheless, the game has proven very popular and continues to role out innovative social networking strategies, like its new ConnecDing competition that allows players to win rewards for all “fellow players,” among others.
Free Realms’ innovative event calendar during its Snow Days, is an in-game daily guide to snowy activities taking place throughout the MMO world. Simply click on the daily event and your avatar is transported to the action. Kind of a cool and novel idea for an MMO – except that sometimes traveling through the world to your destination is the very reason you get to see all the interesting changes taking place during the season.
Lest we come off sounding like Bah Humbugs (a real breed of insect living under the couch of our new apartment in Free Realms!) sometimes you just want to log in and go to the party rather than waste a lot of time traveling over land unnecessarily. Besides teleportation is an intrinsic part of Free Realms game play.
The image to the left is a calendar of the many many activities the creators of Free Realms have concocted to keep you busy – looks like a lot of fun to be had! Enjoy and happy holidays!
FreeRealms has finally opened up the soccer game to members. After meeting with the soccer manager outside the soccer field (just Southwest of Snowhill) we delivered some jerseys and then were ready to start kicking the ball around.
At first we weren’t sure just how the soccer play itself would feel. After all, soccer is not only a very collaborative, team effort sport, but it is fast and furious and requires a lot of field strategy.
Well after a few questionable attempts, we got the hang of it and before long forgot we were playing a video game and started feeling really competitive.
To get an idea of what the controls are like for playing soccer in the game, we created this gameplay video for you to preview.
This also got us to wondering whether Free Realms might be the first ever MMO to introduce team based sports within a fantasy setting…? *chin rub*
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