Comments on: SOE Reboots Tomorrow

By: Raevhen

Raevhen — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:39:30 +0000

I played the game and I feel they were targetting the Wii crowd. Just like the Wii, it doesn’t target the 360/PS3 crowd, but look how successful the Wii is over those other consoles.

By: Mandella

Mandella — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 02:11:15 +0000

What Calandryll said. Also, what most of these games do is allow you to buy points in batches. 1000 points might cost, say, twenty dollars, which of course has to come from Mommy or Daddy’s credit card (or a physical game card bought for cash at the local gaming store), but then the kid gets to choose how he wants to spend the points and how fast.

This makes it easy for the parents to set an “allowance” and not have to be bugged every time their precious needs to pick up a new hat and shades.

Or, with the gamecard option the child might actually use his own cash. That does happen.

Sometimes.

By: Calandryll

Calandryll — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:30:45 +0000

I’ve seen the issue of payment in a kids game a few times in this thread. The idea that the need for a credit card (or other payment options) is some kind of barrier in kids games is simply not true. Runescape, Club Penguin, and a host of other kid focused games have done quite well with their subscription and micro-payment options. Free Realms also has game cards for sale already and I’ll be surprised if they don’t offer other payment options in the future.

Remember that the parents of the games these kids are playing have been paying for things online, including mmogs, for years. It’s not a stretch for them to pay a subscription for their kids or buy them virtual goods. The model has already been proven.

By: War

War — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 22:14:19 +0000

So they are aiming this RMT game towards teens. And typically to buy something online you need a credit card. Teens don’t have credit cards. So they will need to get parental permission every time they want to buy something (which from my experience is *all the time*).

I assume you don’t just attach a CC to the account and then buy at will. I could see a lot of pissed off parents with a $100 charge when their teen went RMT nuts…

By: Iconic

Iconic — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:23:32 +0000

How long until the Goons invade?

By: Bleaktea

Bleaktea — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 19:57:55 +0000

I got bored of the beta fairly swiftly, but I’m going to be trying to get a subscription for my 12-year-old niece, who will probably love it. I just need to work out some way to prevent her from maxing out my credit card by buying a million hats…

By: Klaitu

Klaitu — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:49:02 +0000

This looks even lamer than WoW, which means it will no doubt be the most popular thing ever.

By: Heartless_

Heartless_ — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 18:28:41 +0000

Maybe I’m just pessimistic (oh really?), but I feel that Free Realms will not be successful enough for SOE to maintain at a reasonable level or production schedule. However, Free Realms will significantly increase the quality expectations of players in the freemium/micro-transactions game market. This all means that smaller projects will have a harder time convincing players that being free to play is a Pro, because without a large enough investment up front, the quality of the game will suffer.

Anyone looking for the next “thing” in MMOs, it will come from games like LOVE, not Free Realms.

By: Gx1080

Gx1080 — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:50:42 +0000

Pointing to a new market isnt a bad thing, AND to make sure that the little ones dont swap for new shiny (like the big ones) its polished. Besides, the ones paying for that are parents, and parents are afraid of the suscription model. This game wouldnt make as much money if it was a suscription model.

Thats called “understanding your demographic”, and if you are going for unexplored terrain, you better do it right. SOE are “doing it right” and we should be happy for them, even if it isnt for us.

Unless the part of us that is talking is jelaous of the fact that a kiddies game is better polished that many of our DIKUMuds or hardcorePvP games. I couldnt be that because we are mature, right? Durr for you if you arent.

By: Jerid

Jerid — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 17:06:18 +0000

“until I see some fixes that never made it into beta; anyone who mined up to level 5 knows what I’m talking about.”

Or tried running the postal quest line.
Or tried doing Pet trainer quests.
Or tried doing Trading Card Duelist Job line.
And as someone mentioned earlier, the racing Jobs.

Frankly, WAYYY too many main jobline quests with issues to be releasing in my opinion, but mabey they DO have the “magic patch noone has seen” that Anarchy Online didn’t have.

Keep in mind antoher thing, they never did allow us at any of the “Member only” content or have Station Cash available to try stuff out. There’s no telling what will happen for someone that goes “Member” for a month or 2 then stops paying either.

However, even with all those negatives… it IS a nice looking game, and I can definately see it drawing in non-MMO types.

Then again it IS SOE we’re talking about, and their logic behind the Micro Trasanctions seem to be a bit lacking. The Trading Card game pricing totaly baffles me. (The “Virtual only cards” cost more then the ones you can buy a phyisical deck for, plus the physical deck gives you a ration of Station Cash on top of it)