After you read this preview, don’t expect to hear much more about Free Realms on the pages of GameSpot. Sony Online Entertainment is doing a lot of things differently with its upcoming freely distributed and free-to-play massively multiplayer online game. For starters, SOE plans to market the game solely through viral methods; it will probably do things like seed message boards and allow word of mouth to spread. So we’re not expecting to even see the game again before it releases on the Internet, much less obtain any screenshots or videos to show you.
Luckily, we’re glad to write about it anyway, because Free Realms sounds rather interesting. The game is being created primarily for the PC, with a PlayStation 3 version planned as well. It’s also being created so that people with computers of all shapes and sizes will be able to run it. That means you shouldn’t expect the game to push any graphical boundaries like most retail MMO games do. But on the flipside, Free Realms will purportedly be quite compact because you’ll be able to download the game client, as well as get up and running within the gameworld itself, in a matter of moments. Rather than installing the entire game to your hard drive, you’ll also be able to download new components piecemeal as you move around the gameworld.
What we got to see of the game itself looked fairly promising. SOE says it’s targeting both male and female gamers from a wider range of ages than it has with past MMO games. To that end, the company is crafting a lighthearted, whimsical sort of world in which your adventuring will take place. No details were revealed about the lore behind the gameworld, but it looked like a cartoonish, vaguely medieval setting with some real-world elements, such as what appeared to be a Halloween celebration. Again, this isn’t the most graphically complex game you’ve ever seen, but it seems to be taking the World of Warcraft track, with colorful and varied art design making up for any technical shortcomings.
