I know you’re in love with mono-word posts lately, but for those of us who can’t a) view gamer sites at work and b) can’t watch videos from work in any case, could you be a little more descriptive of what would be found if one were able to follow the link, and why it’s noteworthy?
Lately, I dunno. Maybe you should can the blog and just use Twitter?
I seem to remember a few years ago when SOE called WoW’s graphics too cartoony. They were lauding their “realistic” graphics of EQ2. Now it seems they have a good Dev Team working on this and a very good product. I’m surprised this is SoE.
If that’s Free Realms on the link, I had a good long look at it at Fan Faire. It’s more like what if Chuck Jones made an MMO.
Looks kinda grindy; you have to farm stars to upgrade each profession individually. You can have a LOT of professions, so that’s a lot of star farming…
“…we’ve made delivering the mail interesting and fun.”
This makes me want to cry, since what they showed while making that statement struck me as neither interesting nor fun. Am I a bad person? Am I a hater?
Also I’ll second Tipa’s request for more information about your linkage. For all we knew, you could be sending us to a site protesting how Kraft Foods is poisoning our children with colorful, sugar-laden drinks.
(And, completely on a tangent, once, in college, I made a Kool-aid reference in a public speaking class that was being taught by a professor named Jim Jones. I had never seen 20 people do a spit-take at once. It was amazing.)
Jalann, how did you explain it to them… in my minds eye I see ….
(shimmershimmer)
“So, Koolaid drinking. Picture this, there are they two gamers, let’s call them Heartless and Brent… and then we have these two different video game companies. Now imagine if H and B liked different things …”
When are we gonna stop apologizing for these games and say it’s not okay to have combat that can be accomplished with one hand? Free Realms: Yet another mmo where you can take a nap while fighting! I’m not asking for Ninja Gaiden or Devil May Cry combat depth, especially in a children’s game, but will any developer ever make a game that takes actual skill to play well?
I told them the whole story of Jim Jones. My mother-in-law was there to fill in the gaps. I was 3 to 4 years old one it happened. It’s strange that I should remember it. My parents were driving me home from a restaurant when the news came over the radio. As a child, I remember asking my parents what cyanide was, what suicide was and what was so bad about Kool Aid.
No, I don’t remember their answers. I just remember them looking at each other during the radio report and me asking them questions.
Not coolaid indeed. Crazy people drink coolaid and believe. You must be getting paid richly to actually sit through that video and still retain any interest at all.
They featured mail delivery as something to look forward to. The ‘fetch x’ quest design now has a full class built exclusively for it, with an AWESOME run faster ability, how great… Guess they never played LoTRO and did the Shire mail delivery quest, complete with hobbits that you must avoid like the dogs. Problem is, in LoTRO it was thankfully only one quest, not an entire ‘feature’ to look forward to, or to promote in a video. It’s like SOE saw the ‘chicken play’ think LoTRO did, and said ‘Ok, lets design something even more worthless than that, and then toss in a ninja’.
Being burned out on MMOs is one thing, everyone needs a break, but to peddle this as the future…?
That video did not make me interested in playing the game.
But I am also pretty sure I am neither the target audience for the game, nor the target audience for the presentation.
The mail delivery was probably easier for them to demo and they did certainly did not show that much of the different play styles they mentioned. It seems more that they showed how some features from other MMOs looked like in Free Realms rather than trying to make the game stand out as a different take on things. Remains to be seen, but I thought the game was more interesting from what she said rather than what she showed.
For a free MMO , it’s a very nice… for 12 year-olds.
Lots of mini-games inside? All combat is instanced? Mobs that get little stars around their head when you beat the them? Heck even some 12 year olds I know would get tired of such a game quickly. FreeRealms will obviously have a lot of nice little games/features, but by choosing to spread out their focus, by necessity they will not have enough depth any specific area to satisfy a grown-up who wants a bit more sophistication from his/her MMO. How many abilities did that ninja have? 4? How many gear options?
I see nothing exceptional or truly innovative. The ability to switch your class instantly (and without any in-game currency penalty) is just a design decision – the opposite of what WoW devs chose, but that doesn’t make it innovative. The inclusion of mini-games is a detriment IMHO to a serious MMO, not something helpful. For that matter, it’s also a waste of dev time – WoW (and any other game with a programmable API) allows many mini-games to be programmed (as indeed they have) by fans. I didn’t see the video till the end, so if they talked about the crafting mini-game and if it’s any good, that perhaps is an exception to the rule – a good crafting system can be a lot of fun.
Darren, if you truly believe FR is innovative or the way MMOs will look like in the future, I’m sorry to say, I personally believe in that case you’re drinking something considerably stronger than Koolaid ;p
I liked a lot of their ideas and goals, but the implementation left me much less enthusiastic. It should be popular, but not sure how much fun it will be. Worth checking out anyway.
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