written on Monday, May 11, 2009
I know, I said I was going to play the card game. But then I discovered the Post Office profession. An MMO where you can play as a mail carrier... You pick up mail that's been scattered about. You throw left and right into mail boxes as you run down the street. You drop dog biscuits to keep man's best friend off your butt, and you constantly look for short cuts and speed power ups to avoid taking too long and failing the mission. I'm not going to say the being a mail carrier in Free Realms is awesome, but I will say this.
Why does no other MMO do fetch quests this well?
Perhaps it's because Free Realms isn't trying to be a horrible time sink. The level cap in the game is level twenty. I think I maxed out the Post Office profession in under four hours. Every other MMO is trying to keep players on the hook with mostly just combat for months. Free Realms has a lot of simpler games. I wouldn't say they're less challenging or less fun than combat in traditional MMOs, either. Some mini-games have a goal, bonus goals, and elite goals. I haven't cleared the elite goals for any game ever, so there's definitely challenge. And even if I were to beat the elite goals, there are leaderboards where I could check my high scores against the rest of the world and despair all over again. The card, board, and racing games provide more direct competition. And getting in a party to fight monsters, could provide some co-op entertainment.
I don't know marketing, so I have no idea if Free Realms can succeed in the US with this broader approach. But given what's happened with the Wii and DS over the past few years, and the overall quality of the experience so far, I wouldn't dare dismiss it.
I'm considering getting a subscription ($5 a month) to try out the other professions once I max out the free ones. Knowing me, I'll burn out early next week and never get to that point, though. The combat classes take forever to level and are less fun than cooking or carrying mail, to me.
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