Baby’s First MMO
It’s kinda fun going from the blood-spattered hallways of Rainbow 6 Vegas 2 (which I am enjoying way too much lately) to a magical land full of faeries and sheep and stuff.
Yes, it’s apparently free MMO week in my brain, because I decided to give the aptly titled Free Realms a shot.
Free Realms is currently being marketed as a “fun for the whole family” MMO, which means that some internet subculture is probably plotting its downfall at this very moment. In all seriousness, the best way to describe it seems to be Nintendo DS + Popcap games + a hefty dose of “hey kids, you gotta pay for the good stuff!”, all wrapped up in a shiny 3D graphics package. In short, marketing brilliance.
Players can choose to be a human or a pixie character (I made a human chick named Violet Ponyhammer, in case you were wondering. Fear me.) and run around doing jobs. For example, the Chef career involves things like playing a Bejeweled clone to harvest vegetables and then playing a blatant Cooking Mama ripoff to actually craft things. Other careers include Postman (whoo, sign me up!), Miner (in case you get nostalgic for killing people over ore in WoW), Pet Trainer (better get Mommy’s purse), and Kart Racer/Demolition Derby driver. Luckily, you don’t have to choose just one out of so many fine options; you earn xp in the job simply by doing it.
I will say I’m highly impressed with the game itself; you sign in from your browser, but it launches in a new window that looks like you just fired up a regular MMO. Which, you have to admit, is pretty brilliant when the thing is geared toward children.
While I mock Free Realms, I would actually highly recommend it to anyone who has school-aged kids; I can see myself going crazy over this back in the day. (We barely had the internet back then! You kids these days don’t know how good you got it! Now get off my lawn!) Just be mindful that SOE has strategically placed “buy me!” things every two feet, so be prepared to tell your little snowflake “no.”