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Press Release

SAN DIEGO, CALIF. – Mar. 29, 2011– Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) today announced that Free Realms®(www.FreeRealms.com), the popular free-to-play, family-friendly virtual world game, is now available as a free download on the PlayStation®Network. Free Realms, originally launched in 2009 for the PC and in 2010 for the MAC computer, has quickly grown into an online community of nearly 17 million registered players!

Free Realms comes as SOE’s second massively multiplayer online game on the PlayStation®3 computer entertainment system, following DC Universe ™ Online’s PC and PS3™release this past January. At launch, Free Realms is also the first free-to-play MMO and the first family-friendly MMO to hit any console to date.

“SOE has set the standard for MMOs on the console with two incredibly successful, innovative and exciting new massive online game worlds for the PlayStation®3 system- first with DC Universe Online and now Free Realms,” said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. “Our games extend the current lifecycle of the console with the added value offer of bringing tens of thousands of people together, in a game world, to socialize at community events, compete in combat activities and engage in a diversity of gameplay experiences, for years to come.”

Much like the PC and MAC versions, Free Realms on the PlayStation®3 system features the fun minigames, robust player housing system and adventure exploration that millions of gamers have come to love. From racing cars and building backyard mazes, to casting spells and mining for gold, in Free Realms players have endless opportunities to play and explore! New to the game, the PS3™version adopts the console’s interactive capabilities and is easily accessible from the PlayStation ® Store. Players are now able to use voice chat to communicate with their friends as they boogie down at parties, engage in battles against mystical characters, and more. Additionally, players can now earn, compare and share trophies.

FEATURES:
Attracted to adventure? Love to Explore? Players can take on endless amounts of roles including ninjas, warriors or wizards, while participating in a variety of activities such as adventuring for treasure, playing a soccer game, decorating their player house or even entering a demolition derby! If players are seeking a totally different challenge, they can participate in minigames and quests that include decorating their house, constructing a maze, or exploring the terrain on the back of their T-Rex Ride. Free Realms is a safe place for friends to imagine and have fun!

· Fun Now, No Waiting: Free Realms is easy to access! Get in the game quickly and easily from the PlayStation®Store, create a character, and adventure in a fully immersive social game world. Click on the Game Guide to access the Activity Finder, Events Calendar, 3D and 2D minigames, quests, Match Making and more!
· Be Whoever You Want: With 15 jobs to get into and more than 30,000 wearable combinations, players can find the perfect profession, or try them all! Jobs include: wizard, blacksmith, medic, archer, warrior, ninja, brawler, chef, miner, demolition derby driver, kart driver, adventurer, postman, soccer star and fisherman.
· Fun for Everyone: With so much to do and seeit’s easy for players to find something fun to do! Start by playing minigames like cooking, mining, soccer, Demolition Derby, or Pirate’s Plunder. Players can decorate their player house with a party dance floor, rocket ship or talking tiki head, or create a maze with any number of items and invite friends over to race through it. The action doesn’t stop there; players can participate with the entire community at live event Boss Battles or in holiday quests, attend in-game concerts and learn boom box dance moves.
· Vibrant, Deep Environment: There are eight distinct, unique and breathtaking environments for players to explore. Areas include the snowcapped mountain villages of Snowhill, the dark and mysterious swamps of Blackspore, and the sunny shores of Seaside.
· Connect with Friends: Whether one’s meeting up with old friends or finding new ones, Free Realms players can connect, play, quest and adventure together. For group quests and multiplayer battles, players just log in to see what their friends have been up to, select them from your friends list, and join them in game.
· Play Free or Upgrade: At its heart, Free Realms is free-to-play, with more than 800 quests and the ability to take each job through level four. Players who want to break through to the next level can become Members with access to an additional 400 quests and the ability to level all jobs up to 20. Memberships are offered in terms of one month, three months, six months and lifetime (valid for the life of the game). Members and free players can also purchase a variety of items and wearables through micro-transactions.
· Family-Friendly: Recently recognized by Creative Child Magazine with the 2010 Creative Toy Award Seal of Excellence, Free Realms is a fun online experience to share with the entire family. Parental controls on the PC and MAC allow for the customization of safety options, include pre-canned and white-list chat, reporting, and filter for younger players. For kids who enjoy playing on the console, robust parental controls are innate to the system PlayStation3 system.

Free Realms is rated E10+ for Everyone 10 and up with content descriptors of Crude Humor and Fantasy Violence. Online Interactions Not Rated by the ESRB. Free Realms is now available to download on the PlayStation Network for free; with options to purchase one month (US $4.99), three month (US $12.99), six month (US $ 24.50), one year (US $29.99), and lifetime membership (US $34.99).

To play Free Realms on PC or MAC, visit: www.FreeRealms.com.

About Sony Online Entertainment
Sony Online Entertainment LLC (SOE) is a recognized worldwide leader in massively multiplayer online games, with hundreds of thousands of subscribers around the globe. SOE creates, develops and provides compelling entertainment for the personal computer, online game console and wireless devices. Known for its blockbuster franchises and hit titles including EverQuest®, EverQuest® II, Champions of Norrath®, Untold Legends™, PlanetSide®, and the recently launched DC Universe Online™, as well as the recent kids’ phenomena Free Realms® and Clone Wars Adventures™, SOE continues to redefine the business of online gaming and the creation of active player communities. Headquartered in San Diego, CA, with additional development studios in Austin, TX, Seattle, WA, Denver, CO, and Tucson, AZ, SOE has an array of cutting-edge games in development across various platforms and genres for audiences of all ages.

SOE, the SOE logo, EverQuest , Free Realms , and PlanetSide are registered trademarks of Sony Online Entertainment LLC. Legends of Norrath is a trademark of Sony Online Entertainment LLC.

All other trademarks and trade names are properties of their respective owners.

Sony Online Entertainment Announce Free Realms Is Out Now In The …

Free Realms has been around for awhile on the PC and Mac, but this past Tuesday Sony released Free Realms for the PlayStation 3.

So, what exactly is Free Realms?  It a nutshell, it’s a lot like what PlayStation Home is: a virtual social world where you can create and style an avatar, decorate your home, change clothes, chat with friends, and play a variety of different minigames, but targeted to a much younger crowd.  It’s like World of WarCraft but with very casual, minigame style “quests”.

It’s very cartoonish in nature, and seems to be targeting the 10 through early teenage years, you know, the ones who think that Club Penguin is no longer for them because it’s a game for babies, and they need something a little more “mature” and  substantial.  Kids are so fickle. 

Installing Free Realms on the PS3 is a bit deceiving.  The original download file from the PlayStation store is 29 megabytes – a quick download, right?  Well, once you download and install the program, an additional 800+ megabyte file is downloaded.  Something to be aware of.  The 800 megabyte download went by relatively quick, but don’t expect to immediately jump into Free Realms when you run the game for the very first time.

Once the full game is installed, you are then instructed to create an avatar, and give it a name.  Just like in any MMO, there are several different choices of character customization.  The selection of clothing was relatively slim, and I expect, just like with Xbox Live’s Avatars and PlayStation Home, you’ll be able to purchase additional items… at a small fee, of course.

Upon joining the world of Free Realms, you’ll see a very familiar and busy game world populated with both actual players and quest givers.  Quest givers have an on-screen arrow with the quest giver’s name and how far they are away from you.  While there is a lot of characters and their names overlaying data on the screen, once you know what to look for, getting where you need to go is a bit less daunting.  I did have trouble a few times trying to chat with a quest giver, but because another player was adjacent to them, the conversation lock-on kept wanting to select the other player rather than the quest giver.

There are a lot of mini-games to play.  Some are basic and familiar games like chess and checkers.  I also played a tower defense game, and an 4-player co-op action games where you protect a flock of sheep from wave after wave of angry wolves.  There were also games that were only available to members, and this is when Free Realms starts to show its true form.

Free Realms is free, but only if you like being limited in what you have access to and what you can do.  Not only do members gain access to perks, but they also gain access to micro-transaction purchases.  In essense, you have to spend money, to then be able to spend MORE money.  Ah, Capitalism at its finest!

Some items are as cheap as 50 cents while other items (like avatar props, etc.) can easily go for $5.50.   The cost of a monthly membership is $5.  However, the payment system through the PlayStation Store gives you a discount if you pay by the 3, 6, or 12 months.  In fact, there is a lifetime membership that is only $5 more than an annual membership.

For me, the thought of paying for something like Free Realms is not appealing at all.  While everybody was playing World of WarCraft (or not playing it while being charged the monthly $15 fee), I was the playing Guild Wars, which didn’t have a monthly fee.

Free Realms is a vortex that will eventually suck your bank account dry.  There is a lot of things to do and games to play that are free, but eventually you’re going to be forced to make a decision if you really want to progress further.

Free Realms (PS3) First Impressions, 5.0 out of 5 based on 1 rating

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Free Realms (PS3) First Impressions « Brutal Gamer

<a href="http://gry.interia.pl/news/daty-premier-nowych-mmo,1584610tag:news.google.com,2005:cluster=http://gry.interia.pl/news/daty-premier-nowych-mmo,1584610Tue, 18 Jan 2011 11:01:01 GMT 00:00″>Daty premier nowych MMO

When asked if the game, which is currently under the working title of Everquest Next, would be coming to PS3, SOE president John Smedley said, “Can’t comment on that. All I can say is we are a Sony company, and we are very, very proud of the work we’ve done on DC Universe Online, which is multi-platform; and we are very, very proud of the work we have done on The Agency, which is multi-platform.”

So, while it isn’t a confirmation, it isn’t a flat out denial either. Considering SOE wants to make a number of upcoming MMOs multi-platform releases, it would appear that the chances we’ll see the next Everquest title on PS3 are good.

Sony Hints At Possibility Of Everquest 3 Coming To PS3 [With …

Today the virtual economy services firm Live Gamer announced the opening of a Live Gamer Exchange (LGX) for the Sony Online Entertainment freemium game Free Realms. The Live Gamer Exchange is a secondary player-to-player marketplace where players can opt to sell their in-game possessions for real money to other Free Realms players. Access to the Free Realms LGX will only be enabled for players who are eighteen and older. 

“Free Realms is the first successful, large-scale MMO in the US to support a freemium model, and Live Gamer is delighted to complete their virtual economy with a sanctioned secondary market for virtual goods,” said Andrew Schneider, President and co-founder of Live Gamer.  

Officially sponsored secondary markets like LiveGamer’s LGX programs allow game publishers to create tremendous reductions in fraud and other customer service issues. Allowing legitimate ways for players to sell in-game virtual currency and goods to each other makes it easier for SOE to identify and ban grey market gold sellers, who are associated with high incidents of charge back and credit card fraud. 

Live Gamer provides secondary market services for SOE titles Everquest, Everquest II, and Vanguard: Saga of Heroes. Live Gamer also provides secondary market services to freemium game publisher NHN USA. Earlier this year, Live Gamer acquired the Korean payments processor N-Cash and the virtual economy analytics firm TwoFish, allowing it to now offer complete suites of virtual economy services for partners on a global scale.  

Early registration for our Engage! Conference and Expocloses Friday, January 14th.  Register now and save.

Live Gamer Launches Free Realms Marketplace | EngageDigital

The fact that Free Realms has yet to launch on the PS3 is a mystery. We’re sure someone over in SOE could explain it to us if they sat us down and took us through the minefield of getting an MMO onto a console, but it’s still baffling as to why, after launching successfully on the PC and attracting millions of free (and subscribing) members, the console version is still in limbo.

With its attractiveness to younger gamers through mini-games and how it introduces the concept of interactivity with others online in a safe, fun environment, not to mention its colourful, customisable characters, Free Realms could be the gateway for Sony to a whole new demographic. Yes, that sounds a little insidious, but I know I’d prefer children were enticed by a game that rewards collaboration with others rather than watching them rank up head-shots in the latest FPS.

2010 was designated “Year of the console MMO” by those in the know. I think we even said it as well at one point. Here’s hoping Sony Online Entertainment finally iron out whatever complex issues they’re having with bringing Free Realms to the console market next year.

We’re still interested SOE, but as you can see from where this kitschy MMO for kids with oodles of potential has appeared on our list, that interest is understandably dwindling.

TSA's Top 100 of 2011 – #95 Free Realms | Gaming News and Opinion …