Sony Online Entertainment has announced that FreeRealms is getting hoverboards. That’s right, the Ride every kid has wanted since 1989, debuts today in the family-friendly virtual world of Free Realms™! Players will look cool cruising around Free Realms at 150 percent of their character’s normal walking speed and showing off with board trick animations. The Precursor Tech Hoverboard is currently available in a brown and blue version and a brown and orange version, each for 550 Station Cash in the Marketplace.
At the time I said the demo looked quite amazing and it struck me that a lot of people, adult gamers included, could make great use of the environment as a place where they could all meet, either to game with each other or to social network, especially if they were friends who are otherwise playing different games to one another.
And you know what? Despite some comments I will make in a moment, I think that might just come true. This is a very polished gameworld to be able to engage in for free and I think it will appeal to both sexes; and probably even more Free Realms Coins to female gamers.
It sounds like I must have been playing Free Realms recently to make that sort of call and, yes, I have been. A little while ago, I made a bearded avatar I called “George Imperialsaga” (I used the in-game name generator to come up with that), and due to his likeness to a certain bearded director of space fantasy movies, petitioned that his real name should be George Lucas which, bizarrely, SOE approved. So if you’ve seen George Lucas running around in-game lately, yes, that was me. Guilty as charged.
So what’s the game like? Well, at the risk of disappointing people, it’s like every other MMO out there. You run around a game world; you do quests; you can talk to people; you can explore; etc, etc. Surprisingly, based on everything I had thought it would be, I found it to be very grindy. Very, very grindy, actually. While it’s a cool concept that one character can be multiple professions and, in turn, it’s very easy to unlock the first level of each profession for your character, like ninja, postman, medic, blacksmith, warrior, treasure hunter, wizard, kart driver, chef, brawler and explorer (phew, and that’s not even all Free Realms Gold), it actually takes quite a bit of running around and “doing stuff” to get to level two. I haven’t even gone beyond level two as I set about playing the opening level of as many professions as possible, but if the game follows regular MMO conventions and makes level three harder to achieve than level two… well, it’s a good thing the game’s free, as kids might need to spend years leveling in it.
