Originally posted by Kyleran

Originally posted by local93bc

If they market this thing right I smell a WoW Killer.

 

What are you talking about...this is a WoW clone all the way.  Has the same depth of gameplay I'm sure.

A bunch of kids running around using their parents credit card to get access to the game? 

"""What are you talking about...this is a WoW clone all the way.  Has the same depth of gameplay I'm sure.

"""""".

Well I know they are targueting the same oddience.

My initial response when I saw the small advert for this game on the mmorpg.com home page was "Oh a kiddies mmo.....well that will just be a simplified version of any other mmo with bad graphics. Its just gonna be crap".

Then I read more about it and found that actually it offers MORE than any of the other mmos currently out! What the hell is going on?! I'm sick to death of all the brain dead, repetitive & unimaginative crap that currently seems to capture the minds of millions and then along comes another one that has everything all of those games have and........its aimed at young children!!!! Surely you can see the point that SOE is making right?

Its pretty funny that adults take games like WoW, EQ2, Vanguard and others seriously when Free Realms has pretty much the same level of complexity. It says everything about the average online gamer really doesnt it.

The existence of Free Realms simply confirms the extremely low standards that mmos have reached. Also I think the way that SOE is grooming young children to become brain dead level grinders is disgusting. They are setting them up so that later in life they have more customers to play their level grinding garbage games.

The terrible thing is that it will work.

Originally posted by Reklaw

So by the looks of it SOE seems capable to produce a diverse MMO, but then my question why ain't they really doing this with the more mature MMO's, cause most of them are dumped down, now not in the sense some people try to want to make you believe, but overall most more adult oriented MMORPG have been sort of dumped down to please the instant gratification type of player, yet seeing this child's game it seems to offer more the many of current crop of MMORPG's are offering.............WHY?.

Anyway even thought the possibility in this game afcourse it doesn't appeal to me, but I would like this type of game structure to be seen with more MMORPG for the "adult" community.

Why they've decided on a free to play/pay to play model was addressed by Mr. Smedley in a recent interview.  If I remember correctly, he was impressed with the success of Runescape.
 

So, it looks like once again he has seen another company's success with a particular model, and he intends to emulate it with the hope of achieving similar results.

He also talked about free to play games with cash options like RMT loot or trading cards.  I believe he said that people would pay you more money for these things than you might expect.  He seemed to think that RMT and optional content subscriptions could gain more revenue in the long run than a standard monthly subscription fee model.

The impression I got from his comments was that again this is all about finding the magic target audience and the magic business model to maximize revenue.  I'm sure that makes sense to him.  It also makes sense to me, but it's a very two dimensional plan.

The missing dimensions include things like excellent quality assurance.  Simply speaking, the game should work well.  It should also include excellent customer service.  On the rare occasion that something goes wrong, the service provider should be courteous, respond quickly and help the customer find a solution to the problem.  This is not what SOE is known for in my experience.  Next, communication about the service should be absolutely honest and accurate.  No games, no deception, no manipulation, no bait and switch etc.  Once again, SOE doesn't seem to have a good reputation for these things.

My advice to Mr. Smedley would be to change his focus.  If he really wants to be successful, he needs to put his customers' experience much higher on his list of priorities.  Once he has done this, I think he'll find a way to address QA issues, customer service and marketting.  As long as he keeps searching for the magic business formula with the ideal target audience (to the exclusion of more important factors), he's going to miss the whole point of an MMO, an entertaining experience for the customer.

For example, wouldn't it be cool if he just thought one day, "What kind of gaming experience would really be fun and exciting for kids?  Let's build that.  Of course if we do a good job, we'll be duly compensated with an excellent revenue source, but this is really about kids having fun."   Really that would be fantasitic wouldn't it?   When I read his responses in interviews, however, this really just doesn't seem to be where he's coming from.

My advice to SOE at this point would be to ensure their management team has priorities and strategies that lend themselves to customer satisfaction and long term success.  If this doesn't seem to be the case, well something needs to change.

Smedlys job isn't to make games, it's to make money. Money which keep the 100's of employee's at SOE from having to be out of work. While making games is fun and creative, it takes millions of dollars and investors want the song and dance, reassurance their money, time and patience will be rewarded after the 3-4+ years it takes to make an MMO. Smed doesn’t decide what’s in the game, the developers do. If the game is tanking it's not Smeds fault it's the developers and Smedly does what he can to salvage the game so it continues to make a revenue and support future projects.

why make mmorpg for kids i mean kids don't really care what they playing as long is colorfull and easy to play and have some toon they like or something heck they can play flash games and enjoy it the same way they whould enjoy mmorpg

Originally posted by betatry

why make mmorpg for kids i mean kids don't really care what they playing as long is colorfull and easy to play and have some toon they like or something heck they can play flash games and enjoy it the same way they whould enjoy mmorpg

And what do you define as kids? 6year olds? o.o

I know for facts that my younger brother loved games like Halo, Wow and GTA before he turned ten. So meh.. It's all relative what the younger generations like.

Originally posted by Arioc

Smedlys job isn't to make games, it's to make money. Money which keep the 100's of employee's at SOE from having to be out of work. While making games is fun and creative, it takes millions of dollars and investors want the song and dance, reassurance their money, time and patience will be rewarded after the 3-4+ years it takes to make an MMO. Smed doesn’t decide what’s in the game, the developers do. If the game is tanking it's not Smeds fault it's the developers and Smedly does what he can to salvage the game so it continues to make a revenue and support future projects.

Those of you who have been around a while recall a few games which came out and died, or never came out due to cash flow. Putting a game out there is a complex process that takes allot of different skill sets. Even Blizzard tried to do Warcraft: Adventures via outsourcing and that didn't work so they had to scrap the project which they had already invested money into. Ghost suffered from a number of issues I won't get into here and ultimately that's been put on indefinite hold despite the tons of cash invested into it. Had Blizzard not succeeded with WoW they'd be in rocky waters. And while it's nice to view them as flawless due to their successful titles, they've made mistakes like any normal people.

 

Point I'm making is that Smedly is often the one people point a finger at because he represents SOE. Everything that happens in any MMO that pisses you off tends to be his fault. Ultimately he makes the money he does because despite mess-ups, or mistakes by the company he ensures there's enough money to mess up, learn from it, and move on to do better.

 

Free Realms is proof that SOE is trying to put out a quality product, and investing money into it to do so. If in the end the product is lacking Smed will take the blame, but it won't be his fault. He'll take the heat, do the song and dance, and have to deal with all the headache and heartache while the developers will move onto the next projects.All this so that SOE can stay profitable and people can have jobs at a stable company, rather then one where the next game can make or break the entire company.

 

If you're in the industry you know what I mean, companies release a game they think will do well that doesn’t sell too good, despite the investment and they close their doors. Or layoff allot of people...

Smed  is in charge so it is his fault for bad leadership.

All their games stink and they have the worst rep in the mmorpg genre, which is quite a hard achievement to get seeing as there are games like DnL around.

The trailer actually looked exactly like wow at times. Text that looked like Austin Powers credits and an acorn flying like a missile very similar to mario kart.

$OE are reminding me of a cheap market clothes stall that blatantly copies designers to the last button. Oh wait, they dont try to sell it off as original, you know you're buying a fake.

Actually, what I wanted to say here was - you know what will happen in the best case scenario for $OE: The game becomes very popular for children and $OE in all their wisdom and taken by surprise thinks they have a winner here but are only appealing to one part of the market so they change the game so adults can play too, ruining all the hard work the kids put into it to chase more $$.

Does this game have a warning on it that says

"Warning: May turn your child islamic"?

Originally posted by Interpshot

Does this game have a warning on it that says

"Warning: May turn your child islamic"?

Kinda am wondering why a game should refure to a religion, or are you one of those people who for some reason thinks Islamics is equel to terrorist cause the media tells it sort of that way?