Free Realms has been soaring in users since it's launch, what with hitting the 1 million user mark in only 10 days. Today, President of SOE John Smedley announced that Free Realms has almost hit the five million user mark at a panel at the San Diego Comic Con.

Smedley credits the free-to-play, microtransaction business model as playing a large role in the success of the game.

Also on the panel was Min Kim, from developer Nexon, known for their wildly successful game MapleStory, who chimed in on microtransactions in Western games:

 “When people started talking about it back in 2000, people said Western games would never want to do this, to play a game for free and then buy and items. And now everybody is saying, 'We're going to have microtransactions as part of our business model.”

Get the full story over at Gamasutra.

The increasing success of Free Realms seems to legitimize the notion that microtransactions could work in the West. Is this a sign we're headed towards a new age in the MMOG genre? Let us know in the comments!

UPDATE: SOE Representatives have gotten in contact with Gamasutra to clarify that Free Realms has not actually hit five million users, but is close. We apologize for any confusion.

While I'm certain SOE"s micro transaction buisness model has something to do with the success of this game, the looks and gameplay shouldn't be overlooked. 

Personally, I'm still disheartened by the lack of character progression.  20 levels?   Really? 

I would love to see what kind of numbers a grown-up version of FR could do.

~R~

From Gamasutra:

"According to SOE representatives, Smedley announced that Free Realms was "close to" reaching the 5 million milestone, but has not yet reached it"

Originally posted by Nasa

From Gamasutra:

"According to SOE representatives, Smedley announced that Free Realms was "close to" reaching the 5 million milestone, but has not yet reached it"

Yes, they just updated it. Thanks, I will update our story.

Wow, so they edit information like that on the fly? "Hits 5 millions" and then "close to 5 millions"?

Anyway, registered users mean nothing. They should provide numbers on how many players are online like EVE if they want us to think its "success" which is what they want in press releases.

And remember, it's SOE we're talking about.

For MT, it's succesful as long as devs don't lie about it, just be straightforward - premium subscription in order to access 90% of the game, virtual TCG and item mall. So those of us who don't enjoy games that don't use a standard fee simply won't waste our time and your time - like all the flames in CO and STO forums after the Cryptic Tokens information leaked from preorders when they had never announced it, and still they haven't specified anything besides "maybes", stretched comparisons, "perhaps", "mostly" and things like that in every sentence.

Another meaningless fluff announcement from SOE trying to show that they are having success. Registered users in a free to play game mean ABSOLUTELY NOTHING.

The guy is right about one thing, the free to play nature IS why they have so many registered users, because people can register and play without paying a dime. What I think he is wrong about, is calling it a success.

think I'll go register, log in for 5 minutes.... then leave, never to return.............

Then they will have 5 million and 1 registered users!! wowzers!

A press release saying that its profitable, or talking about how many people are playing would something worth announcing.

Originally posted by spookytooth

think I'll go register, log in for 5 minutes.... then leave, never to return.............

Then they will have 5 million and 1 registered users!! wowzers!

A press release saying that its profitable, or talking about how many people are playing would something worth announcing.

It is profitable why do i think this ?   We all know soes past and if it wasnt profitable they wouldnt do it.   

Originally posted by spookytooth

think I'll go register, log in for 5 minutes.... then leave, never to return.............

Then they will have 5 million and 1 registered users!! wowzers!

A press release saying that its profitable, or talking about how many people are playing would something worth announcing.

depends what they mean by users, and how it's defined, at one stage that's how blizzard put it... or players, they even had to do a FAQ in the early days to tell people that it was subscribers.

meh... to be honest even having 5 million people register is impressive enough, check out Funcom, WAR... etc they could only dream of those numbers signing up. Although i still prefer the Guild Wars way of doing things Western wise.... i do hate micro transactions. (Although DDU NA looks interesting enough - even Funcom haven't totally written off going the micro transational way)

Do remember Free Realms is marketed for kids (much like pirates of the caribean online and toontown etc) who seem to spend a fortune with their cell phone products (jamstar for example). So... a few transactions here and there from money and daddy... who are quite happy, because they know where their kids are rather than not knowing ;)

Good luck to Star Wars MMO and Champions Online for having both Subs and micro transactions (that's really going to work).

*shudders* lets hope blizz never do, it's bad/easy/etc enough already without....... an item shop in WoW.

Originally posted by Markn12

Originally posted by spookytooth

think I'll go register, log in for 5 minutes.... then leave, never to return.............

Then they will have 5 million and 1 registered users!! wowzers!

A press release saying that its profitable, or talking about how many people are playing would something worth announcing.

 

It is profitable why do i think this ?   We all know soes past and if it wasnt profitable they wouldnt do it.   

and to that I say, Planetside, Vanguard,  Matrix....rrrrrr scratch the matrix. Profitable? Well I guess Planetside is profitable too since there are only 2 devs working on it. Maybe "successful" would be a better word to use. But I have a feeling we would just be juggeling semantics around :/

and 5 millon registered for a FREE game is nothing. There are flash games that have had over a million players, with chincy java graphics, and no advertising. Second Life touts 44 million "players" or some such. Again, so what?  As the years go by those munbers will only climb higher and higher, but it would not mean there are more players. There needs to be a better way of measuring the success of a FREE game.

Why do you think SOE has offered all of the free returns to EQ, EQ2, SWG, and all of the other games this past month?!?!

Lots of people to count for Free Realms numbers! :)

If Free Realms was half as successful as they make it out to be, I don't think SOE would have recently layed off 5% of its staff.

Many may be trying it - because it's free - but that's all these statistics tell us.

Originally posted by describable

Originally posted by spookytooth

think I'll go register, log in for 5 minutes.... then leave, never to return.............

Then they will have 5 million and 1 registered users!! wowzers!

A press release saying that its profitable, or talking about how many people are playing would something worth announcing.

 

depends what they mean by users, and how it's defined, at one stage that's how blizzard put it... or players, they even had to do a FAQ in the early days to tell people that it was subscribers.

meh... to be honest even having 5 million people register is impressive enough, check out Funcom, WAR... etc they could only dream of those numbers signing up. Although i still prefer the Guild Wars way of doing things Western wise.... i do hate micro transactions. (Although DDU NA looks interesting enough - even Funcom haven't totally written off going the micro transational way)

Do remember Free Realms is marketed for kids (much like pirates of the caribean online and toontown etc) who seem to spend a fortune with their cell phone products (jamstar for example). So... a few transactions here and there from money and daddy... who are quite happy, because they know where their kids are rather than not knowing ;)

Good luck to Star Wars MMO and Champions Online for having both Subs and micro transactions (that's really going to work).

*shudders* lets hope blizz never do, it's bad/easy/etc enough already without....... an item shop in WoW.

Star Trek* (Mythic)

Not Star Wars. Please don't ruin that game yet, let us have some good times in SWTOR before some major screw up from Bioware, which hopefully may never happen.

I'm sorry, but I don't see proof that these are paying customers.  How many of those 5M fork out any money at all and how many fork out even as much as 15 bucks a month?  How many play the game because it's free rather than because it's micro transaction based?

They provide no data what so ever to prove any of their claims.  They're no different than insurance companies pretending to be good neighbors only to screw you as soon as you file a claim.  Smoke and mirrors, smoke and mirrors.

Originally posted by EricDanie

Star Trek* (Cryptic)

Not Star Wars. Please don't ruin that game yet, let us have some good times in SWTOR before some major screw up from Bioware, which hopefully may never happen.

Sorry, had to fix that for ya! =)

Originally posted by mackdawg19

Originally posted by EricDanie

Star Trek* (Cryptic)

Not Star Wars. Please don't ruin that game yet, let us have some good times in SWTOR before some major screw up from Bioware, which hopefully may never happen.

 

Sorry, had to fix that for ya! =)

I wouldn't bet on it.  Their design philosophy according to an interview  is to ignore the top hardcore MMO gamers when it comes to content and mechanics, yet they still plan to implement raids.  How is that possible without diminishing the accomplishments of casuals and crafters and PvPers?  Smoke and mirrors.......

Originally posted by Markn12

Originally posted by spookytooth

think I'll go register, log in for 5 minutes.... then leave, never to return.............

Then they will have 5 million and 1 registered users!! wowzers!

A press release saying that its profitable, or talking about how many people are playing would something worth announcing.

 

It is profitable why do i think this ?   We all know soes past and if it wasnt profitable they wouldnt do it.   

Of course they wouldn't do it. what business would? The sole purpose of a business is to make money. People love to say "such and such a company is only in it for the money" "they don't care about the players". Of course they're in it for the money. That deserves a big fat duh. And you have to care about the players. You have to keep the largest group happy so they keep playing. The more who play means more money.

Free certainly does help. It's also aimed at kids which is a huge population. System requriements are low.  It's not hard to see how it's a runaway success. It would be interesting to see how they calculate their numbers. Is it total registered accounts? Peopel who played in the last 30 days? I don't know. But either way it's still a success.

From the article itself, Maple Story's Min Kim:

He credited his company's successful introduction of the MMO Maple Story to the West. With Maple Story's revenue accrued in 2007, microtransaction revenue provides the equivalent of about 120,000 monthly paying users in more traditional subscription-based games. The game reaches over 6 million free and paying registered users in the United States with little marketing effort so far.

So in the absence of any information from SOE other than that they're nearing 5 million registered users, we would guess this gives SOE earnings from Free Realms equivalent to approximately 100k subscribers.

Yeah, MT is working so well for SOE that they had to lay off 41 people last week.

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Originally posted by green13
If Free Realms was half as successful as they make it out to be, I don't think SOE would have recently layed off 5% of its staff.

---

That means they had over 800 employees.

Im guessing the lay offs had absolutely nothing to do with Free Realms and everything to do with that being WAAAAAY too many employees.

Also, none of you know how successful Free Realms is.
That is a fact.
All you have is speculation based on blind SOE hate.