Sony Online Entertainment has announced that over eight million unique users have registered to play their kids MMOG, Free Realms. The Festival of Hearts, this year's Valentine's Day event in Free Realms, was also announced today, and is set to kick off sometime this week.

The Festival of Hearts event will run all throughout February and will consist of "themed events, daily social activities and storyline quests that incorporate traditional items and rewards which embody the holiday: hearts, candies, forget-me-not cards, flowers, love potions and more."

The event will also introduce numerous new pets to the Marketplace including the Hippo, Tiger, Beetle, Groundhog and Owl.

View the original announcement here.

5 mil no way.... now 8 mil... They really need to count which are active not made. If WoW was free they could be somewhere in the 80mil

Love these press releases with so much relevant and solid information ;)

I always have my doubt about these kinds of statements from companys . How many are active accounts ? . Still anyway you look at it this game has attracted 8 million people to try it . Thats quite an achievment . As for WoW having 80 million active accounts if it was free hmmm I think thats a little over optamistic but you proberbly were joking .

It's not like its an impossible thing to do. I mean every free mmo I play, if I like it, I would make well over 10 accounts just to get things I need or for extra storage space. I think every "real" player out there has more than 1 account. So if you just keep multiplying that 8 million is not so far away as people would think.

8M registered users... Right now I'm wondering how many active users they have :D

I've given it a try as well, and didn't know how quick to uninstall this piece of crap. Even for a flash game it just sucks.
...and worse of all, you can't cancel / remove your account :(

I don't think even how many active accounts matters here, generally speak active accounts doesnt not equate to cash for SOE, its all about the micro transactions.

The big question is "Have they made their money back?"

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Why do disgruntled SWG vets have to do this every time a SOE article about numbers comes up?  Honestly I can understand where SOE  has lost credibility  ove the years but some of the SOE haters have just as little credibility with all the irrational hair pulling over every single positive SOE post. 

LOL, it has nothing to do with SWG vets, they are using bogus numbers to highly inflate the population of a game that basically has two active servers.  There is such a thing as using common sense when reading an article.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Why do disgruntled SWG vets have to do this every time a SOE article about numbers comes up?  Honestly I can understand where SOE  has lost credibility  ove the years but some of the SOE haters have just as little credibility with all the irrational hair pulling over every single positive SOE post. 

LOL, it has nothing to do with SWG vets, they are using bogus numbers to highly inflate the population of a game that basically has two active servers.  There is such a thing as using common sense when reading an article.

It's the same tactics Cryptic is using with their bogus 1 million accounts.

Registered accounts mean nothing. Both me and my gf created a Free realms account (well we already had an Station account, so it was more like applying Free Realms to it), just to check it out for 30 mins and never looked back at it ever since.

It's the same with Star Trek Online and Cryptic's marketing hype ploy with their 1 million registered accounts.

Everyone had to create an Game Account to be able to post on the forums and/or participate in the Closed/Open Beta. Not to mention that Champions Online players share the same accounts.

So lots of accounts are just forum accounts, champions Online accounts and/or Open Beta accounts. Not people currently and activily playing.

Big difference. Wich is exactly the same here with this Free Realms article.

After all these years. Especially after Age of Conan, Warhammer Online, Champions Online, Vanguard, Hellgate: London.

You would expect people to know how marketing works by now.

How many people out of 8 million accounts have to quit a game for it to not be able to fill up even 1 server.

These announcements might as well say "Hey look how many millions of players decided not to play free realms after trying it". 

This is like having a press release for the biggest flop in mmo history.

One of these days somebody's going to spam around to advertise their game and then claim to have "100 million informed users".

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Why do disgruntled SWG vets have to do this every time a SOE article about numbers comes up?  Honestly I can understand where SOE  has lost credibility  ove the years but some of the SOE haters have just as little credibility with all the irrational hair pulling over every single positive SOE post. 

LOL, it has nothing to do with SWG vets, they are using bogus numbers to highly inflate the population of a game that basically has two active servers.  There is such a thing as using common sense when reading an article.

And of course you have emprical eveidence that proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can post yes?

It's pretty laughable to see folks still deny the sucsess of FreeRealms, it is making SOE a shit-ton of money, so much in fact that SOE is producing a Clone Wars MMO based on the same model, and rumor has it that EQ Next will be based on the FR business model as well. 

All I'm saying is hate who you will but at least put some rational thought behind it.

Originally posted by Guillermo197

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Why do disgruntled SWG vets have to do this every time a SOE article about numbers comes up?  Honestly I can understand where SOE  has lost credibility  ove the years but some of the SOE haters have just as little credibility with all the irrational hair pulling over every single positive SOE post. 

LOL, it has nothing to do with SWG vets, they are using bogus numbers to highly inflate the population of a game that basically has two active servers.  There is such a thing as using common sense when reading an article.

 

It's the same tactics Cryptic is using with their bogus 1 million accounts.

Registered accounts mean nothing. Both me and my gf created a Free realms account (well we already had an Station account, so it was more like applying Free Realms to it), just to check it out for 30 mins and never looked back at it ever since.

It's the same with Star Trek Online and Cryptic's marketing hype ploy with their 1 million registered accounts.

and why do you care what they say? are you invested in that company or a company going head to head with them? i mean my god people. its the same thing everywhere

wow has x subscribers
no they don't
yes they do they qualify subs by this and this
yeah but in china they don't count subs right
yes they do.

Free realms has X amount of accounts
no they don't
yes they do as seen by "this or that"
registered accounts mean nothing .....
yes they do ....

I don't get it why do MMO players feel the need to investigate every single aspect of an opposing MMOs playerbase? play the game you enjoy and quit worrying about what other game companies are announcing. unless you are invested in Blizzard or SOE or Bioware or whatever company then maybe you should worry about the numbers game.

Originally posted by solarine

One of these days somebody's going to spam around to advertise their game and then claim to have "100 million informed users".

 

and if they do? how does that hurt your gaming experience?

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Originally posted by storm-dragon

Why do disgruntled SWG vets have to do this every time a SOE article about numbers comes up?  Honestly I can understand where SOE  has lost credibility  ove the years but some of the SOE haters have just as little credibility with all the irrational hair pulling over every single positive SOE post. 

LOL, it has nothing to do with SWG vets, they are using bogus numbers to highly inflate the population of a game that basically has two active servers.  There is such a thing as using common sense when reading an article.

 

And of course you have emprical eveidence that proves this beyond a shadow of a doubt that you can post yes?

It's pretty laughable to see folks still deny the sucsess of FreeRealms, it is making SOE a shit-ton of money, so much in fact that SOE is producing a Clone Wars MMO based on the same model, and rumor has it that EQ Next will be based on the FR business model as well. 

All I'm saying is hate who you will but at least put some rational thought behind it.

Where is your proof that free realms is making "shit tons" of money for soe?  Their press releases?  For all you know it could still be running in the negatives as they try to find a way to retain players and pour money into advertising. 

For that matter you are repeating rumors as if they are truth.  There is nothing official about Clone Wars or EQ3 being made or based of the free realms engine.  That is just rumor right now.

While I am sure it sounds really impressive to hear a company talk about "8 million accounts" or "50 bazillion character created"  that does not equate to paying and active players.

Lets just look at it this way.  Free realms has not added one new server since it has added the last 7 million accounts.  While soe added 4-5 new servers to handle the demand during their build up to the first million.

Lets do a little rational thinking as you put it.

• Free realms is averaging 800,000 new players a month for the last ten months
• Free realms only has 10 servers, half of which were added prior to reaching 1 million to help meet demand
• 7 million new players have signed up, but not one new server has been added
• The game world is so small that it is little bigger than a large zone for most other mmos.  There just isn't enough in game real estate to fit many people without overloading the world.
• Free realms doesn't even have 1 full server and most are empty. 

Imagine if Mythic claimed that 800,000 new players were joining warhammer each month, but they still only had 5 servers.  People would be laughing their asses off at those claims.

Make the same claims about some kids based browser game and people suddenly assume riches beyond belief and somehow hundreds of thousands of accounts can be supported by 1 game server the size of a postage stamp. 

Why do you think soe had to change the game from free to play to subscription only?  Why do you think smedly was talking about how hard it is to keep the attention of kids for more than 20 minutes and retain them as players?

lol, 8 million registers...big deal, How many of those 8 million actually play the game....probably less that 95% 

Originally posted by XxMaticxX

Originally posted by solarine

One of these days somebody's going to spam around to advertise their game and then claim to have "100 million informed users".

 

 

and if they do? how does that hurt your gaming experience?

It doesn't hurt my gaming experience in the least bit. That's why I *wasn't* talking about my gaming experience. Noticed?

I'm just talking about the ways companies go around advertising things. I find this sort of stuff funny, because it's so see-through. Granted, it still works, but then again I guess that's part of the reason it's funny.