More on Free Realms: Developer Interview
Adding to the last Free Realms post, one of the Bright Hub writers has posted an interview with the Free Realms Developers:
I wish I had been able to get her to ask more poingant questions about the harsh dropoff between free and subscriber.
It is indeed a bit too much on the friendly side. Nobody gets hurt.
“It’s up to you what you do or don’t want to buy.” said Laralyn M.
Well, of course, as always?
I would have liked to ask her about her opinion that a fresh level 1 warrior with a shop sword can beat the crap out of a level 11 free to play brawler class and do high level quests quests all alone that the brawler can not.
Yeah, that doesn’t really surprise me. It doesn’t really sound like there’s much of a choice at all. Either you pay to play, or you’re gimp.
Another thing that caught my eye was their trading card game. At first I was like “who’d actually buy this?”, then I noticed the bit about each package containing 50 Station cash. What is Station cash used for? Given their target market of 10-15 year olds, they’ll probably have more luck selling the cards than they will subscriptions.
One of my writers created a REALLY detailed Chef Guide:
http://www.brighthub.com/video-games/mmo/articles/39466.aspx