Earlier this month I sat in on the SOE influencer’s event, a unique opportunity to provide feedback on and hear feedback from the Sony Online community team. As part of that experience, all of the folks at the event were shown a demo of the in-development title Free Realms. Our host was the informative Laralyn McWilliams, lead designer on the project . The core of the presentation was a video demo, essentially the same experience that press folks had at CES. What distinguished the demo we were given was that it wasn’t from CES - it was actually from SOE’s in-house open house event held early this year.

Today I have a complete writeup of the demo we were shown, which fleshes out many elements previously only glossed over. In and of itself, it answers a lot of questions previously raised by SOE’s ambitious project. You can learn about your character’s personal Facebook-style website, the features Free Realms has in common with Google Maps, and what bestselling Nintendo DS game is being incorporated as a major non-violent gameplay component. You can also enjoy concept art like the Town Hall above … exclusive concept art never before seen outside of SOE. Fancy, no?

For the fully monty, make sure to come back tomorrow. I’ll have the contents of the Q&A session held at the end of the event, complete with audio! (Also known as a podcast episode.) That session is full of fascinating insights and hints at what this game may offer - as well as the categorical statement above that seems to typify the attitude of the Free Realms development process. The full on MMO experience, aimed at younger folks … and sans the bullshit.

The demo video showcased a number of expected features in the game, including housing, exploration, combat, and dressing up of your avatar. It was noted that the game has an incredibly friendly system spec, about what you’d need to play World of Warcraft.

The actual walkthrough of the game began out at the title’s website, where the game’s character creation element begin. Free Realms is going to offer two races, humans and faeries of both sexes, at launch. The creator is made in flash, but all options are available instantly. While you’re making your character the client is being delivered to your system in the background. There’s no visible download needed to get into the game.

The character select screen bears a lot of resemblance to a Facebook page. It’s covered in standout graphics, and showcases Achievements the player has netted from in-game activities. It also shows a to-do list, which displays quests the player is on as well as ‘much, much more’. Pets, jobs, and collections are all shown on the page, as is a news feed and a comprehensive friends list. The list shows which players are online, allows chatting right from the webpage to in-game, and with a simple click can have a player teleporting right to their friend inside the gameworld.

As with the CES demo, a quick video shows to demonstrate the possibilities of the ad-supported version of the game. While that’s playing I ask a quick question to clarify: “So this is *not* a web-based game?” It is not. Free Realms runs off of a very small client, not straight from the browser.

Once in-game, the art style you may have seen in demo footage really pops out. It’s noted that this art is now ‘old’; the game looks even better now than it did back during CES. We’re in the Faerie starting area, which is the ‘youngest-feeling’ area of the game. While the game as a whole is aimed at younger folks, most areas don’t skew as young as the lighthearted snow-village shown off in all the demos so far. The town is decorated for Christmas, an event built into the world and active at the time the demo footage was captured.

The whole concept behind Free Realms is to capture ‘how people use the web’. In-game chat is very similar to AIM, and visual emotes will be available from a list. “We’re trying to eliminate slash commands as much as possible.” The interface itself is very spare an minimalist; it only appears when you bring the mouse down to the bottom of the screen, and then presents itself as a series of attractive icons. They deliberately tried to imitate the Mac OSX UI for the game environment, and attempted to make most of the user interface elements ‘fun to use’.

Chat bubbles, for example, are one-click easy to change colors (to suit your mood) and in a crowded space the game presents you with a scored mini-game to click them closed. The upper-left hand mini-map is a very physical element, which can be flipped over to access its options. Instead of just copying what everyone else has done, there’s a definite feeling that they’re trying to convey the feel of the gameworld at pretty much every level. The inventory screen is similarly tactile, and the in-game map, we’re told, will have “Google-like features”. You’ll be able to search for NPCs, for friends, and teleport to them instantly.

The game’s international launch means that everything in-game is going to be iconography-based, instead of textual. Large, friendly, soft-edged shapes are everywhere in the UI, a visual way to interact with the game environment.

The village tour continues with a stop by the Penguin rookery, the starting areas pet location. Each starting zone will have its own adoptable pet – different for every village. We pass by a soccer field, a skating rink, and even a performance stage. All of these are meant to convey the reality that Free Realms isn’t the sort of traditional fantasy game the genre is used to. Instead, it’s a world of the designers making that cribs some elements of fantasy, but will happily steal from any genre or trope that seems appropriate.

By talking to the village’s local mailman, the tour went on to cover NPC interaction and the game’s loose ‘class’ system. NPC dialogue is done via bright text, colorful images, and (when obtaining quest) straightforward goals. Simply by changing into the outfit of a mail courier, the demo avatar’s abilities changed in a context-appropriate way. With the mailman outfit on, the ‘mail delivery’ mini-game becomes available in-world. The mini-game browser is all in-game, with no immersion-breaking elements of any kind. Most interesting is their hope that players will actually play many of these village quest in multiple ways. For example, while one is a straightforward delivery route, another requires players to sort through simple riddles. Another uses a hot/cold mechanic that has the player searching out missing mail, and a fourth requires the player to play a sort of tag with a mail-stealing puppy.

The world of Free Realms is seamless, a feat displayed as the player moved into the mine nearby the village. A short interlude with another player in the mine reveals that every mini-game, every quest, is also completeable within a group. The two add each other to their friends lists, which allows for personal qualifiers above and beyond the normal simple ‘buddy list’ functionality. Family members, Best Friends, Guildmates, and Schoolmates are all possible labels.

Another interlude has the player opening up their personal Facebook-style webpage from within the game world. There (visible from the web as well) the player’s avatar is depicted in her current Mailman mode. Her new friend is also visible on her list, and other ongoing concerns (like the mail quest) are displayed for anyone to see. The site reflects the state of the character as her adventure in-world progresses.

The mini-games in Free Realms have a physicality to them; they’re not just random tasks to be completed. The mail delivery quest is very specific, with the movement of mail. A mining machine is interacted with to start a crafting-style mini-game. Chatting is an option as you continue to play, with all UI elements available even while completing a task.

The final element to be shown in the mines area is combat. We’re told that the combat shown in the demo is ‘old’, with several iterations on the style and substance of the experience having changed even since late January. To run through combat, the player dons a ninja outfit and enters an instance. These sequestered areas will allow for unique storytelling and group-play possibilities. We’re told to pay attention to the UI, which looks very familiar – it’s essentially a combat-specific version of the general UI. “In Free Realms combat is our biggest mini-game.” Combat isn’t the only thing to do in the game world, something they’re very proud about holding out. The ninja can throw stars, or move up to auto-attack. “Combat right now is actually very similar to Guild Wars, if you’ve ever played that.” Each combat experience is tailored to the character’s needs at the moment – further, the combat elements are repeatable. An analogy is drawn to EQ or EQ2, where (upon completing a quest) a Bard might get a harp and a Warrior might receive a sword. ‘Class’ abilities can be raised via a character development currency, but we’re told again that what we’re seeing has gone through several iterations from the bland-looking UI shown to us.

Traveling to the character’s in-game house, a new gardener outfit is donned . There the player attends to her flower garden, and we’re told that many different types of plants are going to be in the game – gardening is a whole other mini-game. Rearing fruit trees or flowers will result in harvestable elements like apples, pears, or various-colored roses.

This leads to a discussion of collections, an increasingly popular gameplay element we’ve seen in other online titles. “Everything in Free Realms is part of some collection”, we’re told. Picking a rose from the garden, for example, fulfills the ‘rose’ requirement in the flowers collection, and the ‘red rose’ requirement from the rose collection. Each completed collection will convey some sort of tangible award. “There are always visible ways to display these [completed collections]. So if there were a collection of the eight dragons of Free Realms, and I’ve killed them all, I might get a dragon head to mount on my house.”

As a final domestic moment, the pet system is engaged by summoning the player’s AI cat. Interacting with the creatures will be very much like Nintendogs, apparently, with learned behaviors and personality quirks developing in your critter over time. You can encourage specific behaviors, such as aggressiveness towards strangers or shyness. The pet will come with quirks as well, allowing you the opportunity to come to understand your pet’s goals and needs.

To cap off Ms. McWilliam’s demo, the in-game player opened up an in-game microtransaction interface. Everything mentioned in the demo will be available for free players, but everyone likes a little perk. To celebrate the holidays, the player buys a cute green and red Christmas dress. Jumping back to the character’s Facebook page, it’s easy to see the new wardrobe choice available there as well. The new flower entries in the player’s collections are also reflected on the page, telling the story of the player’s journey as she moves through the game.

With the demo portion of the event done, Laralyn went on to a Q&A session about the game … which you can read all about in tomorrow’s post.