Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

It may sound crazy, and to be honest, it's not something I thought about until my wife created her pixie this past Saturday morning, but with Free Realms, SOE finally got her. And I don't mean they got her as in she thought the game was cute or something. I mean they got her in that Invasion of the Body Snatchers kind of way and the bedroom has become her pod. From Saturday morning until sometime Sunday evening, unless she needed to get food or liquid (or heed the call of Mother Nature from processing said food or liquid), she did not get out of her computer chair the entire weekend. I’m not joking.

Free Realms is packed full of colors galore.

When I asked her about it, her unrelenting love of the game came from two things. First off, she is always playing casual games over the internet but gets annoyed about having to hop in and out of multiple sites to do it. Free Realms has a wide variety of games she can play and they're all in one place. Secondly, she gets to play a pixie and can change her clothes. Seriously.

It may sound like the unintelligible rantings of the female species us males have always found impossible to decode, but the proof is in the pudding. To take a person that has proven on multiple occasions they have no interest in MMOGs and turn them into a gamer that can barely stand to part with her computer like it was Golem's Precious is no easy feat. Sure, SOE will probably get a million little kids playing the game, but it's the hoards of women that will be playing that will have them raking in the cash.

While I think the women of the world will be the mainstay of Free Realms, I actually think a lot of guys will have some fun with it too. So much so that they create they're own account? Probably not. But how many of those same men do I think will pay the $5 monthly subscription to get one of the extra character slots that come with it? More than even an anonymous survey could uncover. Of course, this ploy would all be done under the guise of "just showing my gal I love her", but it will be done nonetheless. Whatever you've got to do, right guys?

When World of Warcraft went live, it took the world by storm and spurred a slew of clones as companies scurried to jump on the bandwagon and get a piece of the pie. I think the stage is set for the same thing to happen again, just in a different direction. If Free Realms proves half as successful as I'm predicting it will, we're going to be bombarded with Free Barbie, Free Blues Clues, and maybe even Free Willy. History may very well be in the making. Now if you'll excuse me, I've got an appointment in Free Realms to show some hooligans the error of their ways.

Has your spouse been abducting by the Free Realms gods? Is your child already begging you for the game? Or do you just think I'm crazy to believe Free Realms will be a huge success? Drop me a line to let me know or sound off in our forums!