When we heard the infectious Free Realms theme song by The Dares, we knew we were headed for some silliness. After all, if a game is truly about "your world" as the song declared - meaning player choice - well, that's the stuff today's bubble-gum pink One Shots is made of. It comes to us courtesy of Brian H, who tells us a bit more about this image: Just a fun little screen shot I captured of my level 20 ninja being a real ninja, you know, in pink...

One Shots relies on you, dear readers, to send in your images of adventure, silliness, or battle! It's easy to participate. Just email an interesting, cool, etc. screenshot to us at oneshots AT massively DOT com along with your name, the name of the game, and a brief description. We'll put it up here for everyone to check out and give you the credit. So send in those screenshots!

Sony Online Entertainment Fan Faire 2009 is happening in Las Vegas, and of course they've had a number of things to unveil so far. SOE president John Smedley gave his community address last evening, and other speakers made an appearance as well. We've got a few highlights from SOE Fan Faire 2009 for you:


Smedley jumped right in by talking about the state of the SOE game lineup and some of the new directions they've explored with them in this past year. One of those new directions has been the introduction of Station Cash, and he talked about the growing adoption of Station Cash among SOE game subscribers in EverQuest and EverQuest II, as well as how it will soon be tied into new services and customization options. He announced a partnership with Hewlett-Packard which will allow players to purchase matte print images of art from the games using Station Cash. You'll be able to have your own character rendered in a high-quality art print, or even have your entire guild depicted and sent to you as a hardcopy art book.


On the topic of EverQuest, remember that mention we had of SOE trademarking new EQ properties? It turns out these are the new expansions: EverQuest: Underfoot and EverQuest II: Sentinel's Fate. Smedley kicked off the EQ announcements by reflecting back on 10 years of EverQuest and looking to where the IP is headed in the future. EverQuest II producer Alan "Brenlo" Crosby discussed the game's sixth expansion, Sentinel's Fate, where players will travel to the land of Odus and see what's happened there since The Shattering.

He dropped a few details about this next expansion, slated for a February 2010 launch, and the updates they plan to release between now and Sentinel's Fate. These updates will include the ability to downtier characters, allowing you to go back and replay older content, plus achievements are coming to EverQuest II. In addition, the EQ II level cap will increase by ten levels.

SOE hasn't forgotten about their long-term fans either, those who have stuck with the original EverQuest through the years. EverQuest producer Thomas Terrazas announced the sixteenth EQ expansion, Underfoot, which will launch in November 2009. Underfoot will feature 12-15 zones at launch, with bonus zones and additional content to release in April of 2010. Underfoot will have twice as many weapons as any of the previous 15 expansions, a new focus targeting window (allowing you to add specific targets to your list, monitor health of friends and foes), and achievement tracking that will help players remain aware of the objectives to be completed in their progression path. "In other words," Terrazas said, "you won't have to go looking online on somebody else's website so see what you need. It'll be in-game."

Fan Faire 2009 attendees will get both expansions for free.

Today's a good day for you, if you're a Free Realms wanderer. Rejoice as the new update brings guild support, new animations, and some brand new quest lines straight to you!

The big addition for the update is obviously the guilds. Finally you can invite people and form guilds, as well as have a chat channel all to yourself. Past that, however, is the addition of six new quests which lead into a larger storyline. What do the content creators of Free Realms have up their sleeves? Well, you just need to complete the quests and find out for yourself.

For the full notes on today's patch, jump on over to the Free Realms update page and check it out. It's not that long, but we're sure pretty much everyone is focusing on the addition of guilds anyway.

In case you haven't heard, Free Realms just broke the 3M user mark and is averaging 500,000 new users per week. With SOE's aggressive Saturday morning cartoon advertising strategy targeting kids, it may actually continue to grow at this pace. Any subscription MMO would be happy as a pig in slop at these numbers because of the guaranteed revenue stream, but what about a F2P/RMT MMO?

We recently discovered an interesting tool to guesstimate F2P/RMT MMO earnings called the "89/10/1 Rule." This rule says that 89% of your players won't spend anything, 10% will spend the bare minimum, and the remaining 1% will spend extravagantly.

After chatting with Massively staff who play FR, we came up with some numbers to play around with. The bare minimum in FR is $5 per month for a basic subscription. We also think the average heavy spender could easily drop $30 in a month. Let's apply the rule, shall we?

• 2,670,000 spend nothing ($0 total)
• 300,000 spend $5/month ($1,500,000 total)
• 30,000 spend $30/month ($900,000 total)

The grand total using the "89/10/1 Rule" is $2.4M revenue per month. That fancy, made-up number isn't too shabby at all. A subscription MMO charging $15/month would need 160,000 subscribers to pull in the same amount. Now, if only we could get some confirmation (nudge nudge, wink wink)...

Sony Online Entertainment has just announced today that their kid-friendly free-to-play mega-hit Free Realms has hit the 3 millions registered user mark. This news comes less than seven weeks after the game's launch, and only two weeks after their last milestone of two million registered users.

"SOE worked diligently over the past four years to ensure that Free Realms would take the online space by storm," said John Smedley, president of Sony Online Entertainment. "We are pleased to be able to provide such a vast, in-depth and, most importantly, fun world to an average of 500,000 new gamers per week."

As with the previous milestones, this one is being celebrated with more exclusive in-game items. The 3M Pet Party Pack will be filled with goodies for use on a character's virtual pets, and players have until June 19th to redeem this special offer. Keep reading just after the jump below for the complete press release.

Oh boy, what have I gotten myself into? Comparing one of the largest and most popular MMOs with the current fastest-growing MMO? Do I have a deathwish? Well, it turns out World of Warcraft and Free Realms actually do have a few things in common, but a straight comparison isn't the point of this article. We at Massively have decided to compile a guide for World of Warcraft players who may be interested in checking out what Free Realms has to offer. Even better, for those WoW players out there with children, this guide could be valuable for some alternatives to your usual family gaming choices.

"But why would you want to play in a children's game? And isn't Free Realms all instanced anyway? I've heard it's not even really an MMO!"

These are the types of concerns and questions we hope to answer with this article, so follow along below as we take you through our WoW Player's Guide to Free Realms.

Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009 proved to be a significant event for the gaming industry once again, with a fair amount of news and announcements related to MMOs. Massively was there on the ground for E3 this year and we've been putting up breaking announcements, interviews, and hands-on previews throughout.

Given how much info came out of E3 on Massively, here's a roundup of our coverage, day-by-day. Be sure to check out the rest after the jump as there's plenty more content, plus you'll find E3 galleries for these games as you click through. To cap it all off, we've also put together an E3 2009 wrapup video for you at the end of this post. Read on to see where the MMO industry is headed in the next year and beyond!

• Star Wars: The Old Republic world's first fully-voiced MMO

• Final Fantasy XIV announced

• Jumpgate Evolution releases E3 trailer

• EA to publish All Points Bulletin in 2010

• PlayStation Home hits 6.5 million accounts

• Trion World Network unveils Heroes of Telara

• Massively's day 1 video from the E3 floor

Are you one of the folks who has leveled your classes all the way to max in Free Realms and are kind of wondering what now? Well, if you're the type who loves progression and really building your character up to be better, you're in luck. The folks at SOE are planning to introduce Prestige classes (much like the aforementioned racing ones) that will allow players to level their jobs to 20, and improve them through further play.

Along with this interesting development, they are adding in some new jobs to the game, like the Pro Racing class - and perhaps a new class to go with the Soccer game (Soccer player? Footballer?) since SOE has let us know that they are finally bringing those fenced-off soccer fields into play. Added to these new tidbits will be further expansion on the backstory of Free Realms, which will explain a bit more about the lands and inhabitants of this crazy fun casual MMO, as well as opening up more story-driven quests for players. Sounds like a bunch of exciting news coming in the next few months! We can't wait.

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Massively was on the ground in Los Angeles last week and covering all the latest E3 MMO news coming from the convention. Check out our breaking coverage (or all the Joystiq network E3 reporting) and keep your eye on Massively's front page for the latest developments.

While the recent heads-up that we'll be able to add people to our friends list is definitely a welcome bit of Free Realms news, we were even more excited to hear that guilds are soon coming to this casual MMO. That's right - now you'll be able to add your friends and family to a special guild group! From what we were told, guilds will be given their own in-game chat channel so you can chat back and forth without having to worry about others intruding into your private chatter.

Another nice thing that will be coming is the option for guilds to create their own guild halls to spend time together. While we heard a bit about player housing, the specific details on guild halls are still largely under wraps for now - or perhaps Sony Online Entertainment is holding on to the details to give players an overview at their upcoming Fan Faire in Las Vegas. Whatever the case may be, we're glad to see all the new things coming to Free Realms.

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Massively was on the ground in Los Angeles last week and covering all the latest E3 MMO news coming from the convention. Check out our breaking coverage (or all the Joystiq network E3 reporting) and keep your eye on Massively's front page for the latest developments.

Now that Free Realms is live - and by anyone's standards, tremendously successful - SOE's Free Realms team (at around 100 people) is busy working on new features and improvements. In September (or October, perhaps) they plan to add in player housing for everyone to enjoy. For those of you who have been pelting them on the forums for a home of your own - your request has been heard! A nice, shiny home in Free Realms should be yours in time for the holidays.

You'll be able to select land, size, and style of house; then really dig in and modify it to make it all your own. The plan is also to create new mini-games involving maintaining your house as well - we're guessing something along the lines of time-management games, perhaps? According to what we've heard, the garage coming out in July will be attached to your house, so you can show off your cars to friends. Neighborhoods will be instanced (currently planned for three buildings per personal plot with no word on neighborhood size) but they expect this will give players a new place to hang out and enjoy their time in Free Realms. There's currently no specifics on what will be available for F2P and paid members, so we'll have to wait and see.

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Massively was on the ground in Los Angeles last week and covering all the latest E3 MMO news coming from the convention. Check out our breaking coverage (or all the Joystiq network E3 reporting) and keep your eye on Massively's front page for the latest developments.

If you're one of the many people who really enjoy the Racing game or Demolition Derby in Free Realms, then you're in for a treat. We learned in speaking to Andrew Sites, Senior Producer for Free Realms, that the team at SOE are hard at work on a huge content update specifically geared (no pun intended) towards the fans of the racing games. The update, currently scheduled for July, will include progression for racing players allowing them to become better racers over time until they eventually unlock a prestige class mechanic. This prestige racer class is slated to allow players to hit level 20.

In addition to the prestige class, we'll also see a new garage being added to the game which will allow players to have a special place to store all their cars. The new garage will also allow players to modify them, including changing speed, braking, handling and all those other spiffy mechanics that racing gamers like to pick from in order to build the car of their dreams. As if this weren't enough, in August, all you Free Realms racing fiends will be treated to a Pro-driver class which will grant new cars and tracks. Should be a turbo-charged series of updates!

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Massively was on the ground in Los Angeles last week and covering all the latest E3 MMO news coming from the convention. Check out our breaking coverage (or all the Joystiq network E3 reporting) and keep your eye on Massively's front page for the latest developments.

We thought the first day of E3 2009 turned out pretty well, with announcements for Star Wars: The Old Republic, Final Fantasy XIV, and All Points Bulletin. That's in addition to the packed interview schedule we lined up so we'll have plenty more to show you in the coming days. While the Massively team frantically taps their fingertips down into little bloody tater tots to bring you more fresh E3 goodness, have a look at some highlights of what day 2 of E3 2009 brought in MMO news.

• Massively's day one video from the E3 floor

• In-game footage from The Agency

• Platform release info for Final Fantasy XIV

• The Dares concert in Free Realms sets Guinness World Record

• Hands-on with Global Agenda

• Friends fix coming to Free Realms

Want to see more? We've got E3 galleries to flip through for these titles and events after the jump.

Last night at SOE's gigantic E3 booth, attendees were actually a part of history. The Dares -- that youthful pop-punk band that sings the light-heartedly rebellious theme song for Free Realms -- performed a small set for a live concert audience at E3 and simultaneously in the game. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, who awarded the bandmates a plaque after the concert, this is the first time this has been done. Yeah, sorry Second Life fans.

If you're interested in seeing the live performance of "It's Your World", and thereby getting it stuck in your head for the next three weeks, check it out after the jump below. There's also a separate video showing the Guinness World Record reception, as well. Congrats goes out to those guys, although I'm pretty sure they'll never read this.

While there's little doubt that Free Realms is a wonderfully fun, addictive game that more and more old-school MMOers and non-MMOers are enjoying together, it has had some pretty nasty snags since launch. The most glaring of these for social gamers has really been the problem with trying to add someone to your Friends listing. As the mechanic currently works, if you want to add someone to your friends listing in the game to find them later, you must be signed on to the same server at the same time. If you don't happen to know your friends are online, you have no real way to find them. This is leading to players having to hook up on Twitter, via IMs or email, or just by calling one another before they sign in so they can meet up in a particular zone on a particular server to finally be "friends" in Free Realms.

Yesterday, while talking to Andrew Sites from Sony Online Entertainment here at E3, we were told that they'd noticed, while Free Realms is incredibly popular, it's not necessarily as social as they'd like it to be - at least not yet. The friends list problem, they acknowledge, is a good portion of this, as players can't find their friends as easily as they'd intended for them to. As such, they wanted to let us all know that they're currently working on a fix for this particular issue and we should see it rolling out to the live servers within the next few weeks. Good news for those of us who have been frustrated by not being able to play with - or even locate - our friends in Free Realms.

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Massively is on the ground in Los Angeles this week and covering all the latest E3 MMO news coming from the convention. Check out our breaking coverage (or all the Joystiq network E3 reporting) and keep your eye on Massively's front page for the latest developments.