Free Realms brings new "super ego" commercial online

You know, I've heard this before, and I've got to call shenanigans on your accusation.

I did some research. I personally have two SOE accounts - only one is linked to Free Realms. I checked the second (old) account to see if it had been linked, but it is not. It doesn't show any connection to Free Realms at all when logged in to http://www.station.sony.com. I've had no less than 9 friends who also have SOE accounts but do not play Free Realms check their SOE logins as well, and none of their accounts show a Free Realms account tie, either.

Do you have any proof at all of your allegations?

Temploiter what you have to realize as a gamer is that numbers are all over inflated. Ever wonder why you never hear of Blizzards numbers going down? Not like it would matter at this point but it is just all marketing.

Like the news in general I tend to take everything with a grain of salt. Companies just bolster their numbers so they can please one crowd, the investors and stock holders of the company. Those are the people that companies need to impress to keep the games afloat.

The same thing happened to AoC they said 800,000 boxes sold!. Which really meant 800,000 sold to stores and not actual copies bought. So when you hear news like that believe it if you want but my best advice just take it with a grain of salt since in the end it does not mean anything to you.

All I have are quotes from people who claim to be station.com members who did not sign up for Free Realms, yet claim to be subscribed to said game AND my personal experience. Can they be making it up? Sure. But, how can I prove it beyond these allegations, which is why I challenged Massively to do their research.

Quotes from others:

"I'd urge you to go and check your accounts and see if you are all registered 'players' of FreeRealms. I recieved a beta invite ages ago, to which I never responded to. Lo and behold, I went to see if I had yet recieved another SWG vet trial, and viola, it turns out I'm a registered player of FreeRealms."

"I haven't logged in to ANY Sony game since right before the NGE went live and yet my old login is tied to freerealms. I just tried it."

"My accounts also show as active Free Realms...somehow that benefits them in some way whether it counts in their announced 1 mil or not."


Could those people be lying? Sure.

So, I went and checked, with 3 old accounts from 2003 and 2004. These are non-active, but were old Station.com accounts from various games.

I went to station.com and logged in. I then clicked the Free Realms link displayed clearly on the page. This opened a new window (in IE) that was the www.FreeRealms.com site with my station account name logged in in the upper right corner.

I then clicked on the My Account menu item, then clicked Account Settings.

This brought up the following page:
https://account.station.sony.com/authenticated/cam/amHome.vm?theme=freerealms

On that page there is a link labeled "Membership Info". I clicked on that, and low and behold, "Free Realms Account: ACTIVE".

I have a screenshot of this if you'd like me to e-mail it to massively just shoot me the address you'd like me to use.

Aha, I think I see where the disconnect is. You signed in, but did not go directly to account management to check your subscriptions. You, by your own account, clicked on Free Realms after you were signed in, thereby connecting Free Realms to your account. Then you checked Account Management and found it. It will definitely show up there once you use your SOE account to sign in on the Free Realms site - you sign up for a Free Realms account by doing that.

In my case, I signed in to my account without touching the Free Realms link at any point. I logged in to station.sony.com, then went to My Account in the top nav-bar, then Subscription Info. I never went near the Free Realms site, and even now, it's not on my account. Here's a screenshot I just took of my secondary account. I've only blocked the account name information out, but the rest is exactly as you see it.

http://www.krystallevoecks.com/gfx/soenofreerealmsaccount_fullsizekv.jpg

I'd be curious if any other past subscribers who never went near the Free Realms site at all and log in as I described above turn up with Free Realms accounts.

Who really cares. This is the second article that I've come into and seen someone accuse SoE of the same thing. Frankly, I think it's misplaced and inappropriate. Because this thread has nothing to do with account numbers, just a commercial. Immediately taking the comment topic off the topic of the article is just lame. Your just trying to bash the game and/or company because you have something against one or both.

@Krystalle Voecks I didn't sign in on the Free Realms site, I signed in on the station.com site, from there I clicked on a link to the Free Realms site and look at the account info on that site. If that is all it takes to "sign up" for free realms then the numbers are still in question, because I accepted no Terms of Use nor accepted a EULA. At no point was I told I was signing up for a Free Realms account.

@UltimateQ I've never played the game, so I have nothing against it. I saw people on other sites complaining that they were "subscribed" to the game without in fact subscribing and started to do some nosing around. My only goal here is for there to be more transparency in the industry and to advocate for a game-industry press that is more than a free advertising medium. I don't particularly enjoy any games SOE offers (at present), but that doesn't mean that if they release something I like tomorrow that I won't play it.

If this site had forums then I'd be able to start a thread on it, but since it doesn't, my only means, and yours, to chime in is via comments on existing entries.

soe is also guilty of charging the credit cards of those who quit their games months later.

And I agree to that, well except for TV that is still a guess based on trends and such but the movies is right.

I guess what we deal with is a double sided sword. Say we use subscription numbers for an example. If you want the industry to be truthful then do you, as a subscriber really want to know that your MMO is not doing so hot?

Or would you at least like to think it is and have the company bolster some numbers under their belt to reassure you that the game is on the right track?

If the numbers are down then users will look at that as a bad sign and maybe to jump ship early before the MMO "fails" (usually it does fine). On the other hand if you know for a fact that servers are ghost towns and yet the company is saying they have 500k active accounts you would want the truth.

Will more transparency come to the MMO industry? Hard to say. These games are multi-million dollar gambles that are years in the making so it is hard for those that put money into these games not to see good news with sub numbers.

As a company and the industry in general they are out to make money. If that requires them to bend some facts then so be it since they do not care. They want your money each month to make a profit. It really is all about money.

I completely agree with that. I've long thought they were prettied up for press releases. Like Blizzards 11 million number.

If no one cared about the numbers then they wouldn't be puffed up, lied about, and made such a big deal over. If we're going to care about the numbers, and it'd be absurd to claim we don't, then it would be nice if they were at least in the bloody ballpark and not quite so laughably ludicrous.

And, no, all companies do not lie about them. They'd like to, I'm sure, but many of the numbers are taken from shareholder documents and filings. Lying on those is generally actionable through civil and/or criminal court in most jurisdictions, doing so would be a really, really, really bad idea. So when you read Vivendi's latest SEC filing, or what have you, you can bet your rump that for whatever numbers are contained therein they have rock solid proof.

It's when some PR flack releases a press release making absurd claims that things get questionable (as in you have a better chance of getting truth from a politician then finding it in a press release), but that's hardly the only, or even most common, source of subscription numbers.

Unfortunately most of the gaming press doesn't know one from the other, so it all gets lumped together.

Yes, I would like to see all companies accurately report their subscriber numbers. If they reported them by market it may also help to weed out "gold farming" boosts to the numbers as well.

This post is nothing to do with Blizzard but since you brought it up you should look up their Subscriber Definition at http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/081121.html before bringing up inactive or trial accounts. I can't say how many are alts or gold farmers there are but that wouldn't alter the amount of accounts (the numbers are for subscribers, not the amount of people playing).

Back to Free Realms... A Customer Service representative has said "That number is indeed real. As for the Station Access users, only the ones that have come to the Free Realms site and registered an account are included in the count." They also said "Currently, ALL Station Access subscribers will receive Free Realms Membership status upon their first login to the Free Realms web site." If you don't log in to the website or click anything to do with Free Realms then you shouldn't be counted.