SOE’s upcoming title Free Realms promises to include micro transactions and memberships in addition to it’s free to play platform.

Massively.com sat down with Free Realms Lead Designer Laralyn McWilliams to discuss to new title, and came back with a massive amount of information about the game.  McWilliams confirmed SOE’s commitment to Free Realms saying that, “Free Realms is just as important to SOE as The Agency and DC Universe Online.  We have the same size team working on this as we do on those titles.”  Responding to the question of how exactly Free Realms will generate revenue, McWilliams responded, “The answer is two fold: memberships (which, for a monthly fee, will allow the user access to more content) and micro transactions (allowing you to buy items for your character for small amounts of money).”

SOE’s John Smedley also added, “In order for people to see the games, they have to be able to play them; we’re opening them up to that possibility by letting them play for free.”

SOE might be taking a slightly different route when it comes to micro transactions however.  It seems as though the micro transaction question has been given a lot of thought at the SOE labs, and they’re still ironing out the details.  Will micro transactions be solely based on decking out your character in custom threads?  Will the micro transactions allow players to ‘pay to pwn?’  McWilliams addressed this issue.  “We recognize the importance of people earning things in the game but at the same time one of our fundamental tenants is we don’t want to dictate to people how to play our game.  So if people want to buy a potion that increases the speed at which they gain experience, who are we to say that’s not acceptable?”

While still working on the details, McWilliams explains that a lot of these issues will work themselves out in the beta testing.  “There’s nothing in Free Realms initially that you have to work that hard for. It’s all about variety. So we don’t know how much you’ll need to buy that stuff [experience gain boosts, combat boosts, etc] at this point. We’re focusing on game mechanics that are inherently fun, so you don’t want to shortcut your own experience by buying stuff. There’s an amount of joy in buying something that’s going to make you beat everyone in car racing, but after a while, you want your own skills to be what lets you win in car racing, not stuff you buy.”

Players that want to make micro transaction payments will use an in game wallet that can be stuffed with real cash.  Parental controls are also built in to prevent a massive spending spree.  While the game currently features real cash (the title has been developed from scratch with PlayStation 3 compatibility in mind), the Free Realms currency may change in the future.