E3 2009: Player housing coming to Free Realms

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.

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.