Customer Reviews

The Realm (Jewel Case)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

First of all, Sirbenny and Asterix who wrote reviews here are both realm staff. (i.e. the oppressive moderators other poeple have mentioned) Now, Some people are complaining about moderation here, and some have been affected by strong moderation, but generally it is not as bad as these people make it out to be. They are most likely just people with gripes. I have played realm for about 5 years now, and have never had any problems.

The game is a lot like a throwback to an old sierra game like kings quest or quest for glory. The graphics are similar, and play is similar. (this game was actually originally developed by sierra, then bought)

Updates come sometimes.. not as frequently as most would like.

Basically what I would say is buy it and try it if you liked the old sierra games. The fee is cheaper than almost any other mmorpg's, and it is worth it in my opinion.

This game is more like a free chat channel that's moderated by abusive ops than an actual game. When you get booted from IRC you move on without much regret, but when you pay $$ for a game only to get the same result, you may become angered as I have.Despite the moderation, this game has very little to offer, the game updates are only once in a blue moon, the graphics stink and the gameplay is quite repetitive and boring. Unless you have a 10 year old computer ( which can probably handle this game) and you don't mind frequent account suspensions, I don't recommend this game at all.

Unless for some strange reason you enjoy torturing yourself, don't buy this game. The game consists of power abusive game moderaters who completely ruin what little fun you could have. Just for your knowledge, the community is small and there are always moderaters lurking around, even at 3:00 A.m. In game moderaters don't promote freedom of speech, they don't allow disputes or anything of similar nature. If you break these rules, you will get your account suspended at the very least. When game suspensions are active, your counter is still running. It costs [money] a month and suspensions usually run from 14-28 days at the very least. At minimim, a suspension will suck [price] out of your wallet and will only result in anger towards Codemasters for allowing such corrupt moderation. Not only will your wallet get sucked dry, but you will eventually realise how much time you wasted towards this game.
Now time for the actual gameplay review despite the corrupt game moderation. The Realm was released in Feb. 96 and is still virtually the same thing as it was then. No serious updates have been implemented since then. Most of the updates are hacker fixes and there really is ONLY 1 programmer/implementor to this game. The original owner of this game was SIERRA and when they realised that the game was out of date, they sold it to codemasters hoping they could turn it around. The game was only considered average for its time (96) but in this day in age, i'd consider it completely terrible. As an experienced user of this game, i'd say my review reflects an accurate description of this game.

This game is horrible. I'm amazed that this game is still on the market. It's a very simple RPG where you equip your sword and click the "attack button" and that's about it. The graphics are simple and the sound is MIDI. To give you an idea on how bad it is, i've played games from 10+ years ago with better graphics, playability and sound. You then slowly gain experience and fight stronger monsters which all appear the same. Now for by far the worst part of this game..You have to pay a fee every month to play this game.And to make matters even worse, you will have to deal with game moderaters that will suspend your account for things you wouldn't imagine were against the rules. You will have to learn the rules the hard way since most of them aren't written in the code of conduct. You will have to deal with hackers crashing the server to they can steal accounts, dupe and disable accounts with their auto anti-hack software. If you want a game that's better in every single way, then try diablo 2. The graphics aren't that great but the community is huge, the game is free to play online and the sound is decent. And you won't need to worry about your account being suspended unless you are caught hacking.

This games manages somehow to split people fairly fast into two extremes. I personally found this game entertaining, fun, cheap and also easy. Its a game you can leave and return to....you don't lose the overview and you can make some great friends there...the chat system is well thought out. I've left the game a couple of times, but always returned. I am well aware its not top notch when compared to new or more widely played games (i.e. graphics and the such like) but thats what makes it easy and comfortable to come back to. I recommend this game for easy, fun, and mostly stress free gameplay with a strong side of player interaction.

This game is a COMPLETE waist of time, money, and thought.

It is mainly run by unfair GM's with a god complex, to even begin a trial acount you have to hand over your credit card number, then for some reason beond human comprehension you decide to pay for this "game" the first rule you break will result in a warning, followed 10 seconds later by a disconnection from the server, only to find you have been susspended, however breaking a "rule" is not that hard, seeing as the player policy is written so, that the moderators are always right, despite any ammount of bad judgement.

In my experience acceptable reasons for a susspension-

1. Questioning a moderators action
2. Answering a question on the "Help" channel before a guide
3. letting your 4 year old child "spam" a moderated channel ONCE with "fdgjklkdg sgfs sdfsjlk"
4. Asking the "programer" when he will fulfill his promises

And should you decide to pay for another account after being wronged so, a bannable offense is killing a guide, or moderator's player cahracter for "screaming" obscinitys at you.

Thank you, Realm Team! for my enjoyable experience on this horrendously outdated game.

Do NOT waste your money on this game. Save it until Shadowbane or Neverwinter Nights comes out. Save it for computer upgrades... if you spend money on this game you might as well be burning it.

I have had nothing but HORRIBLE experinces with CodeMasters and their ingame moderation. I used to play the game, and I for one am glad I quit. I wasted something worse than money: TIME.

The Moderators and Guides on this game seem to have a "god" complex, in which they do their best to control everyone around them. They are extreamly senseitory, and allow NOTHING that even REMOTELY goes against them be said. If you want to see just how they are you can go over to the Realm Message Board. You have to buy an account to even LOG IN, and once you have an account it is directly linked to their message boards so if you say anything they don't like they will take action against your account.

Also the game is poorly updated. When it is updated it is updated with usless content. For example: Despite the fact that the game play is horrible, the economy is completely unbalanced, and the game has no point -- the ONLY implimenter (programmer) has only added hats to the game in the last SIX Months. (And they were horribly done at that, and didn't go with the rest of the character artwork.)

The game is also terribly outdated -- orginally owned by Sierra and created in 1996. It has a long history, and most of which is bad.

The community around the game is horrible for young children as many "adult" (Males AND Females ranging from 30-45) rutenly seek out young children who are under 18 years of age to "cyber" with. They also use lures of in game items to attempt to move their relationship into real life -- extreamly dangerious place for your children.

There is nothing good about this game that I could possibly say. Every aspect of it is bad, and to make matters worse CodeMasters is using the same Moderators and Customer Base for their upcoming MMORPG: Dragon Empires. When it comes out I will be sure to warn everyone who thinks about buying that game of the same problems and dangers they may face again...

The Realm is a cute online game where you can watch your pixels stand and proudly show your townie items. The game really has no aim. Hunting or PvPing there is no fun. I've played it for more than a year and I enjoyed meeting people there and chatting, but with time moderators seemed to get worse and worse, always finding a reason(not stated in the Player's policy, which you can find on the Realm official website)to suspend accounts or delete posts on the message boards.

A good thing however is that you can find there people who are ready to pay with real money for pixelated items and accounts, so you can make a lot of cash even though it's against the game's Players policy. One thing you'll get quickly bored of is all the promises for good updates you'll never get.

If you want to pay for a chatroom where you'll probably get suspended for not thinking like one of the moderators, get this game. If you're smart, go to a normal free chatroom. You can have fun with this game if someone gives you an account for free or if you have a lot of money to waste, but if you care about what you do with your money, don't give it to Codemasters. I'd be careful with their upcoming MMORPG Dragon Empires too because it will have the same kind of moderation.

I will be honest here in saying that from about '98-'00, '02-'03 and ending with an account I played for less than a year and recently terminated that I have experience with this game. I mainly joined because my boyfriend and other friends of mine loved the old Sierra games, so playing was for nostalgic purposes. During my first years playing the game was still "operated" by Sierra, and although not the most advanced, it was a good place for friends to hunt together. The battle system is very simple and turn-based, and you can extend the battle time to painfully slow to give yourself ample time to use your most devastating moves. With that said, many people hunted in groups and leveled new players up so quickly that you could earn tons of money. There was nothing there for a person who was level 1000 or anything close because nothing new was implemented (although there were tons of inactive spells and creature designs), so came the "townie" culture that many complain about. My boyfriend even became one, earning millions from selling rare items retrieved from quests and playing trivia. The few mods left from the Sierra age were pretty decent when it came to discipline unless you were making obscene references to sex, booze and/or narcotics. Things at that point became really boring, really fast. All of us decided to cancel our accounts and go on to other MMOs.

The second time my boyfriend convinced me to play was after Codemasters had taken over the game. He had some hope that maybe the company would turn it around and finally implement from where Sierra left off. Well that was another waste of time (and money). Almost all of the updates were security patches. The new mods and guides were horrific. I made a semi-innocent joke in public chat once and was sent to jail, only to have a mod ask me if I knew why I was there...and while I was typing a response I was silenced and then suspended for 3 days. From what I hear the punishments became much worse than what I had experienced and that's a shame. Even mine was going overboard. So we waited patiently for any worthwhile (after all of that time I don't consider some hats and a couple of new weapons a big deal) changes and nothing happened while we went back to being quick millionaires. I cancelled my account but for some reason Codemasters wouldn't process it until they got another month out of me (reminded me of AOL).

The third and final time, Codemasters decided to give this "project" the boot. Now it's still operated (believe it or not) by a company called Norseman Games. It's the same old tripe, but to make matters worse they promised updates they didn't deliver, and where this had been a $5 per month chat room for many (or a place to mess around when the server on their favorite MMO was down), this company has the audacity to think about charging MORE! They're out of their minds. It's just really sad when a company would rather give you a goofy useless hat to wear instead of implementing one of the many inactive spells that people had in their books waiting to be used. I have never seen anything like it before on any other MMO and although I will always have a fondness for Sierra and my early gaming years, I have to say that this is a horse with a broken leg that should've been put out of its misery around 7 years ago.

To Bottom Line it: Don't waste your time or money!!! You can play better MMOs for free! People who say this game is good are probably only talking about the fact that it's basically an avatar chat room, and either said nothing at all to anyone or kissed the mods' behinds because any non-mainstream thought will get you in trouble.

This game has seen it's glory days, a long time ago. Yes, it used to be fun when it was new and all, but it is not an "ever evolving world" any more as they proclaim. It has very redundant game play and the updates are less than substantial. Customer Service is less than helpful, as can be many moderators. Customers are treated like peons, even outside of the game. Don't waste your money.

I will say this, though. If you're looking for a place to chat, though, I'll give it 5 stars. But for a game, it's a definite 1.