Exiles from Free Realms — including many kids who grew up with it as their first MMO — have had a hard time finding a way to go back to this game once more. A few years ago, we talked about a rogue server project called Free Realms Sunrise, which is looking to emulate the title, minigames and all.
As of last summer, Free Realms Sunrise continues to move forward at a snail’s pace, with the devs saying that work is focusing on the back end: “Mayhem recently conducted a stress test on a 2009 build of the server via bot loading and found that one area alone could handle around 1,500 players, whereas in alpha, it could only handle about 50 players in one area. That’s a very significant improvement! This will really help us determine how much player traffic servers can manage moving forward.”
But if the wait for that is too long, now there’s another project called Open Source Free Realms that allows you to tour the game as a solo player. “This is a standalone project that allows anyone to help,” the devs wrote. “Our main goal is to get a working stable singleplayer emulator out so everyone can enjoy Sacred Grove again.”
Not overly familiar with Free Realms? Read the history of this unique SOE game in our Game Archaeologist column!
