FM Live – The Reboot

Last week saw the relaunch/reboot of FML which in some quarters caused some disappoint but in many others has been met with great enthusiasm. For existing players of Football Manager Live the thought of everything being wiped and having to start again from scratch was deemed unfair by most, after some thought and discussion a compromise was made to carry over skill points into the relaunched game.

The enthusiasm for the relaunched FM Live seems to be coming from a surprising source – The FM community. Half the staff members here at FM-View are playing FML at the moment with more considering it (myself not included). Another site currently suffering from ‘FMLitis’ (Can I trademark that?) is Fever-Pitch where a large proportion of their staff are now playing FML. Personally I don’t see this as a long term shift but the same pattern we saw in November 2008 when FML first launched. It’s the ‘something new’ syndrome where everyone jumps on board to see what it’s like or in some cases to see how much it has changed.

Another factor for those existing FM players making the shift seems to be the new cheaper price (£4.99 a month) but also that you no longer are locked into longer contracts or have to pay one lump sum to save money. Only having to spend £4.99 and stay a month is definitely an incentive to make even the most ardent FML sceptic (Yes, that means me!) consider giving the game a spin. I’ve never been one for playing online FM, I’ve probably played 2 or 3 online games in my life but the relaunch and the possibility of choosing to go into a Fantasy game world is appealing.

A Quick explanation of Fantasy Worlds …

We want the balance of ‘Fantasy Worlds’ to be the same as that in ‘Returning Stars’ worlds, which are filled with real players, so the FM player database is still our template.

What we don’t want however is Messi, Ronaldo and others to just be given a random name and age and keep the same stats – it would be easy to spot top talent if that was the case!

Therefore we effectively pull out certain parts of real player information, do a little bit of jumbling, and then stick the parts together again.

You can read more about Fantasy game worlds over on the FML blog at Sega.com or visit GameWorldOne for a more in depth look.

Relaunch day seemed to pass off relatively smoothly – This thread on SI games forum details the issues of launch day. Looking at it from the perspective of someone that has seen way too many launch days of CM & FM, it was a lot smoother in some respects than a few versions.

Over the next few weeks we’re hoping to bring you all some FML related content not only from those at this site but also from other people from the FML community. In the mean time make sure you check out the latest FMV podcast which featured Rob Barns-Graham & Paul Hecker from Sega discussing the relaunch of FM Live.