Review: Runes of Magic
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Runes of Magic, the free-2-play fantasy MMORPG from Frogster Interactive launched recently with 700,000 registered accounts and our very own Ryan Plas sat down to review the game.
The first time that you log into Frogster Interactive’s Runes of Magic, you’re probably going to scoff and say “Hey, I’ve seen this before!” You’re probably going to spend the first hour or two telling yourself how it’s just a rip off of the 8,000 pound gorilla. But do yourself a favor and keep on truckin’, because once you do, you are going to find one of the best Free2Play titles on the market today. And in my opinion, one of the better titles on the market today, period. I promise that if you give Runes of Magic a chance, that you will be not only pleasantly surprised, but genuinely hooked.
Runes of Magic has just about everything you could want in an MMO title. Housing, a dual class system, daily quests, instances and dungeons, you name it. And on top of that, the absolute best go to market strategy in their item shop than I have ever seen in a Free2Play titles. And I want to focus on that and get it out of the way, because one of the biggest barriers around to the Free2Play genre are their cash shops. And while yes, Runes of Magic does have the requisite cash shop, not shopping there isn’t going to put you at a huge disadvantage compared to those that do. The reason for that? Because even if you don’t spend a dime in real life cash on diamonds for the shop, you can still earn them in game. Runes of Magic Auction House system is set up so that you can still earn diamonds in game without spending your hard earned cash in this resecession-tastic time. You can put items up to sell that you find in game for either in game gold, or diamonds that you can use on cash shop items, as well as purchase in game items with said diamonds, right through the auction house. And they even instituted a way to add legal in game gold purchasing. Because on top of selling items for diamonds, you can straight up trade in game gold for diamonds, right through the auction house.
It is an ingenious way to monetize the title for the developers, while not creating a huge disadvantage for players not willing to shell out real life dollars. It’s the most down to earth and sensible way to run a cash shop I have ever seen, and I hope that other developers in the Free2Play genre take some ideas from it and implement it in their titles, so that we can see the Free2Play subgenre dig it self out of the black hole that accompanies the name “cash shop” and get some more recognition.
Now that that is out of the way, on to how it plays…
Runes of magic functions like just about every MMO out there. You do quests, beat up monsters and gain levels. At character creation, you chose from your basic appearance and pick your first class. One disappointing thing is that at this time, there is only one character race to chose from, and that is Humans. As you level up and reach level 10, you go to one of the main cities and earn the right to do another of one my favorite features of RoM, you get to chose your second class. And depending on what you chose can really change how the game will play for you. As you are leveling up, you earn both regular XP and TP. TP is what is used to increases your different skills effectiveness. All classes have both Primary and Secondary skills to chose from. Primary skills are only available to you when you are playing that class as a primary, your secondary skills are what are available when you are playing that class as your secondary class. For instance, at low levels priests get 3 basic healing spells, Urgent Heal, Heal and Regenerate. Urgent heal is a faster low HP spell, Regenerate heals you for a set amount of damage every 2 seconds and Heal is a longer cast, bigger HP return spell. But heal is only available with priest as a primary.
And with a limited amount of TP, you really have to pick and chose which skills you want to invest in to get the most out of your classes abilities. On top that, at levels 15/15, 20/20, 25/25, and 30/30, you can turn in some items to get an Elite skill that is going to differentiate with each class/class combination further adding to the customization and difference between secondary classes. I played a Priest/Warrior and for example at level 15/15, as priest warrior you get an elite skill that is a buff that adds attack and defense while reducing the amount of HP you get from heals while it is up, called Battle Monk Stance. But as a Warrior/Priest, you would get a party buff. I think it’s a great system that works very well with the play system.
As you level and defeat monsters, finish quests and run dungeons, you will of course get new gear. And there are a few ways to upgrade your gear once you have them. Monsters drop runes that you can add to socketed items, and you can always purchase items that will add +1 to your weapons and armor, possibly adding some cool particle effects.
You can also take items you get and create orbs that can them be combined and added to any item that will add increased stats. The system can be costly, and you can always spend RL cash for diamonds to help with it, but I found the system to be fairly complex for an F2P MMO, if not a little daunting and confusing at times.
Graphics are your run of the mill fantasy look, and the music is actually very good, when and if its playing. It seems that a lot of time, you just don’t hear it. One of my biggest gripes about most F2P titles is the lack of different item graphics.
Alot of times you just end up looking like the guy standing next to you, only with a +1 next to your armor in your inspect box. RoM though has a ton of different item graphics, and while I don’t think a lot of you will care all that much, it gets extra marks in my book.
All in all, I really enjoyed my time in RoM and have been recomending to anyone I know who is short on cash in this global economy. It might not totally replace World of Warcraft for you, but it certainly is a great title that is well worth the time downloading! You can check out the offical site here, but if you really want to DL the client, I would suggest using Fileplanet.
Review Score: 4/5
Review: Runes of Magic http://bit.ly/s5PA
wish I could play it…
Why can't you play it?
I am mac user… check out my blog MMOmac.com
Maybe you would like to do a link exchange?
GL with your site mate!
Played RoM for a while. Its probably my favorite F2P game out there. Several features of the game are outstanding and overcome a lot of the issues I have with most RPGs. For example the ladies who can teleport you around town, the autonavigation, and the ability to search for the location of mobs in game. Glad to hear MMOGAMER liked it also!
I haven\’t had a chance to try it yet. Going to make some time this weekend.
Bait & Switch, at the end, competitive PvP is spending competition. While it may strike you as a casual-friendly game at start, getting to lvl50 being really easy and all, once the quality of your gear comes to play, you are bound to either ruin your life over it trying to farm/grind it all yourself(almost as bad as WoW on addiction factor) or spend dozens of times more than you would for years of subscription in any pay2play mmo, and there is no end to it, trust me. Markets on all servers are already spinning out of control, company's cash shop currency is replacing gold as only means of player-to-player payment since nobody wants gold which is getting worthless by the minute. gl+hf and cya ingame^^
This is a wonderful game. I've been playing it for about 3 weeks. I have several characters, with a Warrior/Priest duel class and a Warrior/Mage class character being great fun to play. I have yet to pay anything, but I plan to and not only to I want to Contribute to this great game, but even if I drop $20, it’s still way cheaper then paying $15 a month playing WoW. When I was playing WoW, I felt like I had to play so many hours a mouth to get my $15 worth, but with RoM, I don't feel that Pressure. The game world is big, as are the cities, just like WoW. And with it being free to download and play, even if you do play WoW, it's worth checking out.
I\'ve been hearing good things about the game and Ryan certainly liked it. I really need to make some time and play it. About putting in $20 in the game, that\'s another interesting area. How does an average player put into the game per month? Or rather, how much in average do player who pay put in per month?
You can buy diamonds with real money, which are then used to buy things like a permanent mount to ride around with in the game. Or you can do a Currency Exchange, trading in game gold, that you get from quests at the Auction House for diamonds. So, if you are so inclined, you can still buy items but never have to spend any real money at all. Or, as I plan on doing, buy some Diamonds, maybe $10 worth from time to time, and then auction them off or trade them for lots of gold or cool weapons and what-not. This way, the cost of my on-line gaming is low, yet the vaule for my real dollar is high. Perfect world.
Cost of diamonds. – It looks like $4.99 per 100 diamonds.
And the price goes down the more you buy. If you buy 100, it's about 5 cents per — if you buy 1000, it drops down to below 4 cents per.
Is this game Taiwanese or Korean?
The game is developed by a Taiwanese company and published in the west by Frogster, a Germany publisher.
well i really want to play it and ive benn downloading it today it ends up taking forever but i hear its well worth it. right now im updating it and its tooken about 2 hours now just to get to 40% and it has to get to 100% 4 times so ur looking at about 1 day of just downloading and updating and installing a patching
Still an amazing game 8.5/10
Anyone know what the *upload* message means when i start the game?
Hi Michael, have you tried the Runes of Magic forums? They can probably answer game specific support questions better.
http://forum.runesofmagic.com/forumdisplay.php?f=...
do you guys have the extreme lag i do? well me and my friends have it, and im just wondering if you all do too. :
Hey Dark it was extremely lagging for me because I think it was mainly from my 5 years old computer. What I did was that I lowered my display setting so the graphics looked a little bit dull but the game was faster and it was less laggy. You can try to see if it works!
with 3.5 gigs worth of download i hope its worth it.
i wonder if they can make a game like this for the psp. maybe change the res to 520×200 or something.
im sure they can make a mmorpg for the psp. maybe have a download as you go type of deal.
(this game requires 5.0 gigs of memory to play or something) then once you visited all the worlds you wouldn't have to download as you go anymore.
- kinda like the world of warcraft trial. -
i hav downloaded the game multiple time b4 i could install it and now when i patch (successfully) i start the games and “weeds” apear i really want 2 play but i cant log-in with that…. and yes i meet the minimum req??
CasualGamer, they do make an mmo for the psp. Look up "Blade and Soul". You can download it online, and theres a psp version.
I have experienced the same, I was unable to play the game for 2 months because I was stuck in a mountain. They support is NON-EXISTANT.
And yeah their GMs are volunteers so they treat you like sh|t
After three months of playing, this game is not at all worth it! It's true, they have no support and the system is completely unstable. Every patch day they have even more glitches occur and have to hot fix and sometimes not even that. They are ban happy. This unpleasant experience with their support, the headache, and the money is not worth it in this game.
renana, play archlord or shayia if you dont like rom! XD They are glitchest games ever.
They have may errors and broken quests. they have banned many peeps just on suspicion and not PROOF. They are not worth the time. If you have lots of money then you will most likly get banned. This is a bs game. You need to find a better game with less issues. Flyff was better and Free.
A lot of the links on their website doesn't even work. They said to go check patch code in the forums, but they don't seem to have a forums section… They also don't have a login section on the website, all they have is the registration form, but no existing member login. So from the lack of a login screen I'm assuming they really actually don't have a forums section and it's not just that it was down when I tried… Their website is really bugged and they just seem to be missing a lot of contents.
I think if you put in $15 a month for a game, playing at least a few hours a month into the game is more than enough worth it. There's no need to spend that many hours to feel like you've played for your money's worth. Because if you think about it, $15 is about one meal for one person at any normal chain restaurant, and that's on the low ends. If we're talking about dinner rather than lunch it would be more. So regarding how much i'd put in a game a month, probably however much i'm willing to eat at home instead of going out, and if I don't have other hobbies I want to spend that saved money on. I'm a casual gamer.
the game is so fucking laggy i hate it
Most of the people who are saying it`s lagging are confusing server lag with crappy computer lag, i`ve played this game along with 4 of my freinds and i have never lagged once but 1 of my freinds with a crappy pc is always complaining about lag.
What this article fails to address(as many others do) is the blatant preferential treatment of the games EU players and complete disregard of the needs of it's US based customers. Save your time(and possibly money) and find a better game made by a company that is not trying to rip you off at every turn to fatten their gelatinous pockets.
DON'T play this game!! It's a pure money leeching game, they will scammed most of their players who were paying (and you have to pay to compete anyway).
Now you know how us non-US based players have been getting treated with most of the other MMO games
Can be banned with out gitting proof of what you did. I got banned and they said I was conneted to an account that did some thing wrong. My son 14 who does not have a way of getting cash for selling items was acused of selling runes for cash. Thus geting us both banned. you will spend thousands of dollers to get equipment to allow you to do instances and run endgame with the big boys. they will not take you because they are kind! No it is highly competitive. So play at own risk and spend no money on diamonds. Watch you conversations and dont say key words. Read all forums to know what is taboo. Do not joke about runes or tiering or diamonds use. They will ban in seconds and care not what was really going on.
Play safe and be kind we all are in it together.
?????? 10 ????? ???? ? Runes of Magic #MMORPG #runes #mmogamer
http://www.mmogamer.com/04/14/2009/review-runes-of-magic
Wtf are all of uvtalking about? first off… the game isnt that glitchy, and yes shaiya does suck… and yes, so does flyff…
RoM is a great game, and just cuz u got banned for scamming, doesnt mean u have to try to put it down
stop trying to ruin the game experience for others!!!
I'v been playing this game now for over a year. I'v watched the game go down hill fast. Currently the
Game is full of bugs and feels more like a beta version. As to buying diamonds (for real money) you
have to in order to be able to get to any kind of endgame content. Diamonds were available in their
Auction House, purchased with in game gold instead of real money, but that has ended. (So much
for the free to play). With all the in-game issues (bugs) and the need to buy their Diamonds for real
money, to get anywhere in the game, I give this game a minus 10 on a plus 1 to plus 10 scale.
They started out good, but that is no longer the case.
kuke and buffme have you either played beta or a game that just came out?
no well most games go like this the game is made through efforts of a lot of people then they beta test it then they find all the little bugs that are literally everywhere wow has been around for about 10 years now right? thats impressive but how good was it when it had just came out all buggy and glitchy give the game designers some time to weed out the bad bugs and exploitable glitches
nice bolg .nice content ,i found your blog on runes of magic gold ,.i think i wll back soon
so its like wow?im pumped
7gb (+1 with update) of download and patching
8gb of a game, im patching as of right now, and it looks pretty nice