Player review of Runes of Magic open beta looks promising

by Brooke Pilley Feb 3rd 2009 at 11:00AM

Filed under: Betas, Fantasy, Reviews, Free-to-play, Runes of Magic

You may not have heard, but Runewalker's Runes of Magic is a free-to-play/free-to-download fantasy MMORPG that features a large world, avatar appearance customization, dual-class specialization, interesting combat mechanics, player housing, crafting, high-end PvE raiding, and even PvP. If that seems like a little bit of everything from some of the more popular fantasy MMO titles like World of Warcraft, Everquest 2, Lord of the Rings Online, and Age of Conan, that's because it is.

According to a player's review of open beta, RoM has taken some of the best elements from these aforementioned games and tried to blend them into a fun and cohesive experience. It also seems to have taken not-so-good elements like daily quests, no career respecialization, and gear dependency. Many people think free-to-play games must be shallow, but it took the reviewer three days to pick a class combination that would suit their play style. That seems pretty deep to me. Perhaps the best consideration a gamer can make is that free-to-play in this case also means free-to-try. How many times have gamers been burned by paying for a product that ultimately didn't live up to their expectations or tastes? What do you have to lose by giving Runes of Magic a shot?

Tags: crafting, open-beta, player-housing, review, rom, runes-of-magic, runewalker-entertainment

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Iokthemonkey said on 11:10AM 2-03-2009

RoM is all fine and dandy but it's lacking any real heart or soul. I know that sounds wanky but it's just really devoid of personality and for all its attempts at being "Western" it feels very Asian.

I may not have given it enough time but I played it for about 30 minutes and gave up, as it really wasn't doing anything for me and I just didn't see anything that made me want to keep playing...

clockwork said on 12:25PM 2-03-2009

Spot on with that, felt the same way.

Bookhouse88 said on 3:00PM 2-03-2009

I was very excited about Runes of Magic from everything I'd heard about it, but there's something about the actual gameplay that feels very generic, it just didn't grab me at all. I agree that it's better to be able to play a game before you make a financial investment in it, but in the case of RoM, there's really no "there", there. I'll happily keep paying my subscription to WoW and DDO, thank you very much.

Hardy said on 3:59PM 2-03-2009

I think RoM is a fine game, especially considering the cost of it. Which is nothing... Unless you want a horse. lol

Iokthemonkey said on 4:14AM 2-04-2009

Oh I agree that for "free" it's a great game. It's just given the choice between playing this and, say, LOTRO, I'd rather do the latter. Not because it's "better quality" or "more professional" but just that it's more engaging.

I found that in RoM my skirmisher (Rogue?) had an attack that did +25% damage. I levelled up and got a new skill that... did +30% damage. So now combat consisted of hitting with the +25 then the +30 and waiting on the cooldowns. There were no "this attack punches a hole in your opponents armour" or "this attack stuns your opponent for a short while" kind of skills. They may be there but I found in the short time I played that the skill-sets just seemed a bit bland...