First Impressions: Runes of Magic
by Krystalle Voecks 
Mar 18th 2009 at 8:00PM
Filed under: Screenshots, New titles, Opinion, Free-to-play, Hands-on, First Impressions, Runes of Magic
I'll start off by saying that I've heard some truly positive things about this game from several MMO fiends I know. That said, a few of them bagged on it for being a World of Warcraft clone - but I'd have to argue that point now that I've played it. There's definitely enough in Runes of Magic to feel eerily familiar to anyone who has played World of Warcraft for any length of time. However, I feel that there's enough different in the two games - aside from the obvious free-to-play versus subscription - to say that each game will ultimately stand (or fall) on it's own merits. I'd also be remiss in noting that as a First Impressions posting, there was no possible way to reach everything there is to get to in this game - PvP arenas, player-killing, pissing off NPC factions, guild castles, high-end crafting, raids and a bunch more - there's a depth and complexity that I am glad to find in a free title. That said, today's overview should give you enough of a taste of the various parts of this easy to pick up but hard to master MMO for you to decide for yourself if it's worth trying.
Now, on with the gallery, and my First Impressions of Runes of Magic!
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Neurotic said on 8:43PM 3-18-2009
Hopefuly the sheer volume of incoming users who are running Vista, will push Frogster/RW to resolve the disapearing log-in fields on the initial screen. RoM rocks and deserves every chance.
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Krystalle Voecks said on 8:48PM 3-18-2009
Hmm. That's interesting. I tested it on both a Vista and XP machine and it was identical in terms of performance for me. As a matter of fact, the only weird bug I found was when I had Matrix Online loaded on my machine; it kept trying to load the MxO launcher as opposed to the RoM launcher after patching, and even renaming the .exe to .old didn't work. (Archiving the MxO directory into a giant honking .rar worked.)
I definitely hope they get any bugs worked out, though. We'll see how the launch goes tonight.
Cowy said on 10:29PM 3-18-2009
Runes of Magic was terribly boring for me. Far too wow-like without enough reason to keep going. The novelty wore off too quick.
ATM, I'm trying Ether Saga (Open beta JUST released like a couple days ago or so) and its been very entertaining.
Time and time again, you hear people saying Pokemon should be an mmo, etc. Well guess what? Ether Saga is a Pokemon-esque MMO. EVERY class gets to have a pet, and can pick ANY pet type. Nobody is excluded. You can buy or capture more pets, and can trade them. (Sound familiar)?
IN addition, you can fuse with pets in your inventory, to share their power and you can also find card drops to TRANSFORM into various animals found in the game.
For a Free-to-play game, i gotta say its been worth trying.
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Krystalle Voecks said on 4:58AM 3-19-2009
Hmm. I may have to give that a try for the next First Impressions. :)
Jack said on 10:47PM 3-18-2009
Did fall a sleep just looking at the screen shots and crappy trailers.
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snowleopard233 said on 11:18PM 3-18-2009
Wait, mushroom people? ...I'm out.
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papagouda said on 12:02AM 3-19-2009
I've been playing it and it's not bad at all. I can't see a lot that a subscription mmo would have over this.
It'd be nice if people would actually try it before becoming flaming trolltards based on screen shots.
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Dawn said on 12:12AM 3-19-2009
I played Runes of Magic for 5 minutes and was weirded out by all the minutia of detail that was exactly copied from Warcraft. Indeed, I would think that it would have been much easier to create an MMO similar to WoW than it must have been to capture every small interface and character movement detail... that is unless a large part of the game interface was directly copied. I'm not saying that's what happened... but it is troubling to me that the developers felt they needed to go to so much trouble to make a game that could be considered reverse engineering at best.
One of the game's most difficult problems overcome is going to be that it resembles WoW so thoroughly that it's hard not to compare the two. Even as much as it's obvious that the powers that be tried to make them the same in many cases, the two have some differences.
The models of course are not similar to WoW; and are someone stylized and fairly interesting. Aside from some contrast trouble with the color scheme, the models are the best part of the game that I witnessed.
I continued to play the game into around level 17. Many of the places that Runes departs from WoW need some improvement; monster AI is nearly absent in many cases. The quest Log is crazy busy and hard to look at. There are no cut scenes that I saw that might have been helpful in unfolding some compelling storyline. (a storyline that was hidden from me as I played.)
Grinding can be fun if you enjoy grind. Personally, I find most free to play games overdo the grindiness and Runes is no exception.
It's hard to say how the final release of the game will differ from this late stage beta version but I hope it does. I would have preferred something a little less wowish. Still, the game functioned well, without giltchness. And at least by copying WoW's movement and tracking, navigation throughout the lands was a breeze.
I will keep my eye on Runes.. and hope something good comes of it.
Dawn
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Skypp said on 12:14AM 3-19-2009
There are some big differences between this and WoW if you look:
PVP
-corpse looting, that's hardcore
-Castle Raids, like Conan but better
Cross-Classing
-this is the most fun part, I've played several characters just to see how the cross classing affects things
-lets you work on your main class when your friends aren't online, and then switch when they are
Fluff
-housing, something wow always lacked
-costumes, another thing wow did terrible
So its really more like a combination of the best in MMO's today. Sure the art direction is like a WoW-type anime inspired cartoon show, but there are some really nice feature set if you get past that.
That said, this IS a micro trans game that is heavy on the "renting". You rent extra space, you rent your mounts, you rent home improvements. Even if you pay real money, you've only rented what you've payed for.
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Skypp said on 12:19AM 3-19-2009
Few more things I wanted to add.
When you return to an area with your secondary class, new quests are opened up that you can't get the first time through, a continuation of things and it keeps you from getting bored as easily.
The rune system is really nice. Basically any item you get has a chance of having rune slots, sort of like Legendary Weapons in LOTRO(you add relics to up stats and skills) or like WoW's enchanting system. You can also get items to up the level of your armor or weapons, so you get a few more days of usefulness out of a beloved item.
For a free game, this game has A TON of story and detailed quests. I've played free games like Shadowbane, RF Online, Space Cowboy, and several others, and this is the first with a unified story structure that reminds me of the quality of LOTRO/WoW.
Sure it has its shortcomings, but hey, all you have to do is remind yourself that you're not paying for it. For free its pretty damned good, scratch that, for free its great.
really need to add some non-silly face designs though.
Krystalle Voecks said on 5:06AM 3-19-2009
Thanks for adding that in, Skypp. I didn't get nearly enough time to play to allow me to get into the PvP aspects, so I'm glad to see your reply here touching on them.
That said, I am working on getting a dev tour to see more of what the later stages in the game are like. If you're intrigued by Runes of Magic but not quite convinced, you may want to keep an eye out for that.
MrGutts said on 9:00AM 3-19-2009
@Krystalle
I hope you are not going to take that tour on the PvP server. If you do and you are above level 15 you WILL die a few times. :)
Mr. Digital said on 2:48PM 3-19-2009
You actually don't rent stuff for your house, the stuff you buy for your house you get permanently, and then it even adds bonuses to your character.
If you don't want to spend real money on the fancy house items, some are available using tokens, which you get from doing the daily quests.
Hardy said on 12:35AM 3-19-2009
Ugh...This is where MMO players fail. They don't even give the game a chance.
Do you bitch that Saints 2 is so similar to GTA?
Do you complain that Halo is exactly like every other god damn FPS out there? No.
Do you complain that an MMO has traist similar to another MMO. Yes.
It makes no sense.
The game is good, and best of all it's FREE. It's not WoW amazing, but you're getting what you pay for, which is nothing, and you're getting a decent product out of that nothing.
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Jeni said on 9:19AM 3-19-2009
I've been playing WoW for over 3 years now, and while I WILL NOT BE canceling my WoW account, I have spent perhaps half an hour in WoW farming food mats and 4-5 hours a week raiding in WoW. All of the rest of my free time has been spent in ROM.
Sure, it's like WoW. Human female casting animations anyone?
I was even against the cash shop at first, but I figure that if I paid for this game retail, it'd be about $50.00. And a sub would be about $15.00. Yesterday, during downtime, they offered 30% off diamonds...so I spent $25.00 and got 1000 diamonds. A perminant blood ostrich mount came to 199 diamonds (and is soooo cute!
starzzareblind said on 12:42AM 3-19-2009
it's a good game!
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Skypp said on 1:13AM 3-19-2009
More complete than Conan's ever been. And I could list others that people have payed 50 bucks for.
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Mitch said on 1:30AM 3-19-2009
"Why pay $15 per month to play ______ when you can probably enjoy RoM just as much for free?" I ask. It may not be perfect, but I honestly don't feel that it's any more or less flawed than the leading p2p games out there. The hidden bonus of it being free: absolutely zero guilt for not playing it.
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Plastic Rat said on 2:06AM 3-19-2009
This looks interesting. I'm ashamed to say I've gotten addicted to wow's style of graphics. I can't handle most other MMOs because the character models, art and animation just doesn't do it for me.
One thing I can't find anywhere, how does the actual gameplay match up? Is there any grouping content? Do I have to think when I play or is everything basically just tank and spank? Does it have the standard threat/aggro/healing/crowd control dynamics of MMOs? Is there any challenge to playing?
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Krystalle Voecks said on 5:07AM 3-19-2009
Sadly, I had limited experience with grouping in lower levels. That said, I am working on getting a dev tour, so I'll be sure to ask them about the mechanics in the later game and how those play out.
Heck, if anyone has questions for them, I'd invite you to leave them here. I'll see what I can do to either answer them if I know them, or get an answer for you from the developers. :)