In the free-to-play market, the competition is fierce. It seems like we hear about a new game being ported and launching just about every week, and have for the last while. That said,
Runes of Magic, the recent entry into the market by
Runewaker Entertainment in partnership with
Frogster Interactive has definitely
caught our attention in playing through the game recently. That's why we were glad to hear that they've announced 700,000 players are checking out this interesting new world. According to their press release, response has been so good that they've been required to add another European server to their line-up for a total of nine launch servers altogether. They've also had to lock down character creation on the Laoch and Aotacht servers due to population, and state that if any other servers reach max, they've got the infrastructure in place to open more servers should the demand become greater.
With mechanics cribbed from everything from
World of Warcraft to
EverQuest II and even a bit of
Warhammer Online and
Final Fantasy XI for good measure, this is definitely one of the strongest new titles to hit the F2P market in the last while. Just how large the game will continue to grow, considering it reintroduces some less popular mechanics like death penalties and a fairly involved tradeskill system remains to be seen. Still, it's a good sign for
Runes of Magic, and we wish them all the best luck on the future of their game!
Mar 23rd 2009 at 11:00AM
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Punkrockdiva said on 12:02PM 3-23-2009
700K?
Somewhere in the world today, John Smedley is in the fetal position, crying, with a jelly doughnut in his mouth.
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Neurotic said on 12:16PM 3-23-2009
...and I'll be there to say 'Never mind John, RoM's great, but so is EQ2 and I'll always keep my Station Pass. Now give me a bite of doughnut!'
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Brendan Drain said on 12:26PM 3-23-2009
I'm still surprised Blizzard aren't suing them over so much of the UI being a direct copy of their designs. I'm still not sure how they're getting away with it.
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Hardy said on 12:37PM 3-23-2009
You can't copyright a UI.
If that was the case, Sony would've drilled Blizzard into the ground.
RogueJedi86 said on 12:40PM 3-23-2009
Because you can't copyright/patient ui designs? Because WoW's UI is deriviative of the UIs of other MMOs that have come before it? WoW's UI was a design of necessity, all the basic features to play the game comfortably. Other MMOs use similar UIs because it's a good design. It's like asking why Ford hasn't sued other car manufacturers for making vehicles similar in basic design to their original Model T's. You just go with what works.
Brendan Drain said on 12:59PM 3-23-2009
Interesting. I would have thought it fell under Design law, or is that just a UK thing? (http://www.ipo.gov.uk/types/design.htm)
Hardy said on 1:36PM 3-23-2009
"We cannot give design right to designs that are commonplace, everyday or ordinary."
UIs
1. Are not a design, they are a function. UIs are not work. Though making a good one may take creativity.
2. UIs are normal in every game, in fact, pretty much mandatory. So copyrighting UIs would be impossible since not just MMOs use UIs that are similar to one another.
Brendan Drain said on 1:45PM 3-23-2009
So I could make a game that has an almost identical UI to an already established game? As an amateur game designer, I think that's pretty awesome. I was actually working on a game last year and used the UI graphics from an existing game to save myself time. If I am allowed to effectively just draw over their UI elements to make my own, that means I could actually finish the game and release it if I get the time.
I could see Runes of Magic picking up a lot of players. The market for free to play MMOs is huge and the games in that market is usually fairly poor. If this game plays as well as WoW and feels familiar to WoW players, there's no reason they can't pull in hundreds of thousands of players. Since it's free, I'm going to give it a go myself.
Vindelator said on 12:43PM 4-08-2009
Isn't WoW's current interface based on a 3rd party mod that added more skill bars?
Hardy said on 12:37PM 3-23-2009
I have to admit, even though that number will most likely drop. That's a pretty impressive number for a F2P game.
Even if people don't like this game, you should understand this is one game that will raise the bar for quality F2P games.
I hope this game has a successful life.
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RogueJedi86 said on 12:43PM 3-23-2009
I've almost never heard of Rune of Magic, beyond a few articles on Massively that I've skipped over. That 700k number will dip quickly. Didn't Warhammer and Age of Conan boast high launch numbers too? And didn't their actual subscriber numbers drop dramatically after? I wouldn't buy into the launch numbers just yet.
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papagouda said on 12:54PM 3-23-2009
I doubt it'll dip. Most likely it'll grow steadily in a way similar to Rune Scape. It's free to play so there's no reason to unsubscribe? Even people who don't play regularly will log in once in a while when the bug hits. There's no penalty for not doing so. It's not like you're forking over $15 a month that could be better spent elsewhere.
It's also a very nice game. It's on par with most any subby game out there now. I was pleasantly surprised by it during the beta. It won't be my main MMO but I'll play it once in a while when I'm bored or burned on other games.
UltimateQ said on 12:48PM 3-23-2009
I downloaded it. I was waiting for release. Usually, I jump at the chance to beta anything, but for some reason I didn't want to touch RoM until it was released.
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Virlomi said on 3:44PM 3-23-2009
Barely anything changed for release. There was no big patch, no big changes. It was more for hype than anything. What they did do, though, was completely revamp the combat system mere weeks before release, effectively rendering all the previous months of beta testing useless. :)
UltimateQ said on 6:57PM 3-23-2009
Yeah no doubt, usually companies do character wipes. I didn't want to invest any time on a character that may or may not be there later.
HexDSL said on 1:26PM 3-23-2009
grats to them, they got a wow inspired but excellent game
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droid said on 2:20PM 3-23-2009
Question:
Does this game have a class that can fight with a bo-staff?
Does this game have wicked sick pvp bro?
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Coppertopper said on 6:14PM 3-23-2009
Since when is a 'fairly involved crafting system' a less popular game mechanic? The deep crafting system of for example EQ1 is the one thing every MMO should have, if they are going to have crafting period. Does Massively really think it's audience looks at WoW's bland crafting grind as the system to mimic?
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Virlomi said on 3:42PM 3-23-2009
700k active players? 700k accounts? 700k created characters? Which one is it?
Considering how easy it is to create accounts for F2P games, it's a little hard to trust numbers like this.
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Hardy said on 4:42PM 3-23-2009
Well of course their inflated. Any idiot knows these news releases are skewed in the best light possible.
Either way, all it spells is good news for the future of F2P MMOs.