Title: Runes Of Magic
Released by: Frogster
Developed by: Runewaker Entertainment
Platform: PC
Price: FREE
To sum it up in one sentance, if you like World of Warcraft, you’ll love Runes Of Magic.
We’ve always been told that nothing is for free or you get what you pay for. As with most FREE TO play games, that is the case. If they are completely free then they’ve been, well let’s face it, crap! Those that weren’t had some ingenius way of making us pay through in-game items that were recquired to enjoy the game or just use the basic utilities and be a computerised serf all day long watching everyone else with longing. Totally ruins the game.
“hey my sword can do 500 damage per second, allows me to use resurrect and heal even as a swordsman AND has a cool lightning affect every time it swings. What does yours do?”…”my apple peeler cuts stuff?”.
Runes of Magic have taken a similar stance but have gone one step further in allowing ALL contebt to be accesable totally FREE if you play hard enough. Where games such as WoW dislike outside money transactions that can alter the game economy, Frogster love it! They freely allow you to buy diamonds and rubies from them for real money. Who needs bots anymore? Then in-game you can sell these for in-game currency from others or trade for special items such as mounts, armour and more. As such it allows Joe Blog who has played and saved up his in-game gold to buy these diamonds that he’d otherwise have to buy with a credit card, and purchase these special items. Rejoice kids!
Before the pessimistic ones in the crowd ask why anyone would sell these diamonds, it’s simple. Sell them for the gold to buy that rare headpiece worth 2 million gold coins. This keeps the game economy balanced as, afterall most players are kids and few adults will pay real money for anything online in a game.
Gameplay. It’s basically like WoW. Runes of Magicv has basically been copie straight from World of Warcraft. The monsters, the skills, the classes, the layout of the display..it’s a direct copy. How they got away with this is quite frankly, beyond me. ROM is a FREE WoW.
Runes of Magic offer literally thousands of quests in a world that is thousands of in-game miles across. It is truelly staggering to believe this is a free game. No corners have been cut in a plot for people who wish to follow a story. PVP is fully developed for the warmongers amongst us. Thousands of weapons, items of clothing and even more types of mounts than you can shake a stick at. A big stick.
Connection can be dodgy at times but for the most part a stable and fast connection is usually the norm. It IS a FREE game afterall. You can team up with friends online and party. Form guilds. Complete quests. Even resting in an Inn earns you rest experiance that allows all experianced gained to be doubled, just like WoW. Graphics are also on par in my opinion.
The only thing that makes ROM stand out is it’s twin class system. In World of Warcraft, you’re tied to a single class once made. Start a Paladin and you always will be till lvl 80. In ROM however, once you reach lvl 10, you decide a second class. You can be a Priest,Hunter. Able to shoot from a distance and still heal. A Mage/Swordsman. Being able to do massive DPS and tank. However at all times you have one class as a main, the other secondary. Class specific skills can only be used as that class as the main class, but they do have open abilities that can be used at all times.
That handy little idea opens the game up totally to diversify players and, double their gaming time for each player. Each class must be lvled up seperately.
Overall, say yes to Runes of Magic. Their cheeky middle finger at WoW has earned them my respect and they’ve certainly raised the bar for FREE to play online mass mutliplayer games.
