Runes of Magic
As part of my quest to find a Free2Play MMO to play as an alternate game I decided to give Runes of Magic a try. This game had received some fairly reasonable reviews from some respectable bloggers so I figured it couldn’t be all that bad. Or could it?
This game has been compared to World of Warcraft on occasion; as a F2P WoW clone. I wouldn’t use the word clone; instead I’d say ugly step-sister. I’d like to be able to think of some witty comment that best describes it, but I can’t. The game just looks ugly. I tried to crank up the graphics to their max settings to see what I could get out of it and discovered that the highest resolution available was 1076×768. I was playing games at the turn of the century with better resolutions. I’m surprised I didn’t have to run an OpenGL emulator to get it to work. Ok, not everyone has ub3r computers and some people might want to play this on their old notebooks or something, so not wanting to seem like a total graphics snob, I thought I’d play for a while.
Not only are the graphics from the past, so is the game design. It feels exactly like WoW did back in 2004 except with uglier graphics and lacking that new feel. Now I’m not saying that innovation is everything; there’s nothing wrong with taking solid game design and replicating it, but let’s move forward and provide better graphics or a different world; a Sci Fi setting or underwater or something, anything, not just the same old wizards and warriors, but uglier.
Anyway, after doing the first few quests I zoned to another town and found my self mounted on a horse. I thought “hey, this is pretty cool; I get a horse straight off”. Except as soon as I grabbed a quest and went to kill my first mob, the horse disappeared, and I spent the next 20 minutes trying to work out how to get it back. I came to one of two possible conclusions. 1) I’m a total noob or 2) I have to buy the horse via the Online Store, seeing as how the exact horse I had was available for sale. I don’t know why the developers would give me a horse for all of three minutes and then take it away; I guess it was some kind of teaser. Never mind, the horse was ugly anyway.
I persevered a little longer but just couldn’t bring myself to keep going. I’ve since uninstalled the game and I regret wasting some of my download quota on it. This game might be for some people but it’s most certainly not for me. Oh, and did I mention it was ugly?
Another look at Perfect World »
Comments
Comment from Keiry
Time: July 28, 2009, 4:44 pm
*waiting for Aion*
Comment from Publius
Time: August 5, 2009, 11:30 am
It’s easy to get mad at a review of a game you like. Obviously, the reviewer didn’t give the game a fair shot, and missed many of the features you love. On the other hand expecting someone to understand an MMO in a few short hours is extremely unfair.
I got drawn into Runes of Magic precisely because it was WoW-like and free. I’ve stayed because it is so much more. First of all you get a free horse when you create a character that lasts for 24 hours. After that you can rent horses for 2 hours from NPC’s in all of the towns for a small amount of gold. Of course, if you like the game and decide to keep playing purchasing a permanent mount is a great way to go.
The dual classing system that is unlocked at level 10 is very interesting.
Each day you can complete 10 daily quests which require you gather drops from mobs, but you don’t need to accept the quest to get the items to drop and they are not soul-bound so you can sell them to other players. This creates a vibrant economy.
The gear system in the game is the one feature that really makes Runes of Magic unique. Any item that drops in the game typically comes with 1 or 2 stats on it. But stats can be ripped off of pieces of equipment and put on new pieces. Up to six stats can be placed on an item. The best stats drop from end-game bosses. This makes fully gearing your character a nearly endless process of trading for stats, saving up gold to buy them from other players, or running the dungeons hoping to get the good drops yourself.
The team at Frogster is continually pushing out new content and features. Since the game launched 5 months ago new zones, instances, mini-games, and features have been added at a break-neck pace. Now, a full expansion is coming out that includes a new race, 2 new classes, 3 new zones (plus a small starter zone for the new race), a level cap increase and no doubt new features we don’t even know about.
It’s an exciting time to be in the world of Taborea.
caliga
Comment from Yarrnath
Time: July 27, 2009, 9:22 am
Not sure why you were having problems, but I can play Runes of Magic at 1920 X 1200 with everything turned up and it looks decent. The armor sets often look very nice, but I would agree on the “ugly” part when it comes to character models and some of the scenery, although some areas of the game look quite nice.
The first horse you get is a tutorial one and seems to disappear as soon as you get off it. You then get limited use horses from your “level up” bag at various levels, which last a day (real time!!!) or maybe it was two. You can also “rent” horses at various places. But yes, they want you to pay real money to get a mount and they are character bound, which is why I never bought one.
Overall the game is okay all things considered, but with the overpriced and overpowered item shop stuff it isn’t something I’m willing to spend any real money on. I actually like Ether Saga Online a bit more, even with the super-cute graphics. If these F2P games actually had reasonable prices for stuff in their item shops I think a lot more people would be willing to spend some money on them. I’d rather spend that money on something like Aion, which is actually cheaper in the long run, especially if you like having a lot of alts.