The First Ten Hours of Runes of Magic is a multi-part editorial column by iTZKooPA. During his journey he will spend a solid ten hours tackling the opening of today’s hottest MMORPGs that he hasn’t played to death. Be it new game, old game, new faction, or new class, it’ll all be new to him. All titles are judged on the same basic points as described below.
Welcome to my early review of Runes of Magic. As the premiere WoW-a-like free-to-play title, it’s only fair that we tackle Runewaker’s MMORPG, and Frogster’s localization of it. The title has been out for months now, allowing me to jump in and take in all that is Taborea on a few different characters – the highest being a level 18/15 Rogue/Scout. It’s also allowed the tandem of Frogster and Runewaker ample time to ferret out any glaring bugs.
Character Creation: There are many games out there with crazy amounts of character customization. However, Runes of Magic is not one of them. The game is severely limiting for your basic choice of race, Humans being the only candidate at launch. Thankfully the latest Chapter has added a second race, the love-em or hate-em pointy eared Elves. Although gamers are limited to only two races, and obviously two sexes (look to sci-fi MMOGs to change that one day), to start, once we select our poison the creation opens up. From hairstyle to bust size to foot size, the game is loaded with thirteen additional multi-position sliders. The mix of combinations gives Runes of Magic one of the more in-depth character creation systems in the fantasy genre. But that’s assuming you can look past the extremely limiting number of races at the surface.
Opening & Lore: Diving into this title is incredibly bland. There’s no opening cinematic to speak of, and no opening quest lines to get you started. You just pop into existence and are hit with a minimap full of icons demanding your attention. If one wants to find out what’s going on, then your best bet is to spend time on the title’s official website (perhaps while downloading the beastly package). Played any other MMORPG in your life? Then expect to be bored to tears with the opening of Runes of Magic. “Kill 10 foozles” and then “Kill 10 foozles” some more.
User Interface: Runes of Magic’s interface is something that MMORPGers will be very comfortable with. The control scheme is essentially a clone of so many other titles and the keybindings match World of Warcraft’s more often than not. RoM has a myriad of buttons surrounding the very busy minimap, most of which take you to useful places like the Item Shop. For better, or for worse, everything is in your face and readily accessible.
Quests & Grinding: Get ready to be bored. Considering that the opening of the game is very uneventful it’s unlikely that the later levels get anywhere near epic. After leveling my Rogue/Scout for a healthy amount of time I have yet to find an interesting quest. Making matters more tedious is the fact that the company employs the idea of daily quests from the early going. And all of them have you grinding a collection of foozles. For those of you who leveled a WoW character back in Stranglethorn Vale, you’re probably familiar with the The Green Hills of Stranglethorn quest. The original designer of the quest has admitted that it’s the worst quest in WoW for numerous reasons. Yet the creators of Runes of Maker copied it, right down to the required page numbers. How’s that for a synopsis of quest design?
Dungeons: Dungeons are everywhere in Runes of Magic. They present themselves through kill quests early on in the game and offer appropriately awesome rewards. They aren’t exactly original or expertly designed, but they offer a good distraction to the monotonous grindfest of the quests proper. It’s worth mentioning that RoM has a ton of outdoor bosses, or named mobs if you prefer. I call them bosses because you have absolutely no business attacking these suckers if you’re around their level and alone. They hit like trucks and possess a healthy amount of hitpoints. Another worthwhile distraction to the awful quest design.
Polish: Polish is one of those things that isn’t often categorized. It’s an ongoing process in every MMORPG, and title’s always get more polished the longer they are around. Therefore many titles are launched in what is labeled as an unpolished state. Runes of Magic is one of the titles where its obvious that the idea of polish is not at the forefront of the developer’s mind. Actually it’s a mixed bag, some of the issues can be squarely placed on the localizing agent, Frogster America. Poor graphics, mixed framerate performance, jerky animations and balance issues lie squarely on Runewaker. Frogster is at fault mainly for the incredibly shoddy job of localization. The company seems to have taken on too much by trying to localize multiple languages at the same time. In all of the languages there are glaring errors including spelling and grammar mistakes and buffs who’s tooltips don’t specify what they do. Instead a player is shown a placeholder message. Annoying gamers further is that both companies seem to ignore the issue, releasing new content without fixing the glaring problems before them. Some problems can be fixed in just few minutes time.
Uniqueness: Runes of Magic is an admitted WoW-a-Like. It was designed specifically to cater to a crowd that enjoys World of Warcraft, but doesn’t have the time to invest in that title to make them a hero. Or doesn’t want to pay a static fee. At the surface it’s a simple clone, but RoM does offer plenty of uniqueness including the dual class feature (hence why I am a Rogue/Scout), a deeper crafting system, guild and personal housing and a quick content development cycle.
Overall: If you love World of Warcraft, but can no longer afford the time or monetary investment then Runes of Magic might be a good fit for you. It kept me, a staunch WoW lover, mildly interested much further than the intended ten hours of play time. I’ll likely keep it installed as I work my way up to the level cap of 50/50. And why not, it’s free.
Not a fan of World of Warcraft? Then Runes of Magic isn’t for you.
Koop,
I played runes from closed beta and recently logged on with some old guildmates to check out some of the new content. A lot has changed and so many abilities have been gimped or nerfed that I feel that I am not playing the same character as before. I had left an unfinished priest/knight back at launch because I just couldn’t take the gear grind anymore.
I am not saying runes is a bad game. For what it is, a free to play grinder it’s fun and good to tool around with on some off time. I can also tell you that even though it is free, there is no free lunch here.
Endgame is very expensive in the ways of bag and bankspace; that’s where they get you. Mounts aren’t cheap either but they run sales regularly, always look when a new mount is released they sometimes offer it on a discount.
Last, your review is on key. It does become increasingly boring but it still has some enjoyable parts. However, what made Stranglethorn Vale fun was the fact it was contested territory and you never knew when a good ganking was coming your way.
That is the main element that I feel is missing from runes, pvp. There is pvp server that is an absolute ffa, but if you go for a pve server the pvp is bland and almost non-existent. I heard they changed some things and added guild wars and such, but they are still working on balancing issues. They have practically rendered scouts and warriors useless through the build changes. I know they changed up priest at least 4-5 times, frustrating having to retool your build every few months.
I hope you enjoy your game, what server are you playing on? I have a character on Machentacht and might be able to pass you some gear I am not going to use. Which is all of it, because unless they offer something that I really, really want, I am probably not going to return.
It was good while it lasted.
You might want to examine that “deeper crafting system” a little bit further. My experience has been that grinding for mats is incredibly boring and labor-intensive (“rare” recipes require literally 100+ pieces of material) and that the end product is no better than what can be obtained from the five-minute “murder ten foozles” quests.
Also, of course you can do what you want with your free time, but your review calls the game “bland,” “boring,” and unpolished. Why on earth would you willingly continue to play it? Just because something’s “free” (and as you note, level capped players definitely “need” to pay real money if they want to continue advancing gear-wise) doesn’t make it worthy.
You both have no idea! the game rocks and leveling is not boring at all as I have just leveled an elf to 46/35 and it was fun to do so. Obtaining great gear is also a peice of cake if u know what you are doing. Also expensive is wrong when your talk about buying mounts or bag space when it is possible to make 3-4 million gold per hour. I don’t know what game you guys are playing but like I said before this one rocks.
@Chris
There are two main reasons I will continue to play it on and off. First, I want to see if the game changes, perhaps gets better or simply grows on me as I get deeper into it. And secondly, I feel obligated to get to some of the endgame so I can get the full scope of the content being offered.
A lesser reason is because my brother, whom I enjoy gaming with, refuses to subscribe to another MMOG, so this is a pretty good fit for us. Although it appears I convinced him to at least check out DDO: EU.
As for your point about the crafting system, true it is mat heavy and needs a bit of balancing, but it still is deeper than WoW’s very basic system.
Inktomi: I am on the original PvP server Grimdal, but most of my spare MMO time is being dedicated to Champions Online currently – a game that’s pretty refreshing to all the fantasy stuff out there.
I agree that the game need lots of polishing. After playing WoW, I really miss good sound effects and smooth animation in Runes of Magic. Their talents system is also awful, there aren’t enough TP even to support 4-5 primary spells at maximum level. Or you have to buy potions to get more talent points, but for the real money.
I also have an allergy on Mountain Demon Grass, that is required for almost every craft at the beginning. You need TONS of it to level up your crafting skills. And gathering is MUCH slower than in WoW.
Also I don’t like an idea with the boss that appears only within a certain amount of time.
But besides of that, I love more features of that game. Quests seems to be not as dumb as in WoW where you mostly have to kill dozens of creatures for no reason. They also have tier sets of armor for low-levels and mounts from the first level. Double class system is also a huge advantage. But I really expected from them to polish the game a bit with the release of Chapter 2, but that doesn’t happened =(
It’s kind of a morphine to wows cocaine.
Really wow has many of the problems described here as well. Less so, but at the same time you pay a fee for it.
It depends if you just have a mmorpg itch that you want to work off, or if you really want to dive into the itch/addiction – if you want to dive, pay the 15 per month. If your just working off an itch, you don’t need as high a quality game (and by that I mean wow has the same problems, but worked on them more – wow hasn’t magically avoided these problems) or to pay per month.
There’s a few other things I’d say, but I’ve got that on my website.
I’m new to Runes of Magic and I got the same first impression as the reviewer but as expected from the first review I read there was a lot more to it.
The thing that really attracted me to this game is what was in that review. The game has the look and feel of wow with all the epic features from the other MMO’s I liked.
Free2play has got to be the first good point you come across so I’ll say that’s the first feature that attracted me.
There IS pvp on the pvp servers, it’s rather confusing at first cause the pvp tutorials don’t explain everything it should and the wiki has out of date info (every pvper has to like having pk drops ^^).
The talent system is non-existant so it’s missing that but I always thought those were just stupid imbalancer’s anyways. You have enough classes to choose from to make it unique as each combo has it’s own set of elite skills (and you can switch between the two).
Modding from WoW, oh that is an epic step forward in gaming. The functions are hard to learn but they don’t change in totality with each patch like they did in WoW so I don’t have to download a new version of each mod every time. The main ones you can just do a replace all for one command in the lua files (if any) and your’e set. I plan on writing a pvp addon like the old CT pvp KoS with the allies list and blacklist. The ingame one is so lacking it’s stupid. (if you’re still playing be sure to install Steamline and pbinfo as they add to the game’s ease of play, removing tedious clicks through potentially laggy prompts and showing info on monsters you’re always wondering about)
The Itemshop is reminicient of PWI but at the same time it has 3 different currencies that can be farmed for or paid for via IRL money. Like an earlier reply said, in the early levels farming for gold isn’t really possible but later on it’s easy to make money in game and buy diamonds dirt cheap. I’d been saving up for a while and bought cheap diamonds during the diamond half-price event. The next week I got a half-priced high-speed mount with the diamonds I bought.
ARMOR MODIFICATION – This generally goes over everyone’s head. It’s a complicated system that transmuter is. But those that play on pvp servers have seen the twinks and know the epic possibilities. You can do anything from adding sets of stats, to adding extra slots, to moving the entire piece of armor to a different armor model (they call it aggregation, haven’t done half of this yet). You can get some pretty nice costumes in the itemshop too and stick your armor in those for a nice uniform look if so desired.
FREE POSTAGE – Lol, how many times did I hate paying the postage in WoW or EQ or even other games I transfered items between characters on. All mailing in RoM is free and instant to boot. No one hour waits or fees for sending items/money. You have the option of massmailing groups for cost of diamonds (A nice restriction if you ask me) and you still have the CoD option from the other games.
I mentioned the mount earlier. The lack of races make this obvious but there are no race restrictions on the mounts and they are more unique. Animations for the mounts moving at different angles are better too, you horse doesn’t move like a train being diverted on the rails. Early on you can rent horses for 15 minutes at a time to run those “run” quests and I’m sure you noticed there are quite a few of those in the game as well as the woozle killing ones.
I could go on but ranting about the game isn’t something I really wanna do. Recently the out of date pvp info got me to go evil and the exit strategy to it no panning out was one of the things removed from the game. If you’re gonna go evil, make sure you’re top level and have all the prevent hi-jack sealers you need.
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I must say that this is an awful review, not that I’m blaming you. But you have failed to mention many aspects of the game that makes this game fun. Like NewROmPlayer said, there is something called transmutors, which will allow you to customize your own gear like you have never imagined before. This combined with rune creations will blow your brains out in terms of the possibilities. The downside is that if you want to make epic weapons (not EPIC WEAPONS FROM EPIC QUEST) but like VERY good weapons or armor (eg. Tiering), you need loads of real $$$ or spend over 5 years (literally I’m not kidding) if you don’t want to pay a dime lol.
I will explain why. Basically lvl 1-20 gears are t1, 21-40 are t2, 41-55 (60 in coming patch) is t3. Now in order to tier a gear you need 3 mana stones which is created from fusing a fusion stone with a gear. a t1 gear fusing with t1 gear will give you a t1 mana stone. Each fusing will cause 1 charge. You can get on average 3.33333 charges per day ( if you do dailies everyday). To get a mana stone of higher tier you need to combine 3 mana stone. eg. 3 t1 stone = 1 t2 stone.
since t3 gears are widely available from vendors people usually create t3 stones to save money and charges. So in order to create a t10 weapon, you would require around 3x3x3x3x3x3x3x3 (which is 3^8) stones and gear. Which is hell a lot of charges ( which you can conveniently buy with real $$$ :D ) This according to my calculation will take you around 5 and a half years if you don’t pay a dime. Good luck with that.
Back to topic, I would suggest you actually play a game before making any shitty claims like the one you wrote:)
peace out
The reviewer here, not to be rude or make any inappropriate remarks, does not know what the hell he’s talking about. I’ll tell you why:
1) You only got to level 18/15… I don’t think I should have to say more, but I will… When I first started the game, I got to level 20/15 on my scout/rogue by completing quests and generally just “killing foozles”. My point is, you don’t really experience the game until at least level 25 of each class. I mean, the amount of customization there is in the character creation is nothing compared to what you can possibly do with armor and weapons. This adds to your “unique factor” tenfold. Every character in the game can be unique in every way, from the length of their ears to the color and stats of their armor.
2) Yes, there are some bugs in the game, but it has been states by Frogster that they will be fixing them within the next few updates. Speaking of updates, Chapter 3 will be coming out in May, adding to the already huge landscape and skill sets. They are also introducing a whole new battle system: siege battles, which will play a big role in guild wars, and defending your castle.
3) You may call this game a WoW-clone, or however you say it, but, in my opinion, it is an everything-clone. RoM is basically a compilation of the best features from all the best games put together into one package, with some added bonuses on top. Basic design: WoW. Map and Autorun: PWI. Talent Points and Skill sets: Shaiya. and many, many more…
All in all, this is a complete game. There is just so much to do that you cannot possibly write a proper review without experiencing it all. My suggestion: play the game a bit more and open your eyes to the depth of it.
Anyone want to give me their character names? I’m on Reni
ok longtime wow addict here (since vanilla)
lets go over it all.
why im leaving wow to play rom
1. Craftingsystem is offering actually usable stuff and does not bore you out after 50% its done.
2. Fricken nodes dont bug out on you and readily available all time (yay no more ninjaing).
3. No realm secks (oh youre us or eu crap).
4. Havent seen a single goldspam yet.
5. Mounts on start. Thank god.. we can sit.
6. Rom is free. Im pissed at bliz for dumbing down the wow for kiddies to gain proffit.
Some cons about ROM as world is not perfect.
1. goddamn remove that fricken klick there and your char is off to that point like its dinnertime. Its anoying as i want to de-target.
2. they really need to get some motioncapturing on the chars/horses etc.
Summary.
RoM actually beats wow with a stick (this is pre cata though I doubt cata will save wow).
I’ve seen some commenters bash this review because the reviewer missed something that they like about the game. You know, if you “don’t really experience the game for the first 25 levels” or if you “missed the best part”, maybe that’s a flaw in the game design, a flaw in how it guides new players to the cool stuff?
If a game doesn’t give you fun things to do in the early experience, then you’re going to lose players who don’t feel particularly patient when they first download a game. Now, you can be elitist and sniff that you don’t want that sort of riffraff playing with you anyhow but if you’re going to actively design the starter experience to drive away new players, enjoy your limited and dwindling playerbase.
Hello people, this review is called THE FIRST 10 HOURS REVIEW, duh nobody can see everything in an mmo in 10 hours!!! also @ martini, u can turn off the click to move feature in the optuins menu. its real easy to find.
Firstly. Despite what the majority says, it’s not a WoW clone. Blizzard did not come up with that style of toolbar interface, nor do they own a patent on cartoon style characters. Yes you start in a forest. How many other games out there start in the woods? Is my yamaha guitar a “clone” of any other guitar because it has 6 strings and a sound hole? Are Crysis, half life, CoD, MAG, battlefield all clones of one another? There are completely different experiences using the same vehicle. RoM is not anything close to the WoW experience and vice versa. I’m sorry, but world of warcraft did not invent the genre-they just dumbed it down so kids can play it. It is boring, uninventive, and completely repetitive. RoM is neither “better” or “worse.” It’s just RoM and the player needs to decide how they feel about it. Kudos to the reviewer for sharing his personal thoughts based on his play style, although not leveling half the way up, it’s too opinionated of a review. WoW, RoM, Guildwars, etc are all wonderful games and all different. Isn’t it great we have the choice?
I have 2 characters on the Palenque server of RoM, 1 at max level, and another near max level…after playing this game a few months, I have to realize like many of those who left this game…Just how much problems this game have…At first glance, this game might look like a decent F2P game…but most of these writers that wrote these reviews never really stayed on the game long enough to give you an accurate feel of the game…RoM for one, has many bugs & glitches…also, many players reported being hacked, or paid for diamonds that they never received…They never bother to address the bugs & glitches issue, as they continue to add on contents in hopes that it’ll keep the paying players on, and many players still talked about getting their account hacked on the world chat…diamonds purchased and never received would take forever to resolve…basically no customer service to paying players…the GMs only come on the server to chit chat…but when a player ask about fixes or raise issues about the game…the GMs tuck tail & sign off as soon as possible…I have gotten my forum account banned for stating the truth…Letting newcomers know that their Palenque server has a lot of players that take advantage of new players, and are very selfish & greedy…I was banned because a paying player who trolled my posts complained to the GMs…and I was the one banned for trolling & forum abuse when i simply tried to warn new players of the problems on that server…and the GMs have been trying to get new players to join that failing server…where many players have grown tired of Frogster’s shady business ethics, and the self serving players on Palenque, and have either quit playing or moved on to another server. If you want to try RoM still, I would highly recommend that you enjoy it as a F2P and not pay for this piece of crap they call MMO, because you’ll most likely be playing by yourself on Palenque…People will only help you when you have diamonds or something they want from you…save yourself time & money…avoid the game or the Palenque server like a plague!!!
Totally agree with romsux that this game is not worth playing at all…1st, people that plays the game said that you can reach endgame quick…which is technically true…but they did not mention how many hours u have to play a day to get there…while the quests r not terribly time consuming, but that’s not where the problem lies…the reason y u would have to play 8 to 10 hrs a day is because the server is soo laggy…you feel the lag every few secs of playing…it takes 5 mins just to log into the game, 2 mins to load when u switch zones, and if u plan on participating in siege war (RoM’s version of GvG), then be prepared to get dc’d a lot…and i mean somedays, u will dc 8+ times during siege war…now siege war last only 1 hr, so think about dc so many times and 5 mins to log back in each time…u basically r not playing…and if u r the unlucky people who plays Palenque server, u will leave sooner than u can finish downloading the game…they advertise Palenque server as a west coast/mexico server…but there are barely any english speaking players…most of em are spanish player with broken english…and the cash shop is in spanish, without an option for english…and the quality of the players on that server is terrible…not enough people spend money on the Palenque server…most of em playing f2p and knows that they need diamonds, so what they do is prey on unsuspecting newcomers…tons of trading scams, people that’s just nice to u to get u to sell em diamonds u purchased…u won’t get any assistance in game, unless u r the few that buys diamonds…and joining a guild on that server is like joining a gang…they will say that they’re helpful & want to help u reach endgame…but really, they’re just using u to get what they want…they invite people who buys diamonds…take em on instances, but then use master loot to control who gets what…of course they keep the best stuff for themselves & their friends first…so if u’re f2p, u’re pretty much last in line unless u are the self serving types that takes advantage of others..and talk about GM abuse, u can be banned for complaining about the game, and game bugs & glitches…they don’t seem to want to address anything broken about the game…the new chapter 4 is just a ploy to sucker newcomers, pretending that the game is doing well & growing…the fact is, Palenque server just took down another server because too many people left…and when u reach lvl 55, there’s an area where u can farm for high lvl gear, but everyone’s there…so trying to move around in that area is like trying to win a lottery…and there’s only enough room for a raid party of 36…and each event comes around 1 to 2 hrs, but don’t try crashing the party…or u might not likely to get invited in the future runs…and those events bugs often…so it’s not even up for long before it breaks…and unless u have a whole day to blow, good luck trying to get into the raid group, half of them never leave for the whole day…and with more people reaching lvl 55, it becomes even harder to get geared up…unless u can spend tons of money on the game…and the monsters are pretty much the same in all areas, just with different names…so it gets boring quick…and with just bosses in instances that u can’t do unless u have money to spend on the gear…and r willing to deal with self serving players…so all in all, its a big waste of time, imo. Oh, and considering when RoM 1st came out, they report to have over 5 million users…now only 700k+, it’s just an indication of how bad the game is…that they can drop player base this quickly.
There are several ongoing complaints about this game online, all aimed at lousy support, fraud, lack of security of accounts, account lockout of players who have invested hundreds of dollars to equip their characters. The truth can not recommend it to anyone as the service will continue to Frogter Spain.
So what that I bought some game cards?? Five $20 dollar game cards still less than what other subscription MMOs charge, so technically I’m considered F2P!! I can just stand there and press the same buttons, and the boss dies XD
That’s the way I look at it. =]
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