First Impressions: Runes of Magic

Welcome to First Impressions, where I play through the first few hours of an MMO, report back to you on some of the things you can expect as a new player - and whether or not I enjoyed the experience of the game. This week, we have Runes of Magic, a game currently launching early tomorrow morning (or late tonight, if you prefer) at 2:00 AM Pacific. Developed by Runewaker Entertainment and distributed by Frogster, this free-to-play MMO may well be the one that gets even the most staunchly anti-f2p player interested enough to give it a whirl. Also, keep in mind these impressions are on the open beta of the game, so some things may change slightly at launch.

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!

First Impressions: Runes of Magic

Reader Comments (36)

OMG its 204 eastern and the servers are not up yet! This game is so going to fail! I will cancel my account as soon as they get off their lazy butts and open back up the account management!

>this is of course sarcasm, just having fun at all impatient mmo gamers that claim failure the week of release<

let my flaming begin i suppose

Well, honestly, perception is reality. If the players say its broken, its broken.

Look at the LFG tool in WoW. It works perfectly fine. But players have labeled it as broken therefore it becomes so.

Sadly, the microtransaction model will not support anything less than a AAA game, which we have yet to see. Free Realms may be the first to get that test.

The Quest system matches up pretty well in sync with World of Warcraft. They give about the same amount of XP each, per level. Probably a little more in the earlier levels. Plenty of group content with the dungeons and such. The game plays similarly to WoW & LOTRO.

It's a good enough game, especially for free, but I just didn't find myself getting engaged with it. Were I not playing any other MMOs I might consider it, as for a "free" game it's very well polished and there seems a lot of content.

The problem I had though was it's like listening to Muzak. You recognise the themes and tune but all the while you're constantly reminded that it's not the original...

yeham i was shocked, its actually really good

I hate this comment system. It ate half of my comment!

I was going on about how I have 1000 diamonds to spent. I spent half of them for less money than a standard month to WoW, have an ostrich, furniture that boosts my professions when I log out, storage space, etc.

The spring festival also gives you a "blank" piece of face armor that looks like a masquerade mask! What you do is combine this with headgear with stats you want...and your mask now has your headgear stats! I love it!

When I played the Open Beta a month or two ago, there was some grouping content. There were some "elite" quests that were impossible to solo so I got a group together and we did them. It does have the same type of threat/healing/crowd control mechanics as other games but at the time that I was playing, threat was bugged.

I was a knight and no matter what I did to keep aggro, if someone else so much as hit the person, even if I had done more damage than said person, the mob would attack them and wouldn't stop. They have probably resolved that issue by now though. I'm downloading the game at home as I type and hope to be playing when I get home later.

If anyone wants to play later, e-mail me at tylen@comcast.net. Maybe we can group up and such.

I play as Charlotte on Govinda. I'm unguilded right now and mostly enjoying doing my own things, but anyone interested can say hello!

The two-class, housing, crafting, outfit system and free to play / diamonds system looks good. The environment art style and UI look good:

Still I gota ask:

Does it look sound like a JPRG (i.e. Finial Fantasy)? would someone who hates the JRPG style not like this?

Some screen shots it has a “neutral anime” semi-WoW style then sometimes character faces make shudder.
As its free I may just give it a go.. worst case I poke out my eyes and uninstall it. Still wanted to get an impression from fellow gamers here.

Thanks

It didn't come off as feeling very Japanese to me, personally, although I do have to admit that the mushroom dudes were kind of anime style

Well, I can say that it is very similar to WoW, like others noted, but it does have saving graces (it's free!).
I'm a level 12 Knight / 3 Priest atm and it's still pretty fun, if only for trying to get those awesome random statted drops. =)
I've played Ether Saga, and it lacks severely. I played the Closed Beta and there's not much to it. You can transform when you get the monster cards and those drop rarely, aside from the one you start out with depending on your race. The graphics are cute, though. ;)
Krystalle, which server do you play on, if you don't mind me asking? =)

I'm on Govinda, character name Apseth. Rogue/Priest combo for soloing and grouping, respectively. :)

Feel free to say hi!

I'm still stuck without login fields on my Vista laptop, which is a bugger because my desktop XP machine has gone to silicon heaven. No more RoM for me until it's sorted I suppose! At least I'm not alone with this.

Tried ROM for a couple of hours. The likeness to wow cannot be denied.
The game itself was ok but not groundbreaking, although better than most F2P. I didn't extensively test the crafting part, although it seemed pretty standard to me (gather things, buy recipe, click to produce)

The too-bright and glowy neon colors totally killed my eyes and were the gamebreaker for me.

Ok, for the record, downloading and installing the release client solved the login field problem. Hooray!

Sound interesting and you can't beat the price so why not at least try it?

I'm downloading the client now but it's got another 4 to 5 hours to go.

First Impressions: Runes of Magic

First Impressions: Runes of Magic

Reader Comments (36)

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 2:07AM tk421242 said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 7:31AM Lethality said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 2:24AM Valentina said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 5:59AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 6:14AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 10:42AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 10:59AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 1:18PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 1:33PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 19th 2009 3:22PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 21st 2009 2:42PM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 21st 2009 2:44PM Krystalle Voecks said

Posted: Mar 22nd 2009 1:06PM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 11:38AM (Unverified) said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 12:22PM pcgneurotic said

Posted: Mar 23rd 2009 4:07PM (Unverified) said

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