Runes of Magic is a free to play MMORPG that has the potential to
easily compete with subscription based games like World of Warcraft.
With the quality of its content, amazing list of features, and steady
implementation of new content and patches, Runes of Magic is not an
experience to be missed. Anyone willing to shrug Runes of Magic off
purely because it's free to play, will be missing out on one of the
best MMORPG experiences ever created. Perfect World International was
an impressive free to play game, but it still played like a free to
play game. Runes of Magic on the other hand is a free to play game with
the gameplay and features of a subscription based game, and the big
boys have reason to be scared of it. As such I will be reviewing Runes
of Magic as if it were a pay to play game, because it deserves that
much at least. I will get this out of the way right now though, the
interface is influenced heavily by World of Warcraft. It's very
similar, so much so that it's been called a World of Warcraft rip-off,
but it was a good move on the developers part instead of making a
completely unintuitive interface just to be different.
Since the release of Blizzard's amazingly popular World of Warcraft and
its expansions, it's been impossible for new massively multiplayer
online role-playing games to avoid the inevitable comparisons. That's
probably for the best in the case of Runes of Magic, for while the
aforementioned games have some superficial similarities to this one,
their core designs are far different. Runes of Magic, for better or for
worse, hearkens back to the older days, when in-game death was more
than just a slight annoyance and groups camped for bosses that rarely
spawned. But by doing its own thing, Azeroth be damned, Runes of Magic
sets itself apart, thanks to complex features and being a completely
free to play experience. It's also rough around the edges, exhibiting
all the bugs and glitches of a game not quite ready for release. Yet
Runes of Magic is quite friendly to genre newcomers, and has enough
rewarding gameplay to please experienced adventurers willing to
overlook its technical hitches.
In Runes of Magic, home is the world of Taborea, which features eight
huge regions and cities, one playable race, and six classes. While the
choices may seem limited, you are able to use a primary and secondary
class, with most of the combinations fitting archetypes and group roles
familiar to anyone who's played an MMORPG before. The Knight is your
usual heavily armored tank, while the Warrior is a well equipped
weapons melee specialist. The Rogue is a stealthy backstabbing melee
specialist, while the Scout is a long ranged bow and crossbow
specialist. Priests take up the role of healing, and Mages use their
arcane powers to destroy enemies with impressive power. There are a
good number of ways to modify your avatar's physical appearance, so you
could easily spend quite some time deciding on the look and purpose of
your character. Once in the game, a system of pop-up messages guides
you through an optional beginning tutorial instance, then you're off to
explore, quest, and level. The starting quests are genre standards
familiar to anyone who's played an MMORPG before, but once you've
gained a few levels, you'll find just how daunting Taborea can get.
The first and obvious challenge once you are around level ten is that
you need to get a secondary class. That isn't to say its required, but
consistent grinding without one is a good way to get quickly
frustrated. If you're mainly a solo player, you may get frustrated
later on regardless if you have a secondary class or not. Some quests
are obviously designed for groups, even if they're not necessarily
identified as such in your quest log, and soloing what should seem like
a simple mission can result in quick death if you aren't careful. Even
with a full group, some areas and dungeons can be a time-consuming
challenge, particularly because Runes of Magic features some instanced
and some open areas. As a result, you might need to wait a while before
the boss you need to vanquish reappears after the last group's battle.
Multipart group dungeons may take a few hours to get through, and even
with a good party, a simple mistake can cost you your character's life.
That cost can be pretty high, since resurrection entails experience
loss, training loss, and a trip back to your tombstone, assuming you
want to regain some of that experience. You may choose to ignore your
tombstone, but at higher levels, the amount of time you need to put
into regaining all the lost experience is intimidating. In any MMO,
returning to your tombstone in a monster-infested dungeon may be next
to impossible, and the additional loss of experience often makes the
penalty even more frustrating in Runes of Magic. There's no experience
loss by falling to the sword of another player on the
player-versus-player server, which eliminates the need to retrieve your
tombstone but means your killer can potentially loot equipment you're
wearing. On the PvP server, PvP is "open". That means there are only a
few limitations on who can be attacked and who cannot. Through your PvP
achievements, your character gains (or loses) reputation and can move
either way to become a Hero, fighting for Good or an evil Demon,
slaughtering all in their wake. Along with the usual duels and arenas
common to the genre, that's the only PvP content Runes of Magic offers
so far. Battlegrounds and Guild Wars are in development though, but who
knows when we'll see their release.
But if exploring Taborea is riskier business than we're used to seeing
in MMOs over the last few years, playing a character in Runes of Magic
is even more unique. Much of this is thanks to the dual-class system,
giving Runes of Magic 30 unique class combinations for players to
choose from. Each combination becomes more its own when your character
reaches fifteen in both classes and obtains its first elite skill.
Elite skills are combination specific abilities that ensure a unique
experience with your combination. The combat in Runes of Magic is
satisfying and fun, as some spells and abilities can be triggered only
if certain criteria are met. For example, a stunned opponent may open
up an attack not normally available. Because those attacks can be
powerful, managing your skills and available source(s) of energy adds
some welcome strategy to your choice of abilities at any given time.
Class combinations and group chemistry make battles feel dynamic,
especially considering your character doesn't need to stand still to
perform most skills.
Runes of Magic supports add-ons, but also has some amazing built in
gameplay enhancers of its own, similar to some of the most popular
add-ons for WoW. The quest log contains a wealth of information,
guaranteeing you won't get lost while traveling to the next stop in a
quest line. The compass shows harvesting nodes with appropriate icons,
as well as tracking dots for mobs and environment triggers needed in
quests you have in your quest log. When you hover over a mob that is
required for a quest, the tooltip will tell you how many more are
needed. There's also a quest tracker, a point and click auto-travel
feature, an NPC and monster search function, an extremely in-depth
macro system, and many other useful additions that the developers cared
enough to have built into the game right from the start. Although these
features are great to have built right into the client, the add-on
community support for Runes of Magic is extremely impressive. There are
hundreds of useful add-ons for Runes of Magic, many of which are
usually updated a few hours after a patch.
There's also plenty of crafting and harvesting to do, and making a
finalized and useful product is a task similar to the system in World
of Warcraft. Creating a single item requires a recipe, ingredients, and
a particular workbench. There are four levels of skill involved with
crafting and harvesting; apprentice, craftsman, specialist, and master.
You can learn as many professions as you wish on the apprentice rank,
can become a craftsman in six trades, be a specialist in three and
ultimately master one profession. Additionally, progressing in crafting
can be expensive for the required recipes of a particular profession.
For example, if you want to pursue a harvesting profession, you would
need to buy certain recipes from the appropriate NPC in order to
convert higher tiered materials into usable ingredients for the
crafting professions. Recipes can get quite costly at later tiers,
especially since the only useful recipes are rarely dropped from
enemies in the wild. Because of this, you'll find yourself looking for
recipes at the Auction House more often than you'd like. It's an
involved process to be sure, but producing a useful product is
rewarding.
Runes of Magic's most unfriendly characteristic is its overall lack of
polish. To its credit, it launched without a hitch with an updated
website, forums board and patch, and server disconnects are relatively
uncommon. Unfortunately, a number of bugs infest the game, while some
other features are completely absent. Getting stuck in geometry
requires you to use your recall ability, unless you've already used it
which forces you to wait an hour while the skill cools down. Much of
the game is also silent, with a noticeable lack of music, ambient
noise, and sound effects for a majority of the content in Runes of
Magic. Broken quest triggers, unexplainable lag, and other frustrating
issues have popped up frequently since release. Lag spikes will hold up
combat for several seconds, or even cause an action in progress to stop
while still costing you the time the skill requires.
Surprisingly, though, some of the missing features don't have much of
an impact on the beauty of the visuals. Many of Taborea's areas are
stunning, from both an artistic and technological standpoint. The
detailed settings and colorful desert surroundings of Dustdevil Canyon
is one notable example, but exploration in all of the areas reveals
plenty of dramatic landmarks. The splendor doesn't translate evenly,
though. Some of the environments are inconsistent, and many of the
dungeons and enemies are graphically uninspired. And as pretty as most
of it is, the game engine seems to keep up pretty well. A mid-range
system can see Taborea in all its glory, but even on a high-performance
PC Runes of Magic may lag while trying to load each and every character
within a city. When adventuring outside of a city area though, you'll
be running at a stable framerate.
The soundtrack is attractive when it's playing in the background, but
most of the time you'll be trapped in a void of silence. When you can
hear the musical tracks, they sound nice but don't necessarily reflect
the local environment well. The few combat and ambient noises that can
be heard are what you would expect, although some enemies are eerily
silent when attacked. Also, don't expect the pleasant NPC chatter from
EverQuest 2, or witty WOW-ish quips; NPCs in Runes of Magic are mute,
though the quest descriptions are full of personality.
Features like player housing, guild halls, and arenas will extend Runes
of Magic's life for players approaching the top level of 50, and even
with plenty of room for future questing content, there's a lot to see
and do. But Runes of Magic is undoubtedly not for everyone. Multiple
bugs, class balance issues, some forced grouping, and a vocal player
community sensitive to criticism and change currently keep players
looking for an easygoing adventuring experience at arm's length. But
Runes of Magic gets a lot right, and the engaging combat and nifty
features are more than enough reason for genre enthusiasts to give it a
shot. Sure it's a free to play game, but put the monetary transactions
aside for a moment. A subscription fee doesn't automatically make an
MMO great, so why should the lack of a subscription fee make an MMO
trash? A great game is a great game regardless of the fee it requires,
so give Runes of Magic a try. The only thing you have to lose is some
time and bandwidth, though I highly doubt you'll be disappointed.
