Impressions: Runes of Magic [PC]

Welcome to Taborea. A world of magic, mystery and cute creatures just waiting for you to slay them. Read as we explore the world of Taborea within Runes of Magic a free MMORPG by Frogster Interactive. I’ve got things to say about some of the games many interesting features. First of all I’d like to point out how Frogster succeeded over other MMO’s by actually helping you kill the time whilst waiting for your game to download. The download client has a few mini-games for you to play while you wait, so I quickly found myself wasting two hours playing Asteroids.

Okay, with that out of the way a great way to start is to say that Runes of Magic (RoM) is actually a very simple MMO, and I’d like to recommend it to anyone who haven’t tried MMO’s before; and don’t want to be thrown into a complex new type of game. RoM starts out with some very easy tutorials which wouldn’t take you very long to complete if you’re an experienced player, however these tutorials may be absolutely necessary for people new to the genre. The tutorial continues on through the first part of the game and allows you to explore every little part of the gameplay system.

As for the classes I found a few problems with the balancing between stats and skills. I tried playing as a warrior, mage and scout – and found the mage to be superior to the others by far. These are the kind of things your bound to see once in a while in MMO’s but it still annoys me how my scout was so incredibly weak from the beginning of the game whilst my mage did so much quick ranged damage using hardly any mana at all that the enemies were dead even before noticing me. The mana almost regenerated faster than I was able to use it, although I’m pretty sure this will be fixed ASAP as nobody wants a game full of mages! I’ve kept an eye on Frogster’s patch releases for the game and they seem very determined to fix the worst bugs and errors in the game, so a new balancing of classes shouldn’t prove much of a problem.

When your character reaches level 10, you get the opportunity to decide a secondary class, like seen with the subclass system in Final Fantasy XI. This feature makes the game a whole lot more interesting and your able to get your secondary class by visiting a class trainer. I was quite happy to find this included in the game since I thought it worked very well for Final Fantasy XI and since then I’ve longed to see more games with this implemented, luckily it seems someone got their eyes opened.

I’d recommend having at least one friend playing along with you, since the missions can get quite boring. It helps to have someone to talk to and an MMO would not be the same without that multiplayer aspect. I myself had a friend join in and we quickly found out how much easier everything is just by adding one more player. We were able to clear quests in no time since we could split up and slash our way through any monsters we encountered. Later we had to team up on certain enemies but in the long run we saved a lot of time by joining forces. So don’t be shy in-game, ask for help if you need it or bring a friend along for the ride, it adds so much more fun to the game.

In combat the controls are very similar to World of Warcraft, Everquest and The Lord of the Rings Online. You click on an enemy to target it and use hotkeys to choose the attack. The combat and difficulty of the game is probably also the best reason for new MMO gamers to play this game first before emigrating for other challenged.

When you’ve traveled to the Logar settlement in the Howling Mountains you’ll also be able to get a nice little home for yourself. Here you can decorate your own home with furniture, as well as crafting stations, or store items you don’t need. You can also throw in a few mannequins and dress them with armor items your not currently using and after that you can use the mannequin to quick-dress yourself if for example you’re a role player and often changing your costume. The furniture items that can be bought seem to be updated almost monthly and I’ve heard other players talk about some house expansions that might make their way into an update soon.

You’ll also be giving something called an Arcane Transmutor, which is much like the horadric cube from Diablo 2. Weapons, runes, armor and magic stones go in and magic weapons, runes and armor come out. Pretty nifty alternative to crafting.

In conclusion the game is probably best for newbies. Experienced or ‘hardcore’ MMO players might end up bored by the easy gameplay , but the multiclass features and the feeling of being in a group makes it very tolerable. The graphics and sound in the game are pretty average for a free to play MMO but of all the free MMO’s I’ve played I think RoM takes the cake when it comes to originality. Im looking forward to seeing their future updates and im confident that they’ll continue to suprise me with cool features. I’ll periodically check in regarding this title and post impressions as I have them. If you don’t know if this is the MMO for you then there’s no harm in downloading the game and trying it out for a few hours. It is free after all.

Download Runes of Magic Client