Runes of Magic: Review

From Thirteen1 Issue #7. http://www.thirteen1.com/Issues/13131008/mag.php In this time of seemingly endless MMO releases, it’s always a pleasure to see one with genuine promise stand-out amongst the rest. Especially those that try to do a few things differently and drive the market forward...Runes of Magic (RoM) is one of these games! It’s obvious that a lot of effort has gone intomaking sure the details are right. In fact the first thing you notice upon entering the game is how polished the overall presentation of RoM is.The visuals are spot-on and complimented by audible, thematic music (not the usual ‘elevator music’ that we’ve come to expect). Runewaker has been working on the gamefor over 4 years and it shows! With the character creation RoM has gone for6 classes (with the obvious choices of Mage,Knight, Rogue and Priest all present).

However Runes of Magic excels itself by allowing you to fully customize your avatar in a unique way: altering every body part! Want a tall knight with small feet? Consider it done! A tiny tongue with fat arms and bright green hair? Done! The 6 classes might sound limiting, but every class has a selectable secondary class that you can add from level 10 onwards, which puts the total amount of classes at 30. As you enter the game you are greeted with the usual short tutorial that shows you how to use the controls and quests. RoM has two- both feasible - control mechanisms. You can point-and-click or use the FPS ‘WASD’ controls. RoM uses the usual mix of -go there, kill this, talk to- quest system, with over 600 different quests available at launch, of whichsome are daily, so can be done more than once.It’s worth mentioning that the developers have obviously played WoW and Ultima Online.. Alot! While WoW is a great game by all standards, RoM does tend to approach or even crossthe line at times. While playing the RoM beta yours truly was also playing the Wrath of the Lich King beta and there are a lot of similarities between the two.If you have played many MMORPGs you will notice that RoM has borrowed manygreat elements from other games; from Ultima Online to Everquest to Guild Wars. This doesn’t have to be a bad thing and it’s definitely not plagiarism, but I can see some people been bothered by it.The major positive of RoM taking heavy influence from other titles is without a doubt the planned housing system.