Final Generic Review of Runes of Magic

There are too many features in Runes of Magic (ROM) for me to give them all real commentary at my low level.  My Priest/Warrior is only 15/15.  Therefore I’m going to discuss some final thoughts and then get back to my usual format of discussing my own adventures in gaming.

More Good Things

• No gear can be purchased through the Item Mall.  For players who are opposed to RMT gear, you don’t need to worry.  You can purchase armor and weapon enhancements via the Item Mall but they are the same items someone could just farm or pay to have crafted in game. Therefore the Item Mall can't be used as a long term combat advantage.  Given enough time and sweat equity, all players can acquire the same enhancements.
  
  (Edit: Recent research revealed the existence of elite gear enhancements that are only available via the Item mall.  This level of enhancement-epeen is not required to complete PVE content.  However, I'd imagine players with the means who like having the best-of-the-best will consider these additional options.  This is likely to impact players interested in participating in ranked PVP.)

• There is no character level restriction for riding a mount and mobs don’t dismount you.  Blizzards philosophy that mounts enable content skipping isn't taken into consideration.  I say, make your content too compelling to skip and mounts won't be used as avoidance.  If someone doesn't want to do a zone or interact with those mobs why force them to anyway?  Moreover, I never understood the necessity of having lower level mobs dismount me.  There was no contest about who was going to win so why waste my time?  And blah-blah if a lowbie can ride through a high level zone.  So what????  They're either a high enough level for where they are headed or will die when they arrive.  Game people.  Not job.
  

The rest of this is a good news or bad news depending on your point of view.  The only way to get a permanent mount is to buy one from the Item Mall.  Using in-game currency (gold or Daily Quest tickets) you can only rent a mount in 24-hour, 7-day and 30-day increments.  Not so bad to me but some people won’t like the idea.  I think that you can earn an elite permanent mount through a high level quest chain.  I saw chat about someone working on the gathering the materials over the weekend but no details.  I’m going to be in ROM for a while and although I didn’t think it was worth it yet to purchase additional back space, I did pony-up for a mount.  For approximately $15US, I purchased the diamonds needed and am no longer walking.

• Player housing is for role-playing value and storage OR strategically used to help you advance in the game – your choice.  What ROM has implemented is very close to what I'd been hoping for in WOW (minus RMT) when Blizzard announced they were working on a first expansion and then the second expansion, but still no player housing in WOW.  Player housing doesn't have to be just fluff.  It can be made optionally strategic and offer convenience amenities.  There can be no excuses.  EQ2 has had player housing since forever and now has Guild Halls too.
  
  In ROM, every character gets a house for free.  Like EQ2, it’s a modest one room instanced location.  You can use your in-game gold to purchase furniture and storage containers.  It’s simple and straight forward.  However, if you’re not opposed to RMT, you can purchase furniture via the Item Mall that adds bonus Rested Experience gain (Training), Training Points gain (Study) and Crafting Experience gain (Learning). I think I have those correct.  The translations to English aren’t consistent and are often poorly worded and clipped – verb/adjectives inverted.
  
  You can’t earn more than what your class allows – max level is 50, each class has max training points that can be earned/spent and each crafting profession has max level.  All you’re doing here is accelerating the journey.  Think EQ2 bonus weekends, veteran reward potions and the Friends programs launched by Blizzard.  There is no long term advantage that offsets the balance of the game.  For me, I can see value in increasing the XP earned for crafting. This where players are saying the game currently has a steep grind.  I’m open to spending little cash to make a few less batches of Cheeseballs and Bowls of Turtle Soup, before getting to the stuff that matters to me.  Then again the crafting “grind” might not really be all that bad.  Players are complaining about harvesting and materials, all of which look easier and less complicated than EQ2 crafting.  The chat and forum complaints I've read might be from people who’ve never “really” climbed a crafting ladder before.  Since I have,  it may actually turn out to be trivial to me.

• There are instances, raid content and ranked PVP.  Players who are planning to stay post release are starting to form serious guilds with level requirements, as players do in most other MMOs.  I was powered through two instances by a high level player.  I didn’t realize the quests were for a group instance when I made my way there.  Once there I couldn’t get a group – you know the old spamming LFG routine.  I sighed in chat and said I’d need to walk back to town and get other quests, when someone whispered me with an offer to run me through if I could wait until he changed characters.  Unsolicited help offered from a friendly player, damn right I'll wait! 
  
  These were two low level instances around the range of Deadmines or Wailing Caverns in World of Warcraft.  It was the usual lowbie instance fare.  Not bad, not spectacular but certainly on par with anything I’ve done at that level in WAR and EQ2.  It won’t compare with Deadmines which is classic instance and quest design genius that even Blizzard hasn’t replicated again in a low level dungeon.

• Live Events happen on a regular basis.  I mean Live Events like there were in Asheron’s Call2, where there are GMs playing an active part so the event is on rotating schedule.  This isn’t the new term being used by Warhammer where it’s still scripted, there’s no interactive or real GM involvement, so I’m not sure why they use the term “Live Event” for those activities.  I guess WAR means “live” as in, it’s been released on the server - the content is live/available.
  
  In ROM, these are live as in do it now and game staff are involved in the orchestration.  Treasure Hunts, quests, races, etc.  I haven’t participated in any.  They keep happening when I’m already doing something else and don’t even know how to get to the zones where they’ve announced players should gather.  I’ll worry about it later.

Not so Good

• Most of the elite or more unique vanity times are only available via the Item Mall.  No one should be surprised about this fact.  They have to make money somehow in order to continue producing and supporting the HUGE amount of content and many features they’re releasing in a F2P game.
  
  For whatever crazy reason,and I'm strongly among this group, players love vanity items, with non-combat pets ranking high at the list.  For in-game gold you can purchase pets that last 1 to 7 days (I think).  For real money – diamonds in the Item Mall, you can purchase 30-day pets.  I didn’t see any permanent pets in the list.  So unless you want to keep buying your pets every few days like a scrub (j/k), you’ll have to use the Item Mall.

• Content lacks the ambiance and finishing touches of a typical AAA MMO.  The first one you’ll notice is sound or rather, the lack of it.  I know many gamers who mute the game sound anyway but I’m not among them.  I like having the zone theme music playing.  I enjoying hearing combat noises, NPC chatter, etc.  I’m not accustomed to playing in d-e-a-d silence.  I find myself checking my volume to see if I muted audio by mistake.  But no, there’s just very little audio in the game at present.  Some of the mob combat audio is re-purposed.  It's not that great anyway - wolf being hit sounds like I'm knifing a child (bad visual) and that same clip is used on other mobs that are nothing like a wolf.  It's noticeable.  It's strange and down right creepy some times.

• We’re a living in a freakish world that goes from day to evening back to day – there’s no nighttime.  I rarely encountered nighttime in WOW which is rather astounding since I played for 3.5+ years.  Whereas in EQ2, I regularly encountered adventuring in the dark - and I do mean DARK, because the game cycles through a day much faster.  When I was on Nagafen, which is a PVP server, I’ll tell you straight that the dark scared the shit out of me.  Making your way from Greater Faydark to Butcherblock with creeps and Freeps jumping out of nowhere to gank your ass was horrible.  The only good Freep is a dead Freep. EQ2 PVP was the worst PVP experience I’ve ever had.  I think they did a good thing to stop that level locking crap that players were milking in terms of being able to twink and gank in PVP.  Anywho, I find it strange to go from dusk and back to morning again in ROM. *Shrug*

• Where are the human mobs?  Will I only be fighting monsters?  You don’t kill people in Wizard101 and I understand why.  In WAR, you start right off killing mobs that are humans which I thought was fabulous, before being sent in search of wolves and bears.  In WOW you start with animals but on the Alliance side at least, by level 5 you’re fighting the Defias who are humans.  As an aside, the Defias storyline, quests and zones were my favorite of any game.  The whole journey from Northshire Abbey to Southshore was superb.  The only game that’s come close is WAR’s Empire zone and conflict, which were pure gold Tier 1 to Tier 2.
  
  I don’t know if there are going to be humans but I hope so.  I can’t get excited about fighting beasts all the time.  There’s something more emotionally compelling and exciting about fighting someone who has similar traits and abilities.  I have big sword, shield, magic and healing.  Bear has claws and teeth.  Who do you think is going to win in a fight? 
  
  I’ve seen the headstones of players that have died – the death mechanic is like Age of Conan where you need to recover your headstone to remove the death penalty.  But I don’t know for the life of me how those people died in those areas.  At first I thought it was just scenery.  Like who could die here?  Sure the mobs are tightly packed in this game but still.  *shurg*  Perhaps all the research I did before picking a class combo yielded one with great survival skills.  I’ve been caught unawares and swarmed by 3 to 4 mobs and once and didn’t die.  Nubs.  I hope there are humans somewhere as opponents.  I will see if I can find out later.

Bad

• Crafting requires combines for all recipes I’ve seen.  A combine is where there is a material required that must have been prepared first using a crafting profession. Cloth bundles in WOW would be an example.  In ROM, I need wood for cooking – no problem.  That is until you realize that it must be wood planks, not the raw wood you gather via harvesting.  DOH.  Everyone can harvest anything and craft in all professions until a certain level, after which you'll need to specialize - very EQ2-esk.  So before I can cook, I have to make or buy wood planks of a certain tree type.
  
  Depending on how many combines are needed this will be trival or annoying.  I’d hoped that when EQ2 decided to get off the dime and re-vamp their crafting system to remove combines, everyone else would do, “Note to self as crafting system developer – don’t do that to players.”
  
  The only saving grace is that the production is like WOW and LOTRO which are both click-n-go.  So it’s not “that” much of a burden and may create economic crafting opportunities for others by selling combines.  The jury is still out on this one.

• Very limited User Interface (UI) customization. The UI isn’t bad but the positioning of primary elements is not where I’ve ever kept them.  They are too far up on the screen for things that I need within view while I’m fighting.  My eyes are playing the look-up-and-down game which I’d like to fix as soon as possible.  Some aspects of the game are open for modifications by “modders” but I have no idea how much and no one’s going to be doing that until it releases anyway.

Closing Thoughts

If you enjoy fantasy MMOs, are not vehemently opposed to RMT and don’t have an AAA MMO title in your current line-up, you should give Runes of Magic a try.  If you’re playing something like WOW, EQ2 or LOTRO and occasionally need a break but want more of the same, you should also give Runes of Magic a try. If you're a leveling whore, altaholic or might enjoy messing around with a dual-class character progression model, you should give Runes of Magic a try.

If however, you’re playing one of the Big Boy MMO titles, you love it and play it often, Runes of Magic isn’t the game for you.  It’s just more of what you already have but without the sophistication, ambiance and maturity of a game that has been around for years or produced a with multi-million dollar budget.  You’ll find the minor defects and omissions  more glaring because you have something to compare it against on a regular basis, versus someone who isn’t currently playing one of the top MMOs.

Whew!  That’s it.  This is the last generic overview of the game and features in Runes of Magic.  To read all of my current posts related to Runes of Magic, use the Runes of Magic caegories link found on the inner most right-side column.  This station will now return to its regularly scheduled programming.

Comments

[Tipa]

Wasn't WoW on a 1-1 time thing with the real world? If you always played around the same time each day, it would be the same time in the game world each day. Anyway. that's how I remember it.

Runes of Magic made a HUGE deal about the music used in the game. I'm surprised it isn't in the game yet.

I guess there's another game to add to the pile :/

Good review :)

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

@Tipa - Thanks! That's good news and means there's hope for game sound FX and audio. I didn't know that about WOW which explains it. My playing habits were pretty regular. It was always daytime when I played. I remembered thinking I wonder how it felt for players that by their playing schedules were always playing during WOW nighttime.

I think the faster cycling of EQ2 is a better method. You get to see all flavors of the time changing. One for taking pictures, I'm sure I missed many pretty dusk and night scenes.

[Crimson Starfire]

Great review!

I'm not playing any AAA MMOs atm, so I might check it this weekend. Cheers for the write up.

[RomaGoth]

Yes, WoW does a "real time" day/night timeline. I almost always play at night, because of work/kids and stuff. Thus, I was almost always adventuring in the dark in WoW. Of course, I am a night owl so it didn't really seem all that different to me from real life *laugh*.

Nice write up, Saylah!

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

Thanks Crimson and Roma. If you make it on and decided to play a bit look me up. I'm Surianah on the PVE server Artemus.

[Mashuguna]

Thank you very much for all the detailed reviews. I have been itching for fantasy MMO to balance my CoH addiction but cannot justify resubscribing to WoW or LOTRO.

Downloading RoM now :)

Thanks!

[Alysianah aka Saylah]

Thank you and good luck.

[Hudson]

Thanks for the review!