@ spdkilla

Odd... And I even sifted through the deleted stuff to make sure I didn't miss anything. <shrug></shrug> Still, sombody there failed at basic communication. "Limited" imparts no useful detail whatsoever and they deserve every flame they get on this topic.

That said... People actually complaining that they missed out on this deal are nuts. You're playing the equivolent of the stockmarket with a third string MMO title, only marginally better than a f2p. Operating on faith for the first year and change isn't my idea of of a good investment and you have no guarantees the rules won't change six months from now.

Likewise, I really do believe the 'limited' aspect is more than a marketing ploy and they're probably fairly sincere on the apology.  You can damn well bet the number of slots for that offer were limited because after a year, that customer stops generating revenue for them. Unlike some, I'll bet you don't see this offer extended because of this fact. The more they offer, the less they will ultimately make. Sure, you get the initial burst of cash, but long term? The company will die for lack of revenue if they release too many lifetime offers. The best disgruntled gamers can hope for is a limited (very limited) renewal of the offer, but the angery mob is still going to outnumber the lucky few by a very large margin.

I guess what it comes down to is I'm really not seeing a real conspiracy here. Somebody legitimately screwed up, got flamed and apologized. The very mechanics of the market they operate in pretty much bare out the truth- They can't do what people are accusing them of just to yank chains because they live and die by a subscription base, not a one off discount charge. They offer too many of these and they die and that's it.

Since i've been continuously receiving their emails, i decided to go back and take a look at a couple. I'd have to agree, they certainly didn't go out of their way to advertise either the Sept 1 deadline or the limited number of slots... Maybe they were somewhere else, but they definitely weren't in their mass emailing campaign

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That said, I'll give them something for a formal apology. Not much, but it's better than you'll get from some MMOs.

Taking it apart with a microscope... But... But that's our job! ;)

And don't take the comment the wrong way... Compared to other free to play MMOs, Runes is heading in the right direction. In terms of implimentation, it doesn't bend players over or overtly rape them like most cash shop games do. We'd still be remiss if we didn't put its flaws under the microscope however. That said, I was comparing it to a pre-expac warcraft... back in the days when soul link was a 30sec buff and death coil didn't horrify :p

...And a free to play vs up front money argument doesn't gain any sympathy here either. These people are playing for money. If they expect that money, they had better push a polished product up front, not yank gamers around on the promise that maybe someday it will fix the rough edges that should have never made it out of beta.

Just my POV, not nessisarily those of my sponcer ;)

Just weighing in here as the previewer... I have to agree with Sean's rating of "good" though I probably would have been a tad more pessemistic. After some extended play, Rune's of Magic is pretty bland, reaching for Warcraft and more but falling way short in every area I care to think of while attempting to float success on the extras and dual classing.

Runes is a decent time waster, but nothing to be taken seriously at this stage and certainly not what I was hoping would come out of closed beta. It's certainly playable for a free to play- even surprising in several ways -but still rough draft quality in a number of areas when placed side by side  with a comparably finished project.

Originally posted by girlgeek

QFT.

Thank the gods.  I was wondering if there was one damn person left on these forums with one OUNCE of common sense. 

And there's something to be said about why the Warcraft franchise is so successful versus the people they've supposedly ripped content wholesale from. Blizzard makes the genre easy, approachable and fun for the most part. It looks good, sounds great and makes for acceptable fiction... at least until we got to the space goats, but that's another matter entirely.

Frankly, we should be thanking for Blizzard and Warcraft. Whether you like the product or not, it's popularizing the MMO as a genre. An MMO with TV spots featuring Mister T and William Shatner for cryin' out loud. It's also half the reason you have so much competition in the market place. I'd even go so far as to say WoW is the only reason you have a Warhammer MMO to play right now, such is its influence; but that's purely IMFO.

Take pot shots at game all you want, but they've been the benchmark for the last four-some years for a reason.

Robert here...

PvP is still broken atm, mainly due to class balance issues they're ironing out. Since we're dealing with a Beta product here, there's no point in even commenting on it in the article as all the classes have and are still undergoing drastic changes. So far I haven't seen anything as ambitious as battlegrounds mentioned yet, and of course, the game has 5m instances and such. Since the level caps are still in place, it's not entirely clear what the scope of these will ultimately be.

As Mouseff pointed out, there are now more alternate areas to level your secondary class as of open beta. However, my point still stands. You're effectively leveling two characters from scratch, regardless of how many ways they give you to do it. Some people will be fine with this, others not so since it's another grind no matter how you slice it. Since the cash shop is still in its infancy and level caps are still in place, it's tough to give you a clear picture of how good or bad it'll be, so I'll defer to the release version review for that as well.

Hope that gives you a somewhat clear picture.