PVP:Yes | Distribution:Download | Retail Price:Free | Pay Type:Free | Monthly Fee:Free
Desktop Client | System Req:
| Out of date info? Let us know!
Runes of Magic Review: 2011 Re-Review - Edit
7.5
| Pros |
 Completely free Dual class system Friendly community Tons of content |
| Cons |
 Forumulaic game play Generic concept Pseudo knock-off |
The last time MMORPG took a look at Runes of Magic (RoM), the game was recently released and still very much up for debate as far as value verses other MMO options. However, RoM is a 100% free-to-play game (with an item mall, of course), which is certainly a budget friendly investment if you’re looking for a new gaming option. In the two years since our last look at RoM, quite a few impressive changes and additions have been implemented. But does this one hold its own against the other F2P titles—and P2P options—also available?
The RoM Dual Class system.
One of the most enjoyable aspects of RoM is the Dual Class system. Each character is composed of two classes, which are selected from a somewhat disappointingly small pool of 8 options, effectively giving you two characters in one. How this works is you select a starting class, which is automatically your “primary” class, and quest or grind up to level 10. Once you hit this first milestone, you can select your “secondary” class. The only limitation is that Priest and Knight are Human-only, whereas Druid and Warden are Elf-only, so never shall the four intertwine. Elves and the Elf-only classes were implemented after the initial RoM release, and I found the Elven starting lands seemed slightly more advanced and polished than the Human ones.
After you’ve selected your secondary class, you must visit your complimentary house maid in order to swap the combo. Until your now-primary class is the same level as your now-secondary class, you cannot access all of the bonus abilities. Although many players choose to keep their character classes within 10 levels of each other at first, I found that many players over level 40 neglect their secondary class until they reach level 62—the highest level currently available. You will have access to some of your secondary class abilities as you level your primary class, but not all of them. I was disappointed that the dual class system doesn’t give you general access to at least the weapon and armor proficiencies of both classes; my Druid/Scout could use bows, but not leather armor, for example.
)
However, it is a refreshing change from many MMOs which offer only talent trees and minimal customization per character, and gives bonus versatility and variety to each character slot. The additional “Elite” abilities, which are available depending on your primary/secondary combination, give even more bonuses based on your two class choices.
PvE & PvP: A quick rundown.
As with most games offering PvP servers, you can access player-versus-player combat almost immediately after making a character. Simply hit level 10—which takes next to no time in a quest driven game like RoM—and you’re ready to gank other players. The PvE server players can opt to turn on their PK flag, but the majority of PvP happening on the PvE servers is going to be siege combat.
The siege PvP system puts guilds into a head-to-head combat scenario, and the pairings span all of the RoM servers instead of being limited to guilds on the same server. It isn’t the most addictive or impressive PvP system I’ve ever played, but it does give you access long before end-game if you don’t mind being essentially limited to collecting crystals to help your 50+ guildmates build siege towers and the like. Once you’re level 50+, you have access to the fun task of killing NPC monsters or targeting PC opponents. There are set PvP times for these guild-based siege raids, so it isn’t something you can chose to do day-in and day-out. The rewards for the winning guild are pretty impressive; even as a level 20 newbie, I received two 55+ pieces of “blue” grade armor, plus orbs for free XP and training points. Not bad for less than an hour of my time—and not bad for a F2P game, either.
)
A friendly community—for free?
One of the major downside to a F2P game—especially an MMO which has been F2P since launch, as is the case with RoM—is that the community seems less invested in the notion of being “friendly and helpful.” This has definitely been the case with F2P conversion titles, such as Dungeons & Dragons Online, where consistently you’ll encounter unpleasant sorts of people who are on the game because they don’t like it enough to shell-out for VIP membership each month. Naturally, entering RoM with an assumption or fear that the community would be the same assortment of non-committed, egocentric players is a natural one. Fortunately, that seems to be far from the case, at least on the PvE servers. Although the Elven starting lands are notoriously quiet, head over to the Human starting zones to find your Zone Chat filled with requests for assistance, helpful advice, and only the occasional provoking replies.
Of course, the experience tends to differ over on the PvP servers, which are arguably designed to promote backstabbing, 3p33n measuring and general jerkiness towards everyone not in your guild. That is the nature of the PvP beast, and RoM is no exception. Still, guilds seem to be even more accommodating and helpful in a PvP environment, so there is one safe-haven of hope for new players needing assistance.
)
Guilds have enjoyed a healthy dose of attention from the RoM team, who has implemented many strong features able to give legitimate benefits rather than just a fancy guild house or castle with nothing but bragging rights. Over on the Osha server, the guild “Sexy” was kind enough to allow a newbie to join their numbers and poke around in their level 9 guild castle for the purpose of this review—in addition to asking an embarrassing amount of newbie questions. I found this to be a great example of how the RoM community often displays over-the-top generosity, helpfulness or encouragement towards new players.
RoM even has a system for “Honor Parties,” in which a level 30+ player can invite one person into his or her group (provided that player is under level 30), and give the lower level 100% of the XP generated during this grouping. Several of the lads in “Sexy” were kind enough to demonstrate this feature for me, and although it would be nice if multiple newbies could tag-along at the same time I was impressed that RoM offers the system at all. Power-leveling is typically a tricky, if not near impossible, arrangement in most MMOs.
)
RoM Alchemy: Converting Gold to Diamonds.
Like many free MMO options, Runes of Magic offers an item mall with special upgrades, mounts, costumes and more in exchange for diamonds bought with real-life currency. Whether you choose to pick up a RoM game card or use the online system to pay via credit card or PayPal determines if you can gift diamond items to friends. In order to protect honest players from diamond vendors and gold farmers, RoM doesn’t allow you to use diamonds purchased online with a credit card to send gifts. This is unfortunate if you want to mail a mount to your friend, but especially frustrating if you want to participate in the in-game exchange of gold for diamonds. At roughly 10k gold per diamond, players with extra spending money and lots of diamonds can quickly outfit their characters with gold currency items; alternatively, players who can’t—or won’t—spend money for diamonds can still purchase diamond-only items after farming hordes of in-game gold.
)
Unfortunately, there isn’t a trading system in place to protect players during these gold-for-diamond trades. Players advertise the buying or selling of the goods, and these purchase arrangements consist of “buy me X diamond item, and I’ll send you Y amount of gold.” The unofficial, community-made rule is that the person with the gold sends funds first, and then the diamond owner purchases a pre-agreed-upon diamond item to send to the buyer. This system only promotes scamming, and the World Chat is frequently bombarded with accusations of scamming. Not since The Realm Online have I see a trading system, which is openly allowed by the game moderators, enable so much potential for bad trades or scamming. Still, it does allow players who cannot afford diamond purchases an opportunity to obtain those goods. You can also purchase store items with rubies and the tokens obtained doing the 10/day bonus quests, but those items aren’t nearly as fancy as the diamond-only ones.
Players can also attempt to complete free offers and surveys on the Runes of Magic website in order to generate bonus diamonds. These are usually difficult at best to qualify for, but you might be able to land 20 or 40 freebies—maybe more. Of course, these “free” surveys often collect your email info and subject you to hordes of spam invitations to bonus surveys, so proceed accordingly.
)
Runes of Magic: Worth the download?
Arguably, the dual class system is one of the most novel concepts present in Runes of Magic. The heavy questing system, class options, even the visuals are extremely reminiscent of other popular MMOs—especially World of Warcraft. However, considering RoM is F2P, it’s rather impressive that the game offers anything novel at all. The option of PvP versus PvE servers is another nice addition, especially since PvP is still available even if you play on a PvE server. RoM even offers a decent crafting system, and a single character can learn every trade skill and recipe available.
)
Ultimately, I was shocked by the volume of free content available in RoM. As a player who tends to prefer grinding to endless quests, the emphasis on the latter wasn’t something I was thrilled about. However, the XP and loot rewards are fair for the time investment, though it essentially means group leveling is limited prior to level 20. But the RoM world is vast, and the frequent updates and seasonal festivals provide a fairly continuous amount of things to do. Compared to other F2P titles, RoM manages to succeed with style and a polish rarely exhibited without a membership fee or purchase price. While it isn’t likely to ever trump the major P2P players currently in the market, Runes of Magic is certainly worth a trial run for anyone looking to try a worthwhile game for little or no monetary investment.
Despite what a lot of people say, it's still a pretty solid game for a F2P title.
"Over on the Osha server, the guild “Sexy” was kind enough to allow a newbie to join their numbers and poke around in their level 9 guild castle for the purpose of this review—in addition to asking an embarrassing amount of newbie questions. I found this to be a great example of how the RoM community often displays over-the-top generosity, helpfulness or encouragement towards new players."
Are you sure they were doing that to be friendly to a newbie or were they doing that to be friendly to a reviewer?
I would rate it 7/10 when it went out and in 2011, I would rate it 6/10. It's very decent for a F2P but what I disliked are the sometimes coarse graphics, stiff character animations, poor textures and that you've seen this kind of common mmo so many times already. I disliked too the obligation to *rent* (not buy) bags.
But yeah without paying a cent you have a lot of quests to do, some landscapes are nice, you have crafting, housing, pvp, mounts, it's polished, the music and sounds are ok. I actually wish they would offer a reduced subscription price because it's a fleshed-out mmo altogether and worth trying but the item shop seems really expensive from what I analysed when I played it and afaik you must grind insanely or buy stuff or you won't have a good character for top levels if you don't pay anything.
F2p games are not budget friendly if you want the same gaming experience as a p2p.
Which gaming experience? Playing for a month, getting bored and unsubscribe?
Pleare Re-review Allods online. It has changed but people still bere grudges over Gipat, even though I don't know how bad it was, but now it has been officailly released in the US and EU.
Screw allods and runes of magic , Everyone should check out Realms Online, its the re release of regnum online in north america , but NGD isnt the ones running the show its a new dev called Game samba they have awsome customer support, good GMs , population is steadily growing on a brand new server called raven, RVR is already kicking off , good PVE sandbox feel until the RVR starts , its a great game and its 100% free heres the nice part, it has an item shop but the items you can purchase from it give you absolutely no edge over anyone in combat, you cannot buy "I want to be leet" potions , its all just cosmetic and stuff to make the game easier to reach end lvl , mounts etc, nothing like raid gear u can buy with real money or anything like that, if you never want to spend a dime you will have the same gear as the ppl spending money its that simple check it out we could use some more peeps on the new NA server raven! ,
I've been enjoying this title myself recently. There were a couple of rough spots where it wasn't immediately obvious what to do next, but it all worked itself out and the density of quests (I'm a quester) is impressive.
They really should just allow diamond trades on the auction house. It would prevent ragequits by people who get scammed. But perhaps they intentionally cultivate such an untrustworthy atmosphere in diamond trades to discourage them without officially banning them.
I enjoy Allods overall a bit more, but Allods doesn't have the density of content and is PvP centric. Cash shop items are freely tradeable on the auction house, even.
who wants to grind shit loads of PVE quest only lol? you better off playing a game like dragon age origins if you just like doing mediocre quest over and over again lol.
If you want to play this game's endgame it can get very expensive.
Well, seems that for some people F2P means "no community". Well, despite mostly, this isn't right. There are some (i cannot play all games :p) titles with friendly gamers, such as Allods or Global Agenda and P2P titles with crap community (in my experience: EVE and AoC). And remember that famous games such as LOTRO are, now, F2P.
IMHO dual class system means doing twice the same quests: no, thanks, i really don't like it and it's the reason that i no more play RoM.
Yeah, I'm with you on this one. I don't enjoy grinding. And they make you do it twice. No thank you.
Their customer service is atrocious. I tried to buy diamonds from them once, which failed for some reason. I opened a ticket to wait before trying again, but my account got banned. A ticket for *that* kept getting closed without responding to my inquiry of what information they needed from me to prove that I was legitimate and owned that CC.
Won't say *never* about playing RoM again... but it's fair to say that I'd never trust them with money. In the meantime, LOTRO is much better when I don't feel like playing WoW.
Just my 2 cents:
At end game if you PvP you are going to need to spend hundreds of dollars at the very least to fully deck out your character. In PvE this is less of an issue as you can easily outgear any boss currently in game with the way the equipment system works. However, odds are there's no way you are going to happily play this game in perpetuity without spending a dime. Also every time they raise the level cap you have to start over and regear, once again requiring to fork out the same amount if not more money.
You can totally get by to the cap without spending a dime, but once at endgame you have no choice if you want to do high end content and/or PvP. This game was awesome at release because there was no mention of level cap increases coming down the pipeline thereby nullifying all your purchases. However, at this point the cap has been raised 2x (at least depending on how you look at it, ex: they raise the cap from like 60 to 62, then when the full expansion area is out it would bump to 65) and is about to be raised a 3rd. Pretty sure it was 50 at launch and is now up to 62 (feel free to correct me if I'm wrong)
At release and first expansion I got both my classes on my character to cap and maxed out with SP all skills. Never had to repeat the same quests at all. The only repetition comes from doing the 10 a day dailies and those are really so you can get tokens for the item shop and sell the drops for cash on the AH. There really isn't 2x the grind. Hard to explain unless you've played the game. I left due to the costs of keeping up in PvP when they increased the level cap. I was fine with what I shelled out in the first place as it was pretty equivilant to subbing, but then they nullified all the money I spent so I was out.
After reading this re-review I downloaded and created my first toon. As soon as it entered the world and I saw it for the first time I exited and uninstalled.
The WoW like cartoony graphics made this game DOA for me.
Oh come on..
Not 1 mention of how all the thousands of accounts where hijacked along with their personal information, the god awful customer support which got said "hijackers" to even plead "Fix it already!"
The graphics which really don't look that great with the "full client" let alone how freaking ridiculous it is to install the full client with the insanely slow dl speed, and 3 hours of patching it does. Not to mention the strage stress it puts on some computers considering the requirements and little stress.
The dual class system which limits to you only a handful of class combonations that aren't completely worthless let alone the many classes that have no viability in the game whatsoever.
It's not all puppies and rainbows, there's a lot of things to hate with Runes of Magic..
runes of magic is a pile... some Tawaineese copy of wow that offers players the chance to become powerful then other players by purchasing things with real money, no thanks all stick to realms online, The real free to play RVR game.
You can enjoy the game cheaply or even free if and only if you don't roll on a pvp server. (I'm assuming those still exist, they did last year). Cash shop happy fools have spent way too much money on pay to win items for anyone without a magic credit card to venture into pvp.
This review is completely botched. Two main factors were sevrely misrepresented. The game is NOT completely free, nothing in life is free so it should never be listed as a pro factor, expecially when there have been numerous articles done on how much of a rip-off the game is in forcing players to have to use RL cash in order to attain end-game gear and items.
If anything, this game is the most expensive f2p IP on the market.
Secondly, the community in that game is anything but friendly. Unless of course you are a regular player there of course. Otherwise, the game could easily not only match WoW in similar design, but a similar immature and vulgar community as well.
Overall, a really disapointing article.
Friends tells me it is the best WoW clone yet, and it is free.. err very very expensive to play for real.
That is all the reasons I need sorry :)
RoM is a german copy of WoW, much more grindy, and RL-money dependant at the end.
And there are better options for PvP than Realm online.
The best I would rate this game is 5/10. Yes there is a dual class system in place. You level up your primary then change to your secondary and level up all over again.
To say that RoM is a grind fest is an understatement. Everything is leveled up seperatly. Your primary skills, your secondary skills, even every class of crafting like mining are leveled seperatly. Yeah it's free to play, if you want to walk everywhere at one of the slowest paces in any game.
Now that I have come off as hating the game I will say that I actually enjoyed playing it with my wife. As for the "friendly people" I didn't see people being any less or more friendly than any other game.
My biggest complaint about the game is the complexity in grinding out everything you need for high end armor. Not that I have tried but watching my wife spend days trying various things and in the end she just hired someone to make armor for her. She was so frustrated by the armor system she quit playing the game.
The dual class system is one of the best things about RoM. Leveling two classes is not like leveling one class twice; there are plenty of quests for both sides, plus you can quests on your first class and then turn them in on your second class (within 10 lvls), giving you huge XP and leveling your second class much more quickly than your first.
You can also rent mounts for in-game gold. They are cheap, and faster than many mounts in other games. Combined with the teleportation system and small map sizes, I can't really understand why anyone would complain about this. Oh, and if you want to buy a perm mount, they used to often go on sale for 199 diamonds...isn't that like two bucks if bought during a double diamond sale?
Also, the armor system, although complex, is very enjoyable once you take the time to learn it. I understand it's not for everybody, but I certainly wouldn't consider it a general downside of the game.
Unfortunately, all the other criticisms are pretty much spot on: bad customer service, expensive to stay competitive in PvP, horrible class balance, bugs left unfixed, etc.
So... What about the actual important parts, like the quality of the content? The main thing that turns me away from these F2Ps (and even a lot of P2Ps) is that the content is shit. Shitty writing, shitty encounter design, shitty monster AI, etc. I don't care about mediocre graphics, or anything else technical that obviously will suffer because of a smaller budget. But well written quests (a la LOTRO), good encounter design, etc. those will hook me and keep me around.
Being a former end game player... it takes, yes, alot of irl money and time to keep up with the best. With some of the mid 2010 patches came an easy slide to endgame called "pearl events" by most. These events have you work as a group to kill mobs in a time period and the boss to gain "pearls" which can them be exchanged for "mementos" to buy stats and gear which also can be obtained from instances..
So in other words, people would sit at these events all day, build up their gear and know absolutely shit all about the instance, but still think their badass with all this gear they earned sitting around. People who like to pve(like me) did actual raiding to get my own gear and stats.. This is single handedly what changed the game in a big way..
Before this, it took many many many instance runs to get the perfect stats and gear to become a decent player, but now its just afk, get gear/stats from events, know nothing in instances, but have all the endgame gear and not put it to good use... lame and sad.
Final thing is... you can get to lvl cap in like 2-3 days if u spend a shitload of $$$ and become better geared then some endgamers which is pathetic. Yes i know this game is free, but once u really decide to get into this game you'll end up dishing out, it takes wayy to damn long to get endgame if you decide to stay f2p your whole time on RoM.. so ya, uninstalled and glad its gone!!!
i going to try the game out what's ur in game name?
Re-Review:
Pros: You choose.
Cons:
Endgame will cost $$$.
Huge advantage of p2p players over f2p.
Instances (engame dungeons) are very hard, almost undoable if you are not imba geared ( geared = spent $$$ in cash shop or use hacks, bots, exploits to make gold/diamonds).
Totally class unbalanced game - scouts are overpower class, mages are dead. Last 2 introduced instances Kawak's Tomb and Raksha temple are in 90% done with scouts, knight and priest.
In EU, there are no bans for bots, goldsellers, scammers and hackers.
No GM's on EU forums.
Poor or almost non-exist support.
Thousands and thousands hacked accounts.
Some cash shop items are "scam", like jewels to upgrade equipment.
+ more and more really bad things.
As far as the review goes, it's lacking and shallow. Honestly if you guys are going to do re-reviews really dig into a game, otherwise whats the point?
Anyway as for my thoughts on this particular title, I'll start by saying RoM had potential. However what potential it had has since been squandered away with little hope of it seeing the light of day ever again.
Frankly IMO RoM simply exists to make other decent F2P games look bad IMO. I played the game from beta till summer of 2010 and finally just had to call it quits. The community at the time was toixic. Huge amounts of content was simply broken, from quest to instances etc. The investment needed to really play the game was absured. Class balance, while never a strong suite for online games in general, was so perversely bad it it was nearly unbearable. Yet despite all that was wrong what did their dev's do, kept rolling out more broken content instead of fixing any of what came before it.
If someone asked me to recommend a good F2P game I'd prob direct them to any of Nexon's titles, PWE's Forsaken World, DDO, LotRO, EQ2X, or even Allods. RoM wouldn't even be a consideration, which is sad considering I did truely used to enjoy the game before it started to spiral downhill.
i would say...RoM tried it, but it didnt go as planned but they had to bring it out on the market because they needed the money....feels like that to me
You aren't forced to go to the Allods boutique but you can get gPotatoes for free which enables you to enjoy the game even further. So far, I haven't needed to grind. In fact I think there are t o many quests but they aren't all "Go kill 100 folves" but are more exciting and have engaging storyline that you actually want to read and so far whilst playing, I haven't met a spammer or troll. Allods was review to early.
I played RoM for about 2 week then got bored because I could find anything to do. For the 6 hour download and the 1 hour patching time, it's so not worth it.
If you have any questions or concerns about how mmorpg.com conducts its reviews or advertises games then please feel free to contact MikeB.
if I was inclined to go back to a fantasy MMO Runes of Magic would be where I went. I played RoM on a pvP server for about 8 months and stopped playing shortly after the Chapter 2 Elven Legacy expansion came out.
Its very good and I guite liked the multiclassing, the cash shop is also mainly full of convenience items with a couple of things that might give you a minor edge in PvP if you rolled on a PvP server.
Good game, good community & interesting world with loads of content & areas to explore. Whats not to like ?
I dumped this game after support could give a poo less about screwing up the look (unplayable and un wareable error) of the armour I paid for from the cash shop. Never playing this peice of doggy duty again.
it doesnt matter who runs realms / regnum online.... the game is still bad.... even king of kings 3 is more fun
Wait, did we get 1 of them to admit this is just an advertismenet for the game?!
Could it be?!!!
This was a fun game to me for quite a while, but beware like others have said the end game is expensive if you are going to fully enjoy it..
And their mall is enticing with daily and weekly sales added to 50% to 125% free diamonds that are occasionally on sale will cause a buying fury!
In the end i was easily spending 25 bucks a month on this game and sometimes more..
However if you dont mind endlessly grinding for gold and being under equipped at times then this game can be played even into the endgame totally for free..
No
Made it to level 31. Then I started paying attention to my secondary class, and well... the fact that you have to redo quests to level it made me turn away from the game. I don't think ill be going back.
ROM customer service is basically not operational. I paid some real money to up my gears. However, my gear bonus spec is not added to my toon. I reported that problem and send some reminders for 8 months without seeing any resolutions.
It is also true that the support loves to close the ticket without resolving the problem. I suspect that the customer service is meassured against how quickly they can close the ticket.
It also seems that ROM can't really balance the characters very well. After I have invested more than a thousand US dollars into this game, ROM made my character totally irrelevant. A lot of players in the game either quit or rebuild a more powerful class. After they have spent many months building up that class, ROM makes that class irrelevant again.
Honestly, I think ROM is too desperate for money. It doesn't focus on player's experience. As long as they think you will pay, they are happy. Personally, I stop paying for this game. I guess it is alright game if you keep to your discipline and play it for free. Just remember not to be tempted to pay.
Just my 2 cents advice.
It is funny to see that the comments run from one extreme to another, but mostly I see "they didn't do what I want so it sucks"... humm... I take it this way : If I get to play for free for two years and find it entertaining (I play 99% PvE), then I got my money's worth, no?? He he, sent nothing, had fun for a couple of years, not bad.
Well, spent something. After two years, 4 chars (8 classes, and no, you do NOT have to repeat quests to level up your secondary), I spent $20 and got permanent mounts. But again, $20 over thoussands of play hours... not bad at all.
Community : I came from GW, pay for the game, no monthly. And for the life of me I see no difference. I found helpfull people, some less helpfull. Guild aster that think they became GOD, scammers, etc. So to me there is no difference. You see the same gambit of cool players and idiots.
I think RoM is a good fun value for the money, as a PvE player. Lots of quests and areas to explore and the game items DO keep you outfitted enough to deal with the game content. I Do not like PvP so I don't plan to spend $$$ to beat some other idiot with more $$$ than me. That becomes not a game but who has more $$$ to waste. Whats the point of that?
I would be good to learn on your comments that the game was not designed to please YOU. It was designed to please a large audience, and thus, there are compromises. Yes, GW has prettier graphics, but unfortunately not all games can look the same or be the same.
Cons : yes, the install sucks. I decided to download the files and do it myself (not using the downloader). I have never had so many crashes on a game as in RoM, which is why I am on break now trying something else. Slowly the fix them as they go. Oh well.
If you like the two class, with the latest release now you can have three!! :-O
you have obviously never played DDO or LOTRO for any length of time.
ROM is going downhill fast with too much poor quality content. GMS are rude and inappropr iate. Tickets go unanswered and comments on the official US Facebook page or the ROM forums that are uncomplimentary are routinely deleted. Users have been banned from posting, and in some cases accounts have been banned from the game for 30 days if the content is not :nice:. We've created a facebook page www.facebook.com/GameIsRuined for users to freely discuss the games problems without fear of having their posts deleted