Please don't PK me for I am innocent and pretty!
After what must be hours worth of patch downloads, I was finally able to jump on Runes of Magic several hours ago. I must say that I didn't expect the degree of polish found in this "free to play" massively multiplayer online role playing game. The game's user interface is very similar to The Lord of the Rings Online and the gameplay design itself is very rudimentary World of Warcraft, which means you get to do a lot of easy quests that make you feel rewarded every step of the way. The graphics are very well done with impressive looking special effects and smooth character models. The movement in the game feels a bit floaty though, especially the non-responsive and very stiff character jump.
Runes of Magic has pretty summon spells and a rock solid graphics engine.
I made my first character on a player-vs-player server though I am thinking of moving to a player-vs-environment realm. If you get killed by other players, you can lose your belongings and that is not something that I look forward to. Since you can still duel with other players on a PVE server, there is no reason not to go there. I don't know if this game contains any battleground PVPs but I sure hope it does because those are my favorites (I miss participating in them even to this today) while I was playing WoW. There are only two races that you can choose from: Humans and Elves. They both share a majority of the available character classes but they each have their own unique classes as well - this is something that is now lost in WoW. I decided to create a girly looking Elf Warden guy, complete with silky long silver hair and a boyish face. The starting area of the game involves your character completing a lot of quests to graduate from the Elven military academy. The quests themselves are varied and there are a never ending supply of them. Needless to say, completing them is quite an addicting process. Spells are learned automatically as you level up but you have to allot the limited amount of skill points you receive from leveling up amongst your available abilities. I am not sure when but dual-classing is made available at higher levels and I am sure that it would be fun to experiment with that.
Character level-up: One of the most addicting elements in video gaming.
Overall, I am very intrigued by this game and I can see myself playing it on a regular basis. As long as the real money part is not as intrusive as I am suspecting it to be: for a game to be this beautiful, polished, and free, there has to be a catch hidden away for players to discover once they have fallen in love with the game. I will make sure to report back if I encounter such a thing within this game. From what I have experienced so far though, everyone should definitely give this game a try - especially World of Warcraft veterans who have left that game but are still searching for a similar experience.
The game even has Blizzy-styled pop-culture references.
FIRST IMPRESSION: 4 out of 5
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