style="font-weight: bold;">By Eric "Dalmarus" Campbell,
Writer

“Your
soul has been
strengthened. Let you body do the same soon, with guard Hesid's helping
hand,
in front of those antique ruins.” – Regnum Online



Seeing that phrase uttered to your character within moments of logging
into
Regnum Online
is not the best way to instill confidence that this is a
game worth playing.  It’s like starting a book with,
“ href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_was_a_dark_and_stormy_night"
target="_blank">It was a dark and stormy night”.
It's as uninspiring as a quick
shot to the groin and a textbook example of what not to do when
creating a new
player experience. I'd like to be able to tell you that the writing
gets
better, but again, I'd be lying. Let's just get to the nitty gritty,
shall we? 

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Dark
Elves... or skinny Smurfs?

Regnum
Online is
a Free-to-Play Massive Multiplayer Online Game from href="http://www.ngdstudios.com.ar/" target="_blank">NGD
Studios, based in
Argentina. Yes, I said Argentina. Believe it or not, other
countries play games
too. The premise is solid, although it’s about as fresh as
last week’s
leftovers. Players must choose from one of three realms to explore and
compete
in a world with both PvE (Player Versus Environment) and PvP (Player
Versus
Player) content. Once you choose a realm, you’re stuck there
unless you delete
all of your old characters or choose another server. While on the
surface, this
may seem harsh, it's a standard practice in RvR (Realm Versus Realm
Games).

Initiation
Hazing

High school was certainly rough for some of us style="font-style: italic;">[We’re all nerds here,
right?—Ed.]
but the installation process for Regnum made me feel like it was the
first day
of my Freshmen year all over again. Trying to find a site I could get
an
uncorrupted client from was like searching for an alley in New
York that doesn’t reek of urine. Even when you find
one, you’ll still feel like you need a hot shower afterwards.
Even the official
site for Regnum Online
had a corrupted file, but eventually I found what I was
looking for at href="http://www.fileplanet.com/search.aspx?searchtype=2&q=regnum+online"
target="_blank">FilePlanet.



After sorting out the initial file problems, I assumed the rest of the
process
would consist of smooth sailing... how wrong I was. At one point, I
discovered
there were 14 instances of Regnum
Online due to the patching process constantly
restarting my client! It felt like href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zll_jAKvarw"
target="_blank">Leeroy
Jenkins was grabbing every ounce of processing power my
system had like
they were pieces of his coveted chicken.



Once you finally get past the pain of getting things running, character
creation is a simple process of choosing a realm and then one of three
races.
From there, you'll choose one of three classes. Yet the whole idea of
this
selection scenario seems to be a game of href="http://www.worldrps.com/" target="_blank">Rock,
Paper, Scissors gone wrong. There are no stats to
distribute between your attributes and the game does only a
satisfactory job of
giving you the basic descriptions of each class. How hard should it be
to
describe a warrior, mage, or archer? I don't know, but at this point, I
wasn't
necessarily optimistic about the actual content I would find in RO.





Kill Me, Kill Me Now

If
you're anything like a normal gamer, you'll be begging for the sweet
release
of death before long simply because it's probably the fastest way to
regain your
health and mana. Get used to long amounts of downtime. Maybe grab a
good book.
Or make yourself a sandwich. It’s that bad. Think of the days
of the original
EverQuest, but without the nice groups of socialites playing healers.

Fighting
in Regnum Online is a
simplistic affair. All you need to do – and I don’t
jest – is set your
character to autoattack and hit a button on your hotbar every 5 seconds
or so. As
a Mage or Archer, you can get one long range attack off before your
target
closes with you, but after that, it's the same pattern of
“hit hotbar button
once, wait for timer, hit again.” Whether you're a Warrior,
Archer, or Mage
makes little difference in terms of combat. They all play the same.
Save
yourself some pain and go href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWc6QQ9JlMc"
target="_blank">watch Donny Osmond dance like a maniac
for a good laugh
instead. Combat and recovery is so slow, you can probably finish the
video
before you'll be ready to choose your next pixelated victim. 

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It doesn't
get any better than this....really..

There Has To Be
Something
Good, Right? *crickets* Right?

Believe
it or not, there are some bright spots, albeit almost anything could
look
bright against this backdrop. Once you adjust the screen
resolution from
its default of 800x600, the graphics are actually rather charming and
better
than I expected at this point. While the basic structure of character
models
and environment are definitely dated, they have what I like to refer as
an “old-school
charm.” Think href="http://www.tgeweb.com/Ironworks/darkstone/screenshots.shtml"
target="_blank">Darkstone meets href="http://ac.turbine.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=73:screenshots&catid=53:screenshots-a-video&Itemid=63&NavItemid=62"
target="_blank">Asheron's Call and you're in the
right neighborhood. The
textures are smooth and clean, and the anti-aliasing in the game works
great.



The music composition and general sound is on par for what you
would
expect once you've logged in and seen what you’re up
against... I mean…
playing. It’s like an amateur grabbing a bowling ball from
the rack at league
night at the local alley; it’s not annoying enough to turn
off but it won’t
draw your attention for more than a few seconds. The music of each area
you’re
exploring is fitting but certainly not exciting. The combat score
reminded me
of the target="_blank">Peter
Gun theme, so it kept me mildly entertained while battling a
number of
creatures in the world.



The Regnum Online UI is actually something of a simple masterpiece. No
need for
a roll of target="_blank">Bounty
paper towels to clean up any mess here. The UI is href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOK8dmooI20"
target="_blank">spic and span
clean! So clean in fact, that after having played for a few hours, I
went back
to another game I frequent regularly and was searching for ways to
shrink some
windows while itching for a way to remove others. The interface gives
you so
much screen space to enjoy the (relatively little) action that it's
hard to go
back to anything else. It made some of my favorite MMOGs look messier
than a
Saturday night mud wrestling competition.



Sadly, this will be the last [the
only?—Ed.] good thing I have to say about
Regnum Online.





Final Overview

If
you miss the days of watching your avatar autoattack its target while
you
sat watching while periodically pushing a button, you may be in luck.
If you
feel today's games are lacking in downtime and you want to get to know
your
party members while resting for three to five minutes after each
battle, get
your hernia pillow ready for some long sessions. For those players that
long to
return to an earlier era when combat was slow and simplistic,
I've found
the game for you.



If Regnum Online
had been made before 1999, it probably would have been a big
hit. Unfortunately for me, and perhaps you if you decide to give the
game a
try, we're right around the corner from 2009. While it may hold some
charm in a
nostalgic sort of way, it's too outdated to be a viable choice for
today's
gamer. It's a classic case of getting what you paid for. I don't know
about
you, but for myself, being able to play for free just isn't enough. My
time is
worth more than that.