Ten Ton Hammer - Taking MMO Gamers to the Next Level!

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, “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? 

Dark Elves... or skinny Smurfs?

Regnum Online is a Free-to-Play Massive Multiplayer Online Game from 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 [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 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 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 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 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. 

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 Darkstone meets 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 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 Bounty paper towels to clean up any mess here. The UI is 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.