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

She Looks Pretty from the Rear, but How about the Face?

For as long as I have known about Runes of Magic, I have heard people call it a WoW clone. Let's get this out of the way right now: the graphics do look a lot like Blizzard's World of Warcraft, right down to the "stylized" (the industry word for almost realistic but slightly off) art. Character design uses the same WoW tendency to overemphasize certain features for dramatic effect. Landscapes have enough details (vegetation, terrain textures, and diverse color palettes) to sell the ideas without slowing your PC to a crawl. You'll never walk by someone playing RoM and think he is looking at his vacation photos on the web, but you won't think he's playing a game loaded from floppy disks either.

RoM uses some draw in (or pop in) to render items as you close the distance between your character and the horizon, but the game looks nice all the same. Interiors are cluttered with enough items to give a sense that they are real, and locations vary in their design themes. Some dungeons are natural caves while others are castles and keeps.

Armor comes in a few different flavors, too. A large part of customization comes from the gear you equip, and your party can look very different at a glance. It's safe to assume crafting will lend to customization with dyes, but I did not see any different local styles of crafting like in Vanguard.

Yes, Yes, But How Does It Play?

First off, understand that Runes of Magic won Ten Ton Hammer's Best Free-to-Play award for the 2008 Leipzig GCDC. Also note that the title has spent several weeks in my Top Ten Free-to-Play Games list because I have been excited about the level of polish that Frogster has promised for the game. My beta testing was a positive experience. Entomologists need not have applied; there simply weren't a lot of bugs to find. The worst things I encountered were some pathing problems for mobs and the occasional quest that had not been translated into English yet.

I enjoyed the quests because they made a concerted effort to craft a story that expanded to a more global view the longer I played, and I appreciated the maturity of the community during my testing. Not every quest is about battling an oppressive evil. One of the first quests asks players to thin the number of wolves in the nearby valley because they threaten the safety of the starter village. The player base was active in global chat, swapping strategies for crafting or debating the merits of class combinations. Talk about the game tended toward mature discussion rather than haters hell bent on bringing down the game or zealous fans trying to convert heathens.

Parting Thoughts

Runes of Magic may clone from a couple of the most popular subscription games available, but it offers its game for free. It's not generic at all thanks to a thought-out story, so it feels a bit like getting designer clothes at department store prices. When all is said and done, the best compliment I can pay to the game is that writing this article only made me want to play it again. My wife and I will be logging into the open beta the week of December 15, and I could see us playing this game for a while.