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Runes of Magic follows the typical splitting of PvP (player vs. player) and PvE (player vs. environment) servers. The best way to understand anything is to start at the beginning and once you have mastered the basics you can move on to the more advanced gaming aspects of PvP.

PvP Basics at a glance.

1. Open PvP only takes place on PvP servers. On a PvE server you can only engage in PvP though duels or in battlegrounds.
2. Players below level 15 must flag PK(player kill) on a PvP server or are otherwise protected.
3. You will drop a random piece of gear either that you are wearing or in your bags if you are killed by another player with in 10 levels of you.
4. Only players who have reached a reputation of negative 150 or lower can attack or be attacked by NPCs in cities
5. Grouped players cannot attack each other.
6. You cannot attack or be attacked while in your home or an instance.

PvP Rep Infos

Runes of Magic makes it very easy to check your alignment at a glance. The color of your name above your head indicates your basic alignment if you will.

This chart is the official break down of the reputation needed to achieve certain alignment with in the game. Demon and Hero are the only alignments that do not have a color assigned to them. If you achieve these alignments you simply keep the color of the previous alignment color. Example would be if you are a hero the color of your name would simply remain purple.

As you can see it is much easier to be evil than it is to be good; and in turn it’s very hard to go from red to purple. I would suggest that you think long and hard before you go down the path of evil. If you want a direct break down of what each kill gets you based on where you want to go and your current reputation I would recommend checking out the RoM Wiki here

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So now that you know what it takes to become either Good or Evil what are the benefits or negatives of each?

Good

*unless you are up against a demon in which case your drop rate becomes 100%

Evil

*unless you are up against a hero in which case your drop rate becomes 100%

With all of that information it seems that there are great benefits in being evil. Well, at least if you are just adding up the options then yes you are correct. There are a lot of benefits to being Evil, but there are also great negatives. The defense drop and the chance of going to hell/prison are huge. Not to mention if you reach a name color of red then city NPCs will gank you.

While it seems better to be evil rather than good I would have to disagree.

One last thing that is a super cool feature of the PvP mechanics in Runes of Magic is the “Enemies List”. Simply put this is a list of the last twenty players who landed a killing blow on you. Say what? This is perfect for starting and maintaining wars.

Battlegrounds

Battle grounds are the cross server event PvP in Runes of Magic. There is little information out there on the web about the how to for the battlegrounds as this is a fairly new feature to Runes. Most of the PvP that has taken place has been open world up until the Battlegrounds came out. There are several different options for battle grounds listed below. You will basically queue up for these anywhere in the world by right clicking on the crossed swords that are located on the mini map. 

Types

• 1 v 1
• 2 v 2
• 3 v 3
• Visdun Fortress
• Karros Canyon
• Windrunner Race<
• Tyrefen Mountain Range

The first three are very straight forward in that they are exactly what they say they are. This is more of Arena style fighting with little variance in each.

Visdun Fortress – The tale of two fortresses. Two teams of three will square off against each other in a race to destroy each other’s fortress. You can do this by either A) sending out monsters to attack the other fortress or B) going out with monsters to attack the other fortress. This actually reminds me of a game called ramparts but only in a 3D version.

Karros Canyon – The capture the flag style battleground where you try and capture the flag. Its a quick pace battleground where your goal is to capture as many of your enemies flags before the timer runs out

Windrunner Race – A horse race style mini game/PvP game that pits you against seven other players in a death race to the finish line.

Tyrefen Mountain Range – This is the new battleground that is coming with the expansion Chapter III.

As you play through the battlegrounds or mini games as they are called some places you will gain honor points that can be spent on items, gear and clothing. 

Summary

There is currently a ton of complaints about how PvP is broken in Runes of Magic in their main forms. What I see is a free-to-pay game that is trying to take a few elements of well known games and make them their own. Currently the PvP servers are all but dead so good competitive PvP outside of the battlegrounds is very hard to come by. If Runes has proven anything to me over the time that I have been playing it is that the developers are committed to two things. First is creating good solid content that is ever growing and increasing. Then along with that is working to improve the game based on community suggestion. Granted I would say they are focused way more on one than two. I also think that a bit of focus on PvP and a few other big issues would go a long way to retaining more subscribers past their first toon. So keep on playing!

What do you think about the state of PvP in Runes of Magic? Leave your comments in the forums!