Runes of Magic

[Nezz]

Stumbled over this one (http://www.runesofmagic.com) via Eurogamer. It's a free MMO that's going to enter open beta soon. The Generic Fantasy Name Generator must have had a particularly bad day when it came up with the title, but I thought some features (http://kotaku.com/5040589/runes-of-magic-+-more-than-a-wow-clone) should make it worth a look. If the classes can really be changed at will, that would do away with my number one gripe with RPGs, too rigid and time-intensive specialization.

Perhaps someone was in the closed beta and has some impressions?

[malkav11]

Don't count on class changing at will removing rigid and time-intensive specialization. Final Fantasy XI lets you change to any class you have access to at will but you have to grind each class up separately and it's an incredibly painful, drawn out process.

[Tyjenks]

You are allowed to have a primary and secondary class once you reach level 10. However, you have to switch to the secondary in order to level it. When you do this, you are basically back at level one so even if the gear for the two classes is similar, you will be wearing gear levelled to 10. You have to shed that and get cheap level one gear. Since you still have the raised level of attributes (str./sta./etc.) you are basically a hyper-buffed level one and the catching up oin levels goes more quickly. Plus, there are multiple daily quests that allow for experience gains each time, so you can run through those. Also, the quest items drop even after you have satisfied your quota. So you could have 50 Orc hatchets, need to turn in 10 for the daily and turn in that same quest five times in one day. You are limited to a total of 10 dailies. Also, a few additional quest lines open up once you start the secondary class and have to go back to the starting area.

You can use abilities from both classes, but there are some that are designated as primary only, so those can only be used when that class is set as primary. Also, there are level restrictions so once you switch to the lower level class as your primary, you only have access to secondary class skills of the appropriate levels. That is, you no longer have access to level 10 warrior skills when you switch to your level one mage, you can use your level one warrior skills.

I need to read the open beta NDA before I say any more. I downloaded it on a lark over the weekend as my money situation is dire and I am afraid WoW may be one of the things eliminated from my budget. That and the fact that auditing busy season is coming up and I will have no MMORPG time from mid-January through May.

The whole game is very similar to WoW in many ways. I think (maybe) I am safe with the above, but again, let me check the NDA before I say anything else.

[Oghier]

The feature list looks interesting. I have never tried one of the free MMO's, and I have two questions:

- How do they pay for themselves?
- Are the player demographics significantly different than the better-known games?

Financial considerations aside, is this thing worth a look?

[Tyjenks]

There will be an item shop, but as to the specifics of what is available no one is sure. You purchase "diamonds" with real money and then those diamonds are used to get some special items (extra bag slots, permanent mount), etc. The AH also has an option to sell stuff for in-game gold or diamonds, so theoretically you could get the special additions by offering up you rare loot for diamonds.

It looks like the NDA was lifted for the open Beta according to press releases, but the login screen at home has a tab called "NDA" so I just wanna make sure everything is kosher. (Pre-EDIT: although I appear to be running my mouth anyways.)

Definitely grindy. A lot more gathering (3 different tiered raw material categories) as there are nodes friggin everywhere. Slightly more complex crafting in I think 6/7 professions. Smithing uses wood and ore. Alchemy uses wood and herbs. And so on. You can Master one profession, get to the next highest level in 2 professions, and then the rest you can advance to the 3rd highest level.

The Diamonds have not been activated and you can advance and play around just fine without it. A lot of the stuff that mods incorporate into WoW already exists in RoM. Mini-map stuff including highlighting the mobs for kill quests and the location of items for gathering quests and some other stuff I cannot think of.


EDIT: Also, for the few days I have played on the PVE server (Osha, channel 1), there has been little in the way of annoying global chat and usually someone around to answer simple questions.

EDIT II: Ten Ton Hammer does a "Top 10 Free-to-Play MMORPGs". The dude updates the standings a couple times a month. That's what made me decide to give this a try.