Free MMORPG Runes of Magic

Drawing much of its inspiration from the mammoth MMORPG World of Warcraft, Runes of Magic brings to life the fantasy world of Taborea with beautiful 3D graphics, and with over 600 quests to complete offers players much in the way of content and features. With fully-realized dungeon encounters, unmatched character customization, a unique multi-class system, in-game player housing, and a growing community of over 300,000 – Runes of Magic guarantees something for everyone. Runes of Magic (RoM) is a free massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) developed by the Taiwanese developer Runewaker Entertainment and adapted for the English and German speaking market by German company Frogster Interactive. After going through an open beta phase, the game was launched on 19 March, 2009 and Chapter II - The Elven Prophecy was launched on 15 September, 2009. The game client is free to download, and there is no monthly subscription fee, because the service is funded by real money transactions (RMT) in the Runes of Magic Item Shop.

Publisher: Frogster Interactive
Playerbase: High
Graphics: High Quality
Type: MMORPG
EXP Rate: Medium
PvP: Open / Duels
Filesize: 3.5GB

Dual classing: You have the ability to pick two classes for every character with skills that carry over between the classes when you switch back them back and forth between primary and secondary. Also there are several "elite" skills bases off of and specific to that class combo.

Races: As of right now there are only two races available, Human and Elves.

Classes: There are 6 classes available to every race with the ability to chose 2 for each character.

PVP: There are pvp servers, dueling and cross-server battlefield available for your fighting pleasure.

Housing: Every player gets a house. This can be used for storage of items and furniture that give you xp and tp bonuses.

Guild Castle: A level 7 + guild can buy a castle. This is their own instance for every guild. It provides access to the guild bank and a tech-tree that will allow the guild to build buildings with different beneficial effects.
Chapters

* Chapter 1: Rise of the Demon Lord
* Chapter 2: The Elven Prophecy
* Chapter 3: The Elder Kingdoms (scheduled for release May 2010)

Classes

There are 8 total classes available in Runes of Magic. What race you play as will determine what 6 of those classes you have access to when creating your character.

Classes available to all races:

Forum icon Warrior.png

Warrior: This is not the main tanking class as you might expect in some other games. This class in Runes of magic is an off tanking class.

They can wear:

* Robes
* Cloth
* Leather
* Chain
* Shield

They can equip:

* 1H Sword
* Dagger
* Wand
* 1H Axe
* Mace
* 2H Sword
* 2H Staff
* 2H Axe
* 2H Hammer

Forum icon Scout.png

Scout: This class all about range.

They can wear:

* Cloth
* Leather

They can equip:

* 1H Sword
* Dagger
* Bow
* Crossbow

Forum icon Rogue.png

Rogue: This class is all about DPS

They can wear:

* Cloth
* Leather

They can equip:

* Dagger
* 1H Sword
* Projectiles

Forum icon Mage.png

Mage: This is Runes of Magic's main magic user. AOE and massive damage fire balls are part of this class

They can wear:

* Robes
* Cloth

They can equip:

* Dagger
* Wand 2H Staff

Classes available only to the human race:

Forum icon Knight.png

Knight: this is the main tanking class for Runes of magic.

They can wear:

* Cloth
* Leather
* Chain
* Plate
* Shield

They can equip:

* 1H Sword
* Mace
* 2H Sword
* 2H Hammer

Forum icon Priest.png

Priest: This is the main healing class for the human race.

They can wear:

* Robes
* Cloth
* Shield

They can equip:

* Wand
* Mace
* 2H Staff

Classes available only to the elven race:

Forum icon Druid.png

Druid: Healer and magic user for the elven race.

They can wear:

* Robes
* Cloth

They can equip:

* Wand
* Mace
* 2H Staff

Forum icon Warden.png

Warden: Melee and Pet class for the elves

They can wear:

* Robes
* Cloth
* Leather
* Chain

They can equip:

* 1H Sword
* Dagger
* 1H Axe
* 2H Sword
* 2H Staff
* 2H Axe

Dungeons

The game's dungeons are split into three types; large player-versus-player open-world dungeons, small instances for six players and large instances for thirty six players. There is also a 120 player dungeon under the first main city Varanas.

Reception

Runes of Magic has received generally positive reviews.

Runes of Magic has been compared to World of Warcraft and also referred to as a clone,but Eurogamer's Daniel Etherington discounted this and stated the view "misses the point." Wesley Yin-Poole of Videogamer.com stated "The guys at Runewaker have clearly constructed Runes of Magic with World of Warcraft running in the background."He stated that despite being "somewhat of a WoW clone" and free-to-play, Runes of Magic contains elements which World of Warcraft does not, and that the latter's developers "would do well to consider." Online gaming website Massively's Shawn Schuster highlighted the range of crafting abilities in the game, as well as the ability to gain proficiency in them all without penalties. "Runes of Magic has these features we see in a triple-A MMO, yet it's a free-to-play RMT-based game."

According to Frogster 20,000 players created 100,000 characters on the first day of the game's open beta; December 15, 2008,rising to 450,000 characters by February 2009. On May 14, 2009, Frogster announced that one million users in Europe and North America have registered to play Runes of Magic. On October 7, 2009, after the launch of chapter II, they announced that Runes of Magic had exceeded two million registered users.
Pros: +Fantastic character customization. +Unique multi-class system. +In-game player housing. +Heaps of different PvP options. +Shares many features with WoW.

Cons: -Many translation errors. -Much of the game requires payment. -Sensitive language filter. -Similarities to WoW may deter some players.