Today marks the official release of the free-to-play MMO, Runes of Magic. RoM might be an MMO originally out of Taiwan, but it certainly doesn’t feel like an Asian MMO. Actually, it plays an awful lot like a Western one. In fact, it is quite different from most free-to-play MMOs, featuring a ton of content and quests, mounts, dual-classing, and even player-housing. There is actually a full game here that you could almost mistake for a title we usually see with a subscription fee. Not only that, but the release of the game marks the opening of new zones and new content.
Given all of that, is RoM actually a good game though? Sure, it is free, and doesn’t seem like a game that would be, but that doesn’t mean it is good. I gave it a shot, although admittedly not for a long time. My opinion is actually about the exact same as the one seen over here.
RoM is polished, it has a solid, familiar interface, you have the ability to customize your character a bit, there’s plenty of content from what I saw, and while it isn’t Crysis (or even Warhammer), it doesn’t look bad. It basically comes down to being a WoW clone that isn’t quite as polished, doesn’t have quite as much content, but is free other than optional microtransactions. That’s hard to complain about. It seems that they pulled in an awful lot of players during Open Beta, so I imagine that it will continue going rather strong, with a large player-base.
At the same time I haven’t felt a huge draw to go back. Mind you, given that I’m a bit unwilling to spend much these days, RoM is pretty appealing for that. Yet, I did not feel particularly grabbed by it either. I really do suspect that this is partly to do with being a bit jaded to this style of MMO these days.
