Runes of Magic

So long without a post, and I notice I'm not the only one. So what have I been up to?

Aside from life in general, Tae Kwon Do and Golf lessons for my son, Cub Scouts, and other family activities, not much has been happening.

I did let Saylah convince me, through her Blog, to give Runes of Magic a try, and it's been a fun game so far. Almost all of the folks I've encountered have been friendly, and it's not uncommon for high level players to offer their help in general chat, "Anyone need help with anything?", there's a distinct lack of Orcs, Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, etc, and the Murloc movie title references and Chuck Norris jokes are conspicuously absent from general chat, but aside from all that it's remarkably similar to WoW ;)

I rolled a Rogue at first and having heard the problem with Talent Point respecs I leveled up to 5 or 6 before I assigned any Talent Points to any of my skills, with the subsequent result that it was like playing my Hunter in WoW for the first time, where I forgot about my Talent Points, and never trained my Pet in anything, and wondered why the more I leveled the harder the game got.

So at level 6 I decided to level up a couple of skills and looking at my Talent Points it was a classic No Brainer where I should invest first. I maxed out the standard Rogue attack Shadowstab (being the RoM equivalent of Sinister Strike), and because wielding a Dagger while casting/spamming Shadowstab puts a 6-second Bleeding Wound debuff on my opponent, and the Rogue skill Low Blow inflicts extra damage on targets with a Bleeding Wound, I subsequently dumped Talent Points into Low Blow as well.

Just as an aside, unlike WoW, you don't get Talent Points each time you level, you actually get them from every Mob you kill. And Leveling up a Skill doesn't require just 1 TP as in WoW, but multiple TPs, but unless you try to max out every single Skill your class has access to you shouldn't have a problem with the amount of Talent Points you have available. RoM also follows a Talent Tree structure that more closely resembles Diablo II than WoW, by which I mean a Level 6 Rogue can increase Shadowstab, Low Blow, and the Level 6 Skill Wound Attack to level 6, then when your character reaches level 7 you can dump more TPs into those Skills to level them up to 7 as well.

I just mentioned the Level 6 Rogue Skill Wound Attack, and this was the 3rd Skill that was a No Brainer recipient of my valuable Talent Points. If your target is inflicted with a Bleeding Wound debuff and you hit them with Low Blow, they suffer a 10-second Grievous Wound debuff. And if you hit them with Wound Attack while they're under the effects of both a Bleeding Wound and a Grievous Wound then that's just about all she wrote.

Up until I dinged level 6 combat had been little more than me spamming my level 1 Shadowstab, which was fine against level 1 & 2 Mobs, but against the level 3 & 4 Mobs I faced at levels 3, 4, & 5, level 1 SS wasn't cutting the mustard, combat was a real drag. Then I dinged 6, spent my Talent Points as I just described, and now I had a 1-2-3 combo, with 1 being Shadowstab, 2 being Low Blow, & 3 naturally being Wound Attack. Now combat was not only over in seconds, but culminated in an explosion of red pixels. Awesome! RoM Rogue with properly spent Talent Points = FUN!

I quickly leveled to 10 then faced a major decision all RoM players face at that point. What to make my secondary class? Imagine a Rogue with access to Hunter skills, or Priest Skills, or Warrior or Mage skills. Yep, RoM is kind of like that. At level 10 you approach the Class Trainer of your choice and commit to a second class, and here I made a mistake. I chose Knight (the RoM equivalent of a Paladin), and it's not bad, but it detracted from the fun of my Rogue. What I should have done was rolled a brand new character, i.e., a Knight, and seen if I liked playing that class first, but I didn't. Later I rolled a Warrior and a Scout (Hunter) and decided I really like the way the Scout played. There is no Deadzone with a Scout. You get up in a Scout's face, and he can still shoot you, while simultaneously attacking with his Melee weapon. I played the Scout up to level 10 and said, I want this guy (actually a female character ;) to be a Scout/Rogue.

As a Scout/Rogue I do not have access to the Rogue's Low Blow and Wound Attack, unless I switch my Classes (which you can do) so Rogue is my primary and Scout is my secondary class, but then I lose access to some of the Scout-specific skills/shots. I found that the Rogue & Scout classes compliment each other, utilizing similar weapons and armor, but like any combination of pure DPS classes they naturally create the ultimate Glass Cannon. Wicked DPS with low Armor means you need to kill your opponent fast or you're going down. Now in PvE you do kill fast so it's not a big deal, although apparently at higher levels you need a Healer to keep you alive, but I'm not there yet so that's not a huge concern. Apparently Rogue/Scout classes also suffer in PvP, for the same Glass Cannon reasons. But I haven't done PvP in RoM yet, either :P

Questing is where RoM again compares to WoW, but it likewise could be compared to almost every other MMO out there as well. You have the regular quests you do for various townsfolk in your current Quest Hub, but you also have Daily Quests you can do that reward you with Tokens you can apparently later spend on cool stuff, like Permanent Mounts, because most Mounts in RoM are temporary-hire objects, that disappear from your backpack after a certain period of time. You get to keep them for longer periods if you pay more up-front, but unless you shell out real cash for Diamonds (the RMT Currency), or sell "stuff" on the Auction House for Diamonds, you're going to find yourself running around on foot or renting your Mount. If you play RoM and like it, and think you'll keep playing it for a while, a Mount costs about the same as a single month of WoW. Considering you don't have to buy a copy of the game but can just download it for free, and that you don't have to pay a monthly sub, I don't think it's unreasonable of Frogster to tell folks, "You want a Mount? Then pony up!"

I'll probably keep playing Runes of Magic for a while. It's a fun game, and it's well put together. Yes, there's a couple of quests that are broken, and have been since the game went Live! but those broken quests are in themselves not game breaking (even if one of them is a limited-time "seasonal" quest). And while the variety of classes is nothing new the ability to combine two classes does make things a lot more interesting. But the best thing of all is it's free. Considering the quality of the product you're getting, that's a price you just cannot beat.