First of all I want to make a note that MMORPGs arent my domain. I had my share of hours and days and months spent on them.. and yet the scope and expansive MMORPGs are its very small time frame of my gaming career i spent on those. But recently I picked one game from the lot of Free MMORPGs. The one game that was truly feature filled and competitve to World of Warcraft.. "Runes of Magic". I have spent around 15 hours in the game now and consider that finally i have gist of features in it to write about it.

Region
Runes of Magic is also known as Asater-AlQuwat (Runes of might) in middle east region. The game was hailed as one of top MMORPGs of 2009 by many sites. So, I got interested when saudi servers were announced by "Tahidi" local service. Now they host their own game world offering ping-issue-less gameplay in all middle east region (and same will apply to Pakistan etc considering its lower demand of ping as compared to FPSes). The US version was first to launch and had great success with over 1 million registered players. then came EU version and now asia is covered too. Now to continue my review which will be based on Mideast region version.

Character / Classes
The first thing disappointing to me was character creation.. there is no other playable race than Humans for time being. There is option to change race but no other avaialble right now. This doesnt suit well to WoW crowd, as they are used to lots of races.

Next thing noticable is ofcourse the difference in attire of character in mideast version. The female character models have painted texture over any exposed body portions. This is done to allow the game in Saudi region. Now that is slap in the face to regular MMORPG norms where u expect most revealing outfits and armor sets for women. Here the rest of armor is same.. but the rest of women skin are turned greyish instead of skin color.

Rest the game offers lots of options to customize the look, various hair styles, faces, dimensions of body parts (yeah tht includes boobs). Standard classes are there to play: Warrior, Mage, Healer, Rogue, Knight etc. and offer their respective bonuses to stats and skill set.

Gameplay
The gameplay is standard MMORPG affair. click to move, click to give attack orders. There are usual skills / magic / potions to get you through the game. Even though I was disappointed a lil at character creation but was throughly impressed to find stats system as deep as WoW. Each skill is well thought out of how it acts and how it acts in combination with other. Which is all the fun in fighting in MMORPGs. Other than normal fighting and questing.. the game features full crafting system with skills like tailoring, blacksmith, cooking, alchemist, carpentry etc. You can expert 1 or all. This requires you to gather resources from around and from animals and then crafting them into usable items in town. New recipes and skills enhance just like your other overall XP.

Leveling
The game has a good leveling system. With awards of XP, TP and Gold coins awarded for each success (sometimes unique items are given too as reward). XP is used to overall upgrade your character. TP can be used to upgrade your skills each skill, upgrading to full max aint wise so wise decissions are required e.g. too much upgrading a skill may use that much mana too. Thus with your current skill and low mana pool, it ends up as a bad decission to upgrade the power. Gold coins are in-game currency to buy stuff. There are micro transactions too and their currency in diamonds which can be bought for real money (=forbidden).

Leveling is faster in start to keep you interested in gaining some good skills, weapons and armor. Later on as with other MMORPGs, it consists of lot of roaming around and quest grinding. there are three type of quests, one time quests (yellow) which are mainly story based, daily quests (blue) which are run of the mill.. kill 10 insects, gather 20 food etc, and then there are Epic quests (purple) which are multi part quests and give out max bonus and rare items. using the daily quest system u never run out things to do in any skill level you are on.

Detail and expansion
The game detail to stats, attacks, buffs, party system, housing, customization is really good. Huge worlds and vareity of beasts does keep you engaged. in start game does look childish with mushroom like enemies and poor graphics and stretched textures. But as you upgrade and move to better cities.. the enemy types improve too (the graphics still however remain similar to or slightly poor than WoW). Moving around the world is easier using auto movement (mark point in map and if character finds clear path.. it will auto goto that point) and you can also buy timed mounts (horses etc). which you can use to travel faster. There are teleportation spells also but have a long cool down time, so for questing u cannot teleport to one city.. grab the item.. then teleport back. Thus the time wasting factor of running one place to other is still there and boring.

Main differences from other games
So, what makes Runes of Magic really unique? The Runes system.. its like crafting for dummies. If you are not much into custom armor crafting then runes present easy way to add buffs to ur armor, weapons etc. u will find plently of stat runes (+3 stamina, defense, attack, wisdom etc) from fallen beast which you can fuse with your items with just a right click without any level requirement.

Secondly the dual class system. This game doesnt force u to make different characters to try different classes but instead assign two classes to your current character. So, e.g. if ur primary is a Knight who acts as tank defense.. once you hit level 10 you will be given option to learn secondary class skills. Selecting a rogue will give you ability to use ranged weapons too. selecting a healer will give u ability to defend and heal at same time. These skills are called Elite Skill sets .. both ur characters gain xp (but in different amounts), ur primary class always gets more XP. So, to increase both skills.. u can switch primary / secondary role to keep both skills up to date. There are even special quests called Elite quests which only dual classes can do.

Housing allows you to customized a portion of game area as per ur liking, u can set furniture and usuable items there as per ur need. Banks can carry cash only but in houses u can put physical items, place armor sets for ready use. and can also act as crafting centers. The game even has macros sysytem which are a life saver if you figure out perfect timing and sequence of attacks / spells for your class to make them. Moreover just like timed mounts, u can buy timed pets too as side kicks.

Overall the game is really fun, it has its backdraws like out dated graphics, and limited character design. But at its core gameplay it really is a good game with such interesting stats system. The game is a true alternate to WoW, for FREE.

Download the game / More info @ official site @ middle east / US-europe

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