Many people call this 'another World of Warcraft clone', that might be half true, but not entirely. Even though the stats system, classes systems, user interface and a few more resemble that of WoW, Runes of Magic still isn't a duplicate. RoM has some cool features which make it good.

The best one is Dual Classes system. A character can have 2 classes, out of, for now, 6 classes. Let's say I make a Warrior/Rogue character. I can switch my Warrior/Rogue to Rogue/Warrior when I'm in town(sort of). By doing so, my character's skills are different. You see, each class has 3 sets of skills: General skills, Specific skills and Elite skills. General skills are usable even though that class becomes Secondary class, while Specific skills are usable only when that class is Primary class. Elite skills are similar to Specific skills, only that Elite skills of the Primary class are determined by the Secondary class too. Let's see more examples.

A Warrior / Rogue means that character currently has Warrior class as Primary, and Rogue as Secondary. Thus the skills available are Warrior Specific skills, Warrior General skills, Rogue General skills and Warrior-Rogue Elite skills. I say Warrior-Rogue for Elite skills because Warrior/Rogue has different Elite skills from Warrior/Scout, or Rogue/Warrior. If the player switches the character classes to Rogue / Warrior, then the skills available will be Rogue Specific skills, Rogue General skills, Warrior General skills, and Rogue-Warrior Elite skills. Understanding this concept, players can make up to ..... 30+ combinations of classes. Want to dual wield weapons? Pick a Rogue. Want to be able to self-heal? Pick a Priest. Want to be able to tank? Pick a Knight. And so on.

RoM also has housing feature and guild castle. You can decorate your house with useless furniture just for the sake of wasting ingame currency, or you can obtain useful furniture such as things that give you exp bonus (best to logout inside the house), or Crafting Tools so you don't have to run around the whole town, processing materials and crafting stuff at different places. These kinds of Tools require Tokens (ingame currency obtained from doing repeatable quests) and Diamonds (Cashshop).

This game's downside? Even though the graphic is really good, character's animation isn't so smooth. And Frame Per Second always drop very low in crowded areas (10+ other players on the screen is enough to cause this). Also, this game allows Diamond (currency for Cashshop) to be traded in-game. That could easily ruin game economy since ingame currency is almost useless if every good tradable items are traded with Cashshop currency instead. It's actually not that bad, yet, though, since the majority of players don't spend more than necessary money for Cashshop, again, yet.

Reviewed Apr 09

RATING