I recently started playing the American open beta of a game called Runes of Magic. And it looks like the game will be a big hit.

Runes of Magic is an MMORPG that is free to play, and the American open beta was recently opened. There was already a European open beta going on, so most of  the bugs have already been taken care of.

My character in RoM

You start out with one of six classes in the Pioneer’s Colony of Taborea, where you’ll quickly become familiar with Runes of Magic (RoM). After a mini-tutorial, which explains the bare basics of the game, like movement and camera control, you’re thrown into the world. And boy,was I surprised. On my skill bar, I found 4 skills waiting for me! At level 1!

While other games are scarce with giving you skills, RoM is definitely not. A common complaint about MMOs is that you have so little skills to use, that you just end up spamming the same skill over and over again, making the game very boring. But not in RoM. You start out with a couple of skills that have synergy with each other, and every level you get to upgrade them as you wish. You also gain a new skills every level or two. And this makes the combat really enjoyable.

The other thing that really surprised me, is how the game kept throwing quest after quest at me. There are so many, especially with the daily quests that you can repeat, that it’s not odd to still have quests of levels far below yours! So you’ll never be forced to grind on your own, but instead you’ll be questing.

However, these quests don’t have a lot of variety. Most of them are simple “Kill x wolves” or “Collect 10 fangs”, though there’s also some quests that ask you to scavenge for items or kill bosses (that are way too strong for their level, I might add- you definitely need a group of multiple people to kill them).

Aside from the combat there’s also a foraging and crafting system. While the foraging system is straight-forward (though it’s annoying how you cannot chop down certain trees or pick flowers until your skill level is high enough), the crafting system is not. I didn’t find out until level 10 how I could create new items, because you have to initiate the crafting from your skill window. Because of this, I accidentally sold a lot of materials that I could have instead used to create new items.

A unique feature in Runes of Magic is that, like Guild Wars, you can gain a secondary class. At level 10 you can choose one of the remaining classes as your secondary, and you get to use some of its skills. However, unlike Guild Wars, you separately have to level this class. I’m a big fan of the dual class system, as it allows for a lot more variety.

For now, I’m really enjoying Runes of Magic, and I hope this game stays as good as it is in the lower levels. If you’re looking for a free MMO, definitely try this game.