Runes of Magic: First Impressions

I had a rare bit of free time this weekend, so being the hardcore gamer I am, I decided to try out an MMORPG that had been recommended to me by a friend: Runes of Magic.  After about 12 hours of downloading and patching because my internet is slow and it was a 3.36 GB download, I finally got around to playing.  About an hour in, I could already feel myself growing indifferent to the game.  Overall, Runes of Magic is just your generic, cliche MMORPG.  There’s nothing that really makes it stand out or unique, which is sad because that is what will make it popular – it’s so much like mainstream games such as WoW, Guild Wars, Everquest, etc, that people will grow attracted to it by its similarities.  However, here are some things that I noticed during my first hour or two of playing:

Irks
-NAVIGATION: I’m a stickler for navigation in an MMORPG.  If I can’t move around easily, it will almost immediately turn me off the game, which in this case, it nearly did.  Moving around in RoM is done by WASD or the mouse buttons, much like many other games.  I usually use either WASD or the “left click move right click view” form of moving around.  However, both ways of navigation had issues, in my opinion at least.  Instead of A and D tilting the screen left/right like I was used to, they made the character run left/right, which got irritating because then I’d have to use the mouse to change view angles anyway.  With WASD being an annoyance, I tried to use solely the mouse.  However, I had to click an area several times before my character would move there, so that didn’t really work out.

-TALKING TO NPCS: It was also highly annoying to talk to NPCs.  In order to converse with NPCs in RoM, you have to click on them once to select them and then once more to actually open the dialogue box.  However, actually being able to select them was a real challenge.  Many times when I went to select an NPC, I ended up selecting a player instead, so it became a frustrating battle between me and my mouse cursor as I tried to make it understand that I wanted it to select an NPC, not one of the many players standing around the NPC.  One time a player was standing on the spot an NPC was, and I had to wait about three minutes for them to move because it was impossible to select the NPC.

Likes
-ITEM MANAGEMENT: There’s a sort button in the inventory!  God how that makes life SO much easier.  Also, when you go to the character equipment window, you can mouse over an item spot and the current item you have on, along with items usable in that spot in your inventory, will appear.  That way, you can compare items side by side to figure out which one you want to use and which one you don’t want to use.  Quite handy.

-BIG INVENTORY: There are six tabs in the inventory, each one holding …30 items I believe.  Ahh the bliss of not having to throw anything out until absolutely necessary.

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Other than that though, there’s nothing else that’s really special about Runes of Magic.  The combat system is your good old “click-attack, skill-spam” kind.  While it’s better than solely click-attack (I would have uninstalled RoM immediately if it was), it’s still nothing new.  I haven’t gotten to the main storyline quests yet, so I can’t say anything about quests, though right now they’re a little lame (collect xx number of this and that).  You can also gather resources in RoM (mining, woodcutting, and herb collecting) in order to make items that you can use to raise certain skills.  I haven’t really done much skilling so I won’t say anything about that either.  Mounts are also available in game, but that’s nothing new in the world of MMORPGs.  House-building is another feature that’s included, but I haven’t gotten at all to that, so again, I have nothing to say about it.  The graphics are also just the usual graphics of most MMORPGs nowadays.  They’re eye-catching to an extent, but they’re nothing new.  Classes are the same old warrior, ranger, thief, and mage, or sort of combination between them with different titles thrown in.  Nothing new there either.  Seriously, the day when I can be some sort of non-cliche profession in MMORPGs is the day the world ends.  Aka I’ll never get to be a troll who beats people with a club made out of dried mud.

I can see myself sticking with RoM for a little while, though I can tell it will bore me quite soon with its unoriginality.  Ah well, who knows?  Maybe it’ll turn out like Flyff, where I get bored of it after a month, then come back to it a year later and have some sort of epiphany and start playing it all the time.
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Here are some screenshots of Runes of Magic (note: I did not take these):

One
(…Uh…ignore the stuff in the message box lol)

Two

What’s Right and What’s Easy

One of the hardest things to choose between is what’s right and what’s easy.

The human mind is inclined to do what is easiest in a situation, especially in the current society.  Take for example researching.  Everyone’s favorite search engine – Google – is now the way everyone gets information.  Back in the day, people used to take the time to look through an encyclopedia or journal to find information.  However, this can’t be helped, as technology makes our society more advanced and yet more lazy at the same time.  That though, is a topic for another post.

The decision between what’s right and what’s easy shows true character in a person.  Say for example that you were a manager at a company and a co-worker came up to you, complaining that someone else was not completing his/her job.  Would you do what’s easy and go up to the accused, firing them on the spot?  Or would you do what’s right and talk to him/her, finding out what the other side of the story is before thinking over the situation and then deciding on an action to take?

That’s a scenario in the future for most readers of this blog though, so here’s a more relatable example.  Say two of your friends got in a fight and you were stuck in the middle.  Would you take the easy way out and choose a side/ignore them, or would you do the right thing and try to play the peacemaker in order to work out their arguments?

Whatever the circumstances may be, doing what’s right and what’s easy is a choice people will have to make many times in their lives.  The question that remains is, what will you do when the time comes, take the simple road or the winding path?

This Made My Day

I was perusing the April 2009 edition of Nintendo Power when something caught my eye. ‘Lo and behold, was it true? An anti-Twilight fan had written in to Nintendo Power? As I looked closer, my glee was confirmed. Here is what a part of the reader’s letter said (in a section asking what movie people would like to see as a Wii or DS game):

“The movie I would want turned into a game is Twilight…NOT! I know this is a bit off topic, but I can’t stand that book/movie. Nothing against fans of Twilight, but I can’t imagine a gamer liking the awful thing…” -Twilighthater

There was a little more to the letter, but that was the part that made me one very happy camper. Twilighthater, whoever you are and wherever you are in the world, keep on hating. Many kudos to you for getting anti-Twilight into Nintendo Power, which is an extremely impressive feat.

While I’m on the topic of twihate, check out http://www.impishidea.com I’ve advertised them before, but I feel like doing it again anyway. If you’re a Twilight hater and you don’t know about Impish Idea, you have no idea what you’re missing out on.