Current mood:	cheerful
Entry tags:	mmorpg, online game, roleplaying, rp, runes of magic, terinu, wow

OMG.. it's another MMORPG
I didn't mean to honestly....
My eldest son downloaded it and i got curious.  So one evening when I was feeling too tired to do much else and the quality of the tele was lower then it's usual aquatic state I set up my own account on Runes of Magic, a free, downloadable MMORGP.  I logged in and went to the character generating screen.  And was impressed. 

It's similiar to WHoL and WOW but with some essentual differenes.  For one thing there is only one race you can play... human.  Although there are plans to install a second race, namely elves, in the near future.  And the career choices are limited to six basic classes.  Although upon reaching level ten you can select a secondary class from the list giving your character abilities from two different fields.  There is a LOT of variety with the choice of faces and hair styles.  Anything from a teenage boy or girl to a graggy faced, hard bitten bearded warrior. My first impression was 'pretty pretty.'  Some of the face styles have a distinct anime flavour while others are fairly realistic.  Skin tones are limited from alabastor to a mid range tan... bit of an oversite there :(.  Hair styles are fantastic.  A lot more variety then WoW AND you can have any colour you chose from a universal pallete.  (Lots of green, purple, bright red and blue running around.)  Though the bit I liked best was the ability to size and proportion your character.  With a bit of imagination I could pretty much approximate most of my human characters from Terinu.  I played with that for a while, a extremely fun time killer.   Then I decided to design a character to play around with.  So what the hell... I'd do a human approximation of Terinu. :)

So I generated this male character, who was short, dark dark blue hair of the right length, though not quite the right style. I chose an anime face to give in a slightly, not human look.  I designated him a rogue, of course, and tapped accept.  Thankfully nobody had used the name, I've found that has happened all to often in other games.  And I entered the game enviroment.

First thought: Very bright graphics with these cute little foxes and a talking dog at the intro.  Well i later learned that the foxes were actually wolf cubs but dammit they look like foxes!  there is a very short intro which is a tutorial which gives you the basic key board commands and idea of picking up a quest... killing a monster and handing in the quest for the reward... for all the online role playing game virgins.  Recommend you do it every time you generate a new toon for the reward, which is a ring, and the free use of a mount for the first 24 hours (real time, not game time.)

Then into the real game, with the bright graphics toned down a smidge and into a fairly WoW like structure of quest givers but with a confusing array of item drops from mobs.  Runes of magic is called Runes of magic for a reason and your pack soon gets stuffed with heaps of different little stones with different magical attributes attatched to them.  They have several purposes... namely upgrading your armour and to use in the crafting skills so save them up.  Dailies are available almost straight away, usually posted on notice boards, and are rewarded with tokens that you can save up and spend on items.  The base currency is gold, though, and only gold.  No copper or silver here.  But think of them as WoW copper because you need a ton to buy anything significant.  the real money is in diamonds.  But diamonds are the way that the people who run RoM make their money.  I guess they have to make a profit somehow.  For the most part you need to buy diamonds with real money to spend in the game.  BUT.. it isn't neccessary to do that to play, at least as far as I've got.  It would be nice to purchase a permanant mount though and for that you need diamonds.

Game play is pretty standard WoW fodder, but with a lot more very short very quick running from one person to the next style quest chains which is excellent for fast leveling.  Instances are small and all over the place though you need to do the quests required to enter them before hand, and the standard game party is six.  The story lines are fairly simple and don't feel as dark and moody as WoW, at least in the lower areas. 

So I reached level 10 and obtained my second proffession.  I was tempted to go Priest... the ability to heal myself during battle was very tempting.  But this is Terinu so i had to go mage.  Not a bad choice as it turns out.  Rogue/mages are recommended as DPS divas and Terinu can certainly hand anything it's ass in a battle. lol!

Next I decided to accept a guild invite.  This guild I joined, as it turned out, is an RP guild.  A new game enviroment for me.  I've often thought about rolling a charcter on an RP server on WoW but couldn't come at the thought of building a new character up from scratch doing the same old same old, especially as my play time is extremely limited at the moment.  So here was my opportunity to try out something I'd never done before. :)

For the most part it felt like a standard leveling guild with a few top level charcters, mostly mid range, and me at the tail end of the level numbers.  Guild chat was normal with all OOC inclosed in double brackets.  The RP happened when guild members came together ingame, apparently usually at the Guild castle.  (Yes, guilds get their own HUGE castle and you get your own house for your character which you can furnish to your taste. lol.)  I decided to visit the castle to get a feel for it.  And...

I loved it.  Ghia help me.

Of course I toned down Teri's prickly exterior but basically stayed in character for the rest of it.  I decided to keep to the story of being raised by a warlord, recently escaped to explore and learn about his recently realised magical talent.  Dropped the whole Gene Mage/ Varn thing as it wouldn't fit in here and everything else that happened post his escape except that he'd been taken in for a while by a group of travellers (haven't elaborated on that yet but they will very loosely encompass his relationship with Leeza, Lance and Rufus amongst others from the series) and now is heading off on his own to make his fortune.  In tune with proper role play I didn't do an info dump about his past history on the other players.  Just used that inside knowledge to base his responses on.  More fun to learn about someone gradually, anyway.

I was pleasantly surprised to see almost everyone Terinu spoke with had rather well fleshed out characters.  There was a knight who's family had been murdered by robbers who was ousted off his farm and ended up joining the military.  A dark moody character that other characters hinted might be a little insane.  A petite female traveller with an accent who had problems understanding the language... played very well in character I might add.  The guild leaders partner who seemed angry and distracted at rumours that another person was hitting on her husband, and that he might be cheating.  And a trouble maker who happily spread those rumours, causing much angst and concern in the castle at the time Terinu was visiting. 

I only meant to pop in and listen in to see what it was like and ended up spending two hours there with Terinu chatting to the other characters, getting a guided tour of the castle and surrounds, and nicking cookies from the kitchen.  Now I understand why people do this.  It's damn good fun.  Like collaborating with a bunch of others on this one long twisty story where everyone writes the part of one character in real time.  Deffinately something i could get into.

In fact i think the bits of time I allotted to playing WoW is probably going to side step into RoM for the time being.  It's certainly worth a second and third look.