Runes of Magic US / AU

you can only lose your gear through PK on the two PVP servers Indigo and Grimdal. However, you are only at risk of losing gear on those two servers if you go out of your way to PK random "innocent" players. On pvp you get a set reputation at base 0.00 and it goes up positive for all the people you kill who are red, down negative for all the people you kill who are blue/good players. Red players are the ones that have killed so many innocent players their PK mode is permanently on till they manage to lower their spirit/reputation and they are the only ones that have a % chance to drop unsealed equipment. Basically if you play on the pvp servers just don't go out of your way to attack people that are not red. You can't lose gear on a pve server with the PK feature enabled, and you can't lose gear in the cross server siege.

Quoted from "hambolt;518038"

reminds me of UO. Thank you ShanksRom

Soo what did you end up playing and on what server?

Just a clarification on ShanksROM's post... the only "safe" reputation you can have is if you're neutral. Going either good (blue/purple) or evil (yellow/orange/red) will initiate the drop probability. Couple points on this... you will only drop to someone who is no more than 5 levels above you, but you can drop to anyone of any lower level that kills you (chance drop). You will get negative reputation from killing neutral players as well. You can return your reputation to neutral by purchasing declarations of neutrality from the item shop.

Keep in mind, it didn't always use to be this way, it was only fairly recently that it was changed from any player, of any reputation of any level had the chance drop probability. This system however, caused the PvP servers to fall significantly behind in progression than the PvE servers, and it's affects are still lingering to this day. PvP servers are also less friendly, where groups are difficult to find because so many people dislike each other from killing one another. This sense of animosity has prolonged the hampered gear and server progression to where it's felt heavily in siege wars.

All in all, PvP is quite a bit more difficult than PvE, both in respects to instance progression & friendly alliance creation. Up to you how you choose to roll, but bear in mind that if you do go PvP, you will occasionally rage.

Like my philosophy on any f2p mmo, install the game and try it out for a while and if you decide that it is not the right feel for your group of friends then all you guys have to do is unistall it.

Quoted from "YomanROM;517912"

i dont know any worldboss that has not been done with 4 or less people.

As someone already mentioned, we are talking about US servers... :p

@OP, only difference you will learn in RoM - transport to instance is cumbersome. You will have to use snoop to travel, then your ride to front of instance. If you have good healer, no problem if you die in instance, but for some instance, you have quite a ride to get back if you get killed and had to rez. (and no 'instant start/entering' once raid is formed.)

What kind of server are you looking at? (PVE or PVP)

Quoted from "RoMage;518126"

transport to instance is cumbersome.

Which is why they made the item-set skill with the transport to all those instances

Quoted from "tmblake09;518141"

Which is why they made the item-set skill with the transport to all those instances

There is an item set skill with transports to instances???? When did this come about?

The cost is the big factor in deciding whether to go to ROM or not.

Technically, the game can be as free as you want it. There is nothing in the game that says "if you have never spent XXX dollars on it, this content is closed to you". Everything can be accessible, in theory, even if you end up having to buy things from "item shop" indirectly, by buying gear enhanced by other people or giving gold to people who buy such enhancement for you. In practice, you would find that being completely f2p is very time consuming.

As mentioned, ROM is gear modification game. You gear needs to be statted, tiered, plussed and have runes. Stats are most important and can be gathered from bosses in instance or purchased with mementos obtained by running instances. But tiers require purchases from item shop (AT charges), plussing required jewels from item shop, and all the runes worth using are also only purchaseable from item shop. Estimates vary on what it takes to succeed. Some people can spend hundreds a month and say that is the only way they feel on top of the game. Others spend $10-$15 dollars and while probably cant run the latest and greatest, are still happy. Yet others go F2P or nearly so.

Many people feel that ROM is P2W (Pay to Win). I disagree with them, but that is a matter of what constitutes win. If you want to say "I have done all the challenges that game has", then yeah, you would have to pay quite a bit.

Quoted from "tmblake09;518141"

Which is why they made the item-set skill with the transport to all those instances

After you get skill for mems, don't you have to spend transport runes to move there? How difference is that from using inc to mark all instances?

At the op and his friends, this is an awesome game. That being said i would wait until an official word from frogster that they are renewing their contract to continue to publish this game before downloading and making any investments into it. We should know very shortly of their plans but right now it is looking like a 50/50 chance.

@silverjeff - Unless you have another source, I think that issue was already covered by another poster (I forget who, srry, but ty!). As i understand, in 2010 Frogster already renewed it's contract untill 2018. Page 16 of Source: http://frogster.eu/en/read_pdf.php?file=…r_folder_en.pdf says:


[INDENT]"Frogster secures Extension of the License Term of its main Cash Cow ... [securing] an extension of the license term from 5 to 8 years per an agreement with the developer [of] the internationally successful massively multiplayer online game ‘Runes of Magic’."
[/INDENT]


@hambolt I'd agree with previous posters. RoM seems to answer many of your needs.

Maybe more debate about what the costs of endgame gearing / remaining cutting edge. I think having a large guild/party pool helps enormously.

Problems may arise in costs if, assuming one is at endgame instances already, you want to maximum-gear-out to cutting edge refinement at +16 with four X Level Runes in each of your 16 pieces of equipment and tier your weapon to T11 with each new chapter/level increase... than yes it can get expensive for those who must have it and choose it.

Is that absolutely required?... meh.

The 'free-to-pay' model allows for a lot of flexibility for different levels of spending and whatever you are comfortable spending then that is what you spend. If you don't go gaga-for-power, or have-to-keep-up-with-next-guy, and have a little control on your spending and shop wisely, I don't see a problem.

Sorry, should have been more specific. If frogster continues to publish this game in North America.

It might seem with current sale/support that they don't intend to publish it for a long time, but I think that they do, just not so sure how to do it.

Just before FA was closed I remember someone posting numbers showing FA being more profitable than FEU, by now we all know why. I remember reading comment that one of the reason to close FA was to add it's positive earnings to not so well EU numbers. Unfortunately, it seems that we are for ride in wrong direction and let's hope that someone will come to its senses before it's too late and they decide that it's best to pull the plug from not-so profitable game.

Back to OP, if there is already good group of them that will help each other, leveling and questing in Taborea will be cheaper and more easy if they decide to work as team.

Quoted from "TheTymos;518149"

There is an item set skill with transports to instances???? When did this come about?

Think it was added in during the "Mighty (fail) Shield" patch. Anyways, go to LoM, up in Kampel Town, and there's some black codex guys up near the mailbox. One of them will sell you the black codex transport spell. Costs like 200 mems (give or take), anyways, after it's purchased, you will permanently have the spell in your skill book. It costs a transport rune to use it each time, but once you click it, you'll be given a list of continents, and the instances located in them; choose which you want to go to and it will teleport you to right in front of the instance portal.

Quoted from "tmblake09;518041"

Soo what did you end up playing and on what server?

^ Is verrryyy crazy about you guys joining them