Runes of Magic US / AU

1. It's Pay to win. Extremely heavily pay to win. You will not be able to do anything in the game except craft/minigames without spending money, whether your own or someone elses. The entire gearing system is based around buying everything from the item shop through the use of diamonds. Everything that you have to have to upgrade your gear has to be bought there. Getting to endgame whilst free to play is theoretically possible, but in this day and age of the game not very probable at all unless you have people that are willing to just give you free stuff.

2. The games population has fallen dramatically. You won't see many players outside of the "hub" areas: Usually the current zone/instance, as well as Varanas and Obsidian Stronghold. Outside of those areas, you aren't going to see many players out questing or doing things elsewhere in the game. Most servers only have one guild that can actually run current content, some have two, like my home server. And even those guilds aren't as populated as they used to be.

There are some great midgame guilds that have alot of activity, albeit unable to run current endgame content. They can be a fun place to hang around in if you're just looking for the social aspects of the game.

3. Forums lately are used by only a few people, and almost everyone on the forums has been around for awhile. There's a select group that frequents and is the majority of posters in the threads. Forums are not very active, even though they may seem to be, it's really just the same few voices posting everywhere.


I know that doesn't paint a very pretty picture, and I'm sure somebody will come in here tellling me to stop spreading lies and trying to push people away, but I try to tell it like it is.

Quoted from "Borella"

1. It's Pay to win. Extremely heavily pay to win. You will not be able to do anything in the game except craft/minigames without spending money, whether your own or someone elses. The entire gearing system is based around buying everything from the item shop through the use of diamonds. Everything that you have to have to upgrade your gear has to be bought there. Getting to endgame whilst free to play is theoretically possible, but in this day and age of the game not very probable at all unless you have people that are willing to just give you free stuff.

I wouldn't say its quite as far as that. There's really no need to spend a dime from leveling to 87. 82+ might get difficult even with gear dirty statted with XII stats, but should still be doable if you're playing a decently powerful class. And some people just have fun collecting skins, trying out all the classes, and chatting, and none of that requires much $$, and I know some that enjoy that playstyle.

But yes,gearing is not cheap, especially if you want to buy everything. If you're not looking to be the bleeding edge and are willing to farm most of the stats you need, a set of gear will cost you around $120 (at least, its how much it costed my guildie) and last you decently for 6-9 months if its decently statted. Using shell gear and having guildies (or crafting yourself) that can craft you gear/stats is a huge help for gearing. And if you're playing a highly desirable debuff class like Wl/M, just need to be geared enough to survive. Or, ask Bangs for advice. Dirty DoD statted W/Wd doing OP DPS ftw lol.

Although If you want to be top ranked on server stats with all T7+16 X runes gear and want to buy every stat you need... might get really, really expensive...

Well i have made billions of gold out of crafting, yes i buy my own diamonds, but less now that i have the capacity to farm, craft, plant stuff. As Noble said, you can get bag stats that drop from mobs for free to gear up and help you out. It all depends of what your goal is, wanna be endgame within a month or two, good luck with that, then you will have to spend ridiculous amount of money, wanna play for fun and do it slowly, then not so much money. As per Noble also said, not all T7 or T8 gear but decent enough to run instances and have fun.

Sadly to say if you play a rogue it will be the cheapest class to gear and a lot of damage output.

But hust remember why you will play the game, Fun or Stress lolll, have fun, it all that counts really ;-)

lol with the blue quest gear that is FREEEEEEE99... and bag stats now that are 150 attributes..... the games imo is cheaper it has ever been to gear up for first time...

i mean hell im STILL using the blue quest gear for endgame content, why not? you dont need perfect gear, perfect stats perfect runes to run endgame.


crafting is where its at rly... i never did crafting till i started over for.. idk 3rd or 4th time lol and i wish i did it years sooner! i wouldve saved a ton of money lolol

Good gear is pretty easy to get these days with a bit of effort, but without huge expense. Crafted gear is pretty darn decent, just a shade below instance gear. Quest gear, which you get for free, is in some slots very close to best-in-slot. EOJ gear is in same boat. Dirt cheap bag stats match Bethomia stats, which means you can stat better than people who geared when Syrbal Pass was latest and greatest.

You would still have to spend some item shop resources to finish gear - just having base gear and stats is not enough to bring it to usable levels. Still it is not that much.

Now, that low-cost approach won't get you to power levels of a certain "lie-spreading-pushing-away-players*" forumite, but then he is one of best geared people in the top guild of an active server, so that is not exactly representative of where most people are.





* What? I am not flaming, he asked to be called that.

Quoted from "zidlef"

rogue it will be the cheapest class to gear

i'd have to disagree with this one statement. the rest of your post is pretty spot on zid.

if you want cheap, healer is the way to go. people will practically give you gear if you go healer primary, and you can keep up with chapters old gear. healing is possibly the most OP thing in the game right now.

Im with Cike, healer is definitely the cheapest class and you can still wear things from a few levels ago and still be effective. However, this is a topic for another thread.


As some people have suggested, you should be able to do okay with crafting gear, which is only 10% less than hardmode instance. By the way crafting gear=memento gear=shell gear=energy of justice gear=normal mode gear. There really isn't a difference between them except the crafting and normal mode gear are parts of sets and if you wear all of them, you get an extra bonus. With that said however, if you just want to nuke the stuff in front of you and just over kill it in 10 seconds or less, then yes, be ready to drop some cash. Ultimately having a friendly and helpful guild is what matters the most. Most people would pick up the slack you leave behind, unless you are just there to leech and beg for fr33 st00f pl0x.

1. You can access all the game for free. But it will take a long time, a loooonnnggg time. I think you can achieve endgame without spending tons and tons of money tho, just be patient!

2. Depends on the servers, Grimdal is practically dead, but Artemis is ful of new and old players.

3. Borella was right, its always the same voices, but ask questions and you'll always get an answer!

1. RoM CAN be a P2W game, however, I'm totally Free2Play and I've made it pretty far... So it definitely IS NOT impossible!
2. Population wise.. Hmm.. I suppose that would mostly depend on the server you play on, servers such as Artemis or Reni are more heavily populated. While servers such as Govinda, Palenque, and Indigo are not quite a populated..

3. Class forums usually aren't a place where most people go unless posting a guide for a class of some sort... Most actually end up going to the 'Questions and Answers' forum page to ask questions about their class, possibly because that's where most people check the most often.

In my opinion: Yes, Runes of Magic has its bugs, and problems, however, I personally think it's still an awesome game to play still, and we are getting better support now than what we were for a while before.. I'd say there is still a lot of hope for it .