I think RoM has recently been choking-out a little of the flexibility in equipment and weapon upgrading, but there's still room to play around.
When it comes to fighting in PvE or PvP I generalize along a wide base line "must-have-to-proceed". There's always a lot of variance close to the bleeding edge of the game that negates the necessity to min-max to do better. Add to that, the ability to really over stat for any content (barring bleeding edge content that's limited due to important factors, like, what's in your wallet), and you have some room to play with and pick-and-choose based on what you like.
I specced my Priest/Rogue like a Mage. I used mainly level-55 Mage gear, but really tried to min-max this part. As far as I know, the P/R's damage-over-time spells still don't utilize critical-hit bonuses, so, I kept that in mind, while trying to squeeze the best out of set bonuses. I had to take some crit-bonuses, but that's okay, because it does affect my Rising Tide, which is my bread-and-butter.
I highly dislike the laser-beam focus newer themepark MMOs are applying to game-play. I do not enjoy placing a toy car and a circular track and letting it go round-and-round endlessly, only to "upgrade" it's speed every time it comes back to the starting position. Ancient, side-scrolling console, level-based games like Mega-man, Contra or, really, many are more imaginative than that (in my opinion).
That's why I end up being obstinate with these games and taking weird, unusual or off-the-beaten path choices (when a choice still actually exists for players).
Out of solely personal preference, I decided to cap myself and my gear at level 62-ish. I took a wand+hammer combo and proceeded to stack oodles of Magic Attack and Intelligence on everything.
I statted both of my weapons with very-good Chapter-4 "end-game" stats and was tiering them both.
It's a very unique, but extremely fun build to play. I may never be as strong as going full healer, and speccing like a Mage doesn't make me as strong as a Mage, either, but I can do any content, and with the ability to insanely gear, it's a moot point.
My interest in RoM, beyond a couple points of cage-free fun, is gone. I've played since Closed beta; 3+yrs and loved every second of it, but the game has decided to be every other import (and that's very pragmatic of Frogster), because it makes them the most money. These companies find the market and target it.
I'm mainly interested in just designing costumes, and even that's kind of hard with the creation of a static market. Today, on Artemis (of all servers) there were only three purple-level cloth leggings to choose from and they are in the ever-corny price-range of millions of dollars(queue Austin Powers music).
I don't regret the money and time I've spent. As a player, I am solely in charge of myself, and I've genuinely always enjoyed the game, no matter what or how I chose to play, but it's time for the final curtain call for me.
I can't even use the insanely awesome armor-customization features in RoM, and I feel they have the best system among the entire MMO landscape.
In the beginning, RoM was an amazing MMO with amazingly fun features. Even Chapter 3 brought us a deep and fun pet-system and housekeepers, among other cool features, but, even then, the one tiny dungeon that was released stole 100% of the news. Nothing else, but it was advertised, because that's the market and where the money is. In the beginning, RoM was bursting with potential and rapidly backing-up its hype with proof and innovation that Blizzard should've been jealous of.
The further we got to the present-day, the more that potential kept glaring us all in the face as the use of that potential kept going down. It's not the game I started with, and I felt, "Eh, yeah, I'm done, cool. Was a great ride."
I can't, and am not, chastising Frogster for doing what any business would want to do; Make money. It's proof that these developers and publishing companies are filled with extremely savvy and intelligent people with access to years of business data and analytical papers to help them get pin-point accuracy to give us exactly what we want. And that's what the MMO industry is doing: Giving the major market exactly what we're asking for, but, unfortunately there's not much room to diversify to allow many differently focused genre's to co-exist.
I don't much like the "games-as-service" approach that's so popular in the videogame industry today, instead of "games-as-entertainment", which seems to be driving companies to find more profitable streams of revenue in building up large portfolios of games and making money through a mass standardization where the games themselves can actually be not-fun-at-all, simple outlets for habitual behavior and obsessive compulsive disorders (without even catering to making it a negative nor positive outlet).
And, although Frogster is scrutinized for being one of the worst publishers in the business and having the most "cash-shoppy" of all MMOs, it's ironically quite the opposite. Those remarks are the proof that it's just a glass-half-empty viewpoint from players who choose to spend lots of their money. What we have, in actuality, is one of the most successful imports ever, and the fact that "it's so expensive" (which is really just a bad translation of: many, many people are pouring more money into RoM than any other game) is proof that it's so popular and Frogster is doing a stellar job. If my colleagues came up to me and looked my business over and saw I was making more money than anyone else, I'd be in a very comfy position as being very successful at what I do.
I love gaming and I still love MMOs. I also have a lot of hope and excitement for what looks to be a movement back toward just plain-ole, silly, cool fun without heavy emphasis on trappings. Games like GW2, Archeage and even the old EQ2 that's adding some really wacky and just-plain-fun stuff like voice-changing and facial recognition. I'm not going anywhere. If anything, you will be seeing much more of me, hopefully at your favorite places to read and watch gaming entertainment and news.
It also doesn't mean I'm bitter or angry. Things come and go. Lives change. And, there's actually still a lot of cool, fun things to talk about in gaming and in the MMO niche. So, I'll most definitely be around in some MMOs and having a blast fishing, decorating my homes and characters and, yes, occasionally stabbing things in the back.
And I'm not sticking around because of my guild. I don't need any single game to keep me visiting my friends. There's no MMO that ever "kept" me coming back, because of friends. I don't need the game to visit them.
So as a final goodbye to RoM, but not gone forever (of sorts). I'm posting pictures of my character, equipment and stats. I hope you find it fun, cool and even stupid, because stupid stuff can be totally fun. In some cases the stupid stuff is the most fun.
I wish the real men and women behind Frogster and Runewaker the best, always. No one should be wished out of work or have harm brought upon them. Everyone deserves to be happy, have a life and making a living.
I hope to see you around and I hope you will be seeing me around the MMO/gaming scene a lot more.
o/
TL; DR
Goodbye. Here's some screenshots.
