Pumping Irony

I’ve decided to — for now — include Runes of Magic as one of my MMO staples. Out of the “true” F2P market it’s probably the best of the bunch. Perhaps I’m picking nits or splitting hairs, but I cannot bring myself to think of DDO’s freemium model to be quite the same thing as “F2P.” It also allows me to get into an established game rather than being an F2P Tourist (there, I just made a new sub-phrase) and jumping on the disastrous bandwagon of dreck like Allods Online. Yes, I tried Allods. It was uninstalled before I ever got a chance to look at the overpriced Item Shop.

So, I have a single character on the Artemis server: Jerreth, a Priest/Knight. I’ve gotten the Priest class up to level 19 and have been alternating between questing in the Sascilia Steppes (a new zone created presumably for leveling secondary classes) and saving up Daily Quests completed on the Priest then turning them in as the Knight so that class gets the XP/TP from them. It’s worked out well enough so far; the Knight is only two levels behind the Priest. I chose Knight as the secondary class because the Elite skills it provides when combined with the Priest make it the best primary healer (healbot) in the game. In all the F2P games I’ve installed and goofed around with, I’ve never leveled much and have never grouped with anyone so I wanted an in-demand class for grouping so I could get a chance to see what things are like grouping in F2P Land.

I knew I got my first Elite skill at 15/15 so that was a priority. I did not know the costs involved, however, but it wasn’t bad. I had to go out and gather enough resources to craft the second-tier materials out of them along with a hefty gold price. But a few levels later, Jerreth already has 100,000 gold again, so apparently gold isn’t much of an issue yet.

During the early leveling around Logar, I concentrated on earning the Glory of Logar armor set. I got the (rather nice looking) robe and trousers but the quest is currently bugged for the shoes. Oh well. I continued leveling and yesterday Jerreth acquired the final piece for the Silverspring’s Hope set. It’s a bit “foofoo” and kinda reminds me of the male Mesmer starter armor in Guild Wars for some reason. But it’s cool in an odd sort of way.

Jerreth is working his way up into Tagena now, in the northern section of Silverspring where the mobs are in the low 20′s, and has already received the first quest for the next cloth armor set: Top-Secret Records which involves some normal quests and a few in the first instance, Forgotten Abbey, which Jerreth will have to gain a few more levels to be a viable group member to enter.

Now, since I am choosing to really play a F2P, ground rules must be set. Unlike most MMO players I harbor no illusions that Frogster needs to make money. I am an adult with a decent salary and I have no problems whatsoever tossing some money at developers if I am enjoying their game. However, since I am not forced to pay monthly, I will only pay when I actually feel I may need or want to. In the meantime it will be an interesting experiment to see how far I can get and what I can accomplish if I decide to spend time rather than money. From what I’ve seen of the Item Shop, RoM does not outright sell gear and other unbalancing stuff. I am getting a bit tired of running everywhere so I will likely buy myself a mount soon, it’s just a matter of deciding which one. Otherwise, at this early stage of the game I have not heard of anything I would “need” to pay for. Should I decide to continue playing all the way to end-game, I’ve never heard of a single F2P where money did not come into play heavily at that point. So, if (and this is a huge “if” since I will be doing end-game in both AoC and LOTRO) I get to that point, and if I’m enjoying the end-gameplay enough to continue with it, a financial budget must be set. Normally I would suggest sticking to no more than what a subscription would cost, $15/month, but RoM doesn’t have a $15 package of Diamonds to make that easy. So I’ll think long-term and go for $180/year, which is what a subscription MMO costs annually.

Frogster ran a sale last week for +100% Diamonds, so I went ahead and bought the $22 pack of 500 Diamonds, which gave me 1000 Diamonds. So I’ve already given Frogster a couple bucks for my enjoyment of the game so far, I simply haven’t used those Diamonds to purchase something from the Item Shop yet. Remember how Darren went ballistic over the $10 horses? Those were the cheap 199 Diamond mounts. The cool mounts cost 395 Diamonds. Since I have 1000 sitting around, guess what I’ll be getting?

I did use the Phirius Token shop, however. Daily Quests in RoM awards 100 Phirius Tokens per quest, along with some XP and TP, and you can do 10 Dailies per day. Dailies reset at 10am Eastern, though there is an item in the Diamond Shop that will reset them whenever you want. I’ll be skipping that. In the Phirius Token Shop there are various furnishing for your house, some of which award either an XP or a TP bonus. I saved up enough for a plant that gives a TP bonus and am now working towards a chest that gives XP. The way these bonuses work is identical to “Rest XP” we see in most modern subscription MMO’s. If I logout Jerreth in his house, he begins to earn whichever bonuses the furniture provides and the next time he is out earning XP/TP, those bonuses will apply until he runs out, then he’ll simply earn the normal amount of each.

There are three Item Shops in RoM: the Diamond Shop (Diamonds are the “points” purchased for real money), the Phirius Token Shop which again is strictly earned by doing Dailies and saving them, so it’s more a time-based currency, then there is the Ruby Shop. Any time you make a purchase in either the Diamond or Phirius Shop you earn Rubies which can then be spent on special items in the Ruby Shop. In addition, Diamonds are allowed to be sold for gold, etc. so while it’s not quite on par with EVE and its Plex currency, it’s entirely possible for players to earn enough in-game gold to buy Diamonds on the auction house to make purchases in the Diamond Shop. Sounds like a very cool idea and seems like maybe it gives pretty much everyone the chance to “succeed” in RoM by spending both money and time as they see fit rather than requiring both.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, March 30th, 2010 at 8:26 pm and is filed under F2P, MMO, Runes of Magic. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.