As World of Warcraft continues to hemorrhage players by the millions each month, more and more developers are starting to recognize the potential that the Free-to-Play model has for an already wildly popular genre on its own; MMORPGs. Several obscure publishers have started to release their answers to the dying subscription model which had served Blizzard so well the past 10 years, and now in the spirit of that trend comes Runes of Magic, the epic tale of intellectual property theft as told by Taiwainese gaming outfit Runemaker Entertainment.

Much like several other countries in Asia, Taiwan is incredibly loose when it comes to persecuting copyright infringement or those who support it, so many developers in the region will take advantage by ripping off other games or franchises pixel for pixel and then distributing them under their own network of standard “pay-to-win” schemes. Because they cost next to nothing to get running and available for download, all it really takes is a small base of rabidly obsessed fans to reach profitability and call it a day.

If you’ve played World of Warcraft you know how to play Runes of Magic, as the two are basically identical on the surface and share gameplay mechanics not only with each other, but with the same generic MMO model that’s been decaying for just a little too long now. Runes of Magic is of course a much buggier, less reliable, and overall more hollow experience than WoW ever was, but most of that can be attributed to the way their revenue model drives the content creation process as opposed to how Blizzard did things while they were still undisputed.

All the standard features are included though, and at least it does what it’s supposed to without costing anything up front or once per month. Pets, crafting, PvP, and raiding perform their duties well enough, so at the very least I’d recommend this to anyone who wants to play WoW but isn’t willing to shell out the cover charge at the door.

Comments