Runes of Magic

"A long time ago, the god Ayvenas created a book, in which he captured the shape of the world and recorded the origin of life. The book's name was "Taborea"."

Runes of Magic is a "free to play" MMORPG, developed by Runewalker Entertainment. Though developed in Taiwan, it became surprisingly popular in America and Germany after another company called Frogster Interactive translated it into English and German.

It is often criticized for being very similar to World of Warcraft, to the point of some calling it a rip-off. Even its fans are willing to admit this if you press them. Nevertheless, it has met with great success, and the number of players who signed up on both the launch of the open beta and the full game were unprecedented for a free-to-play MMORPG. Thanks to an online "item shop" where players can buy "diamonds" with real money in order to get items, extra character customization, and gameplay conveniences, plus boxed versions being sold in Europe, Frogster and Runewalker still manage to make a profit off it despite its "free-to-play" status.

The game is set in the High Fantasy world of Taborea, specifically on the continent of Candara. In ancient times, Candara was the homeland of Taborea's exceedingly proud humans, but that civilization was destroyed in a robot uprising. Some humans survived on the nearby continent of Kloyida, however. They are now in the process of rediscovering the Lost Technology of the Ancient Kingdoms and recolonizing the ruined land of Candara.

Players start out with the ability to choose one of eight classes:


 * The Warrior
 * Lightning Bruiser
 * Stone Wall
 * An Axe to Grind


 * The Mage
 * Glass Cannon
 * Squishy Wizard
 * Elemental Powers
 * Playing With Fire
 * Shock and Awe


 * The Priest (humans only)
 * Combat Medic
 * White Mage
 * White Magic
 * Healing Hands


 * The Rogue
 * Fragile Speedster
 * Knife Nut
 * Dual-Wielding upon hitting level 16, and grants this to primary or secondary classes.


 * The Scout
 * Glass Cannon
 * Trick Arrow


 * The Knight (humans only)
 * Magic Knight
 * Knight in Shining Armor
 * Stone Wall
 * White Magic
 * Barrier Warrior


 * The Warden (elves only)
 * Magic Knight
 * Barrier Warrior
 * The Beast Master


 * The Druid (elves only)
 * Elemental Powers
 * Jack of All Stats
 * The Red Mage

Starting at level 10, players can also choose a "secondary class" ; someone might play as a Warrior/Knight, or a Rogue/Mage for example. Upon getting both primary and secondary classes to level 20, one can also choose a third class.

Players start out in a small mining colony where they are introduced to the world and gameplay, then promptly set off into a Wide Open Sandbox. -- This video game provides examples of:


 * Allegedly Free Game: A mild example. The game is still perfectly playable if you don't pay extra, but the stuff in the item shop can make it more fun.
 * You will spend AGES farming cash at endgame without diamonds, however.
 * You used to be able to buy diamonds on the auction house with in-game currency -- in other words, to earn premium currency (and all its rewards) without spending a dime.
 * All There on the Website
 * Anti Poop Socking: Stay logged in for too long, and the NPC's will start telling you to quit playing! This makes questing impossible, since every quest involves talking to an NPC at some point.
 * An Adventurer Is You
 * An Interior Designer Is You: This being a frontier, homesteads are simply given to everyone.
 * Awesome Yet Practical or Awesome but Impractical, depending on how you combine two classes: Mage/Priest combos are very versatile, but both classes rely on the same limited resource (mana).
 * Back Tracking: So...much....backtracking....
 * Baleful Polymorph: A few days before the end of Open Beta, statues of a giant frog appeared all over Candara, surrounded by frogs. Whenever players killed enough of these frogs, the Frog King would appear, and if it kissed you, you'd have froginated yourself.
 * The Beast Master: Wardens get to summon pets to help them do their fighting.
 * BFS: Any two-handed sword.
 * Bloodstained-Glass Windows: The Forsaken Abbey zone.
 * Breakable Weapons: It takes a long, long time for them to break though, and they can be repaired afterwards.
 * Cap: You can only get to a certain Character Level, and only carry a certain amount of items.
 * Character Customization
 * Character Level
 * Chokepoint Geography: Every geographical region is divided by mountains, and you must take narrow mountain passes through them if you plan on travelling between regions without magic.
 * Class and Level System
 * Critical Existence Failure
 * Combat Medic: Priest-class characters are supposed to heal people, but they can also kick ass if you use them right.
 * Death Is Cheap
 * Follow the Leader: Runes of Magic is, er-hem, "heavily inspired" by World of Warcraft. Just because it's a rip-off doesn't mean it's not good!
 * Enough to Go Around
 * Expansion Pack World: Justified on the grounds of this being a frontier--the new lands aren't just appearing, they're being discovered. Oh, well, at least they're free.
 * Fridge Logic: There's a windmill in a forest. In a small valley. Why?
 * Because there's wind in valleys, too. Also, that pitiful amount of trees counts as a forest? In universe purpose for the windmill is to keep a bunch of evil goblins and kobolds who are Playing With Fire and their leader(s)
 * Maybe they should pay a bunch of mages to cast wind spells at it all day.
 * Fungus Humongous: The Fungus Garden
 * Gotterdammerung
 * Green Rocks: The titular runes of magic, which do basically whatever the designers want them to.
 * Healing Potion
 * Hit Points
 * Holiday Mode
 * Hollywood Darkness
 * Holy Hand Grenade
 * Hot Wings: The "Phoenix" spell for mages. It looks pretty neat, but how often do your enemies line up nicely for you?
 * Hyperspace Arsenal
 * Impossible Item Drop: From the mobs you slay.
 * Internet Counterattack: The game's localization team, Frogster, was in the middle of a bit of a crisis, as an anonymous hacker going by Cpt z3ro made threats of releasing account information unless his demands were met. These include:
 * 1) To stop censoring opinions that Frogster does not agree with, even on forums not in their jurisdiction.
 * 2) To (ironically enough) take better care of their customer's information.
 * And 3) To respect "both [their] customers and employees".
 * Frogster has responded so far mostly with claims that the hacked database is outdated and does not hold accurate information. Whether this is accurate or not is to be seen.
 * Item Crafting
 * Level Grinding
 * Loads and Loads of Characters
 * Look On My Works Ye Mighty and Despair
 * Mad Lib Fantasy Title: "Chapter I" in this virtual world's lifespan was "Runes of Magic: Rise of the Demon Lord." Chapter II is "Runes of Magic: The Elven Prophecy." The third chapter is "Runes of Magic: The Elder Kingdoms.", and the fourth chapter is "Lands of Despair".
 * Magic Knight: Knights, by default. Also, each character can eventually get two classes -- resulting in plenty of Warrior/Mages, Warrior/Priests, Knight/Mages, and Knight/Priests.
 * The Magnificent: Players can get such titles by slaying boss monsters or completing quest chains.
 * Mana
 * Nice Hat: It takes many hours of gameplay to even get a piece of headware.
 * This has been changed around a bit since the Chapter II expansion. A few elven starter quests give out hats.
 * Money for Nothing
 * Money Spider: Averted - you will not see a single gold piece off a mob you kill, but you will see plenty of item drops. You primarily earn money through doing quests for people and selling off item drops.
 * MMORPG
 * Only Mostly Dead: When you "die," you fall over. You can still talk and pan the camera around, and it is possible for a sufficiently skilled priest to revive you.
 * Sufficiently skilled - read "played for all of three hours and hit level 10."
 * Our Dwarves Are All the Same
 * Our Elves Are Different
 * Patchwork Map
 * Petting Zoo People: Most prominant are the Capras, which are goat-people. There is also Snoop the Stubborn, who is basically a talking version of Snoopy. Around Eastertime, Petting Zoo People called Gaia Rabbits also appear.
 * Player Versus Player
 * PVP-Balanced: parodied here.
 * Rainbow Pimp Gear: The item shop does allow players to recolor their armor, but most players aren't willing to pay Real Life money for such a trivial feature. Which results in some very, erm, colorful-looking high-level characters.
 * Randomly Drops
 * The Red Mage
 * Ruins for Ruins Sake: Subverted. All the ruins were in fact built by somebody, we find out what many of them are supposed to be, and there are NPC's studying them to find out more.
 * Scenery Porn
 * Shoulders of Doom: For extra doominess, said shoulders are on fire.
 * Squishy Wizard: Mages, Priests, and either combination of the two.
 * Standard Status Effects
 * Status Buff
 * Stripperiffic: Good gosh. The game's website used to have a picture of a woman wearing little more than a Chainmail Bikini, but the game's classes still follow this. At least for girls, naturally.
 * Sword and Sorcerer: Both types are present.
 * Turned Against Their Masters: The mechanical guardians of the Ancient Kingdoms.
 * Twenty Bear Asses
 * Underground Level
 * Urban Segregation Varanas is divided into the Lower City East (merchants), the Lower City West (craftsmen), and the Administrative District (Exactly What It Says On the Tin).
 * Virtual Paper Doll
 * Wide Open Sandbox