Raiding, Achievements, and Gold, WoW

It’s a Raid!

As I’ve blogged recently, I started playing World of Warcraft again in October after an absence of a little over two years. My intention was not, necessarily, to become a full on raider again, but yet I now find myself in a guild that is working toward the goal of becoming a “Raiding Guild”. The difference is, we’re also a social guild, and with the Guild Advancement feature introduced in the Cataclysm expansion, or focus is more on leveling the Guild than anything else.

When I first started playing again, in some ways, I was glad I was no longer in an active guild. The pressure was off to have to be logged in so often to be a part of guild activities, like dungeons and raids. I have to admit, however, that I’m looking forward to helping build a new guild almost from the ground up. As of the time of this blog, Worlds End is level 6 (of 25) with last night’s efforts in Ulduar contributing greatly to that (in fact, the Guild hit level 6 while we were inside the instance). I’ve been made an officer already and asked to help with organizing and researching the boss fights for raids. And most of all, I had a lot of fun.

Right now we’re actually doing lower level raids. First, because it’s decent practice for when we get to raids that are appropriate to our toon levels. Second, none of us has hit level 90 yet and some are closer than others, so it gives us a chance to bond as a guild and still do things as a guild without having to use “pick up groups”. And thirdly, several members are interested in a new (to me anyway) thing called “transmog” for gear sets, which essentially lets you transfer gear stats from a piece of gear that you may not like the look of to a piece that actually matches the set your toon is wearing. Not really my thing, but helping with that also gets me missing Achievements that I missed out on from a few years back.

Achievement Unlocked

Speaking of Achievements, it seems like there are tons of them added in Mists of Pandaria, which is to be expected. It just seems that the achievement pop up occurs for things that I wouldn’t have expected in previous expansions (like completing a simple quest chain). What’s more important to me are the achievements for old dungeons and raids that I either never attempted or never completed for various reasons. Last night we cleared most of Ulduar (a 10-man raid for which the completion always eluded my old guild). I got to venture into parts of that (very large) instance that I had never seen before. Next weekend, we’re planning a run on Icecrown Citadel to down the Lich King (a raid that I completely missed out on because it didn’t exist yet when I quit playing back in January 2010).

Other recent achievements for my toon include several of the MoP quest chain achievements as well as reaching max level (600) for the skill First Aid.

Ooo, Shiny!

One of the things that inspired me to start playing WoW again was my friend Sam’s blog posts about Star Trek Online. Specifically, he was writing quite often about something called the “Dilithium Exchange”, which apparently is similar to the Auction House in World of Warcraft. One of the side things I did in WoW was to put items in the Auction House for sale to other players (for in game gold, not real money, obviously). This venture could turn out to be very profitable at times and a great way to augment the gold earned in game for quests and looting. What I’ve noticed, though, is that Blizzard seems to have become more generous with the quest rewards and the amounts that “vendor trash” loot sells for to the vendors. I have found at least three things so far that were “vendor trash grey” but that sold for 100g. Typically vendor trash nets you a few silver or maybe a gold or two. That, along with some decent luck with selling things in the Auction House took my main toon from 2500 gold in mid-October to just over 10,000 gold as of this past week. In fact, I was even able to help out a guildie with a loan of 2500 gold and not sweat being able to make that up pretty quick. If only I could make money in the real world that fast.

I have to wonder if, perhaps, the seeming acceleration of gold rewards in game is a way for Blizzard to help combat the gold farmers that sell in game gold for real money. These unscrupulous folks use exploits like bots or just plain hack/steal people’s accounts to strip them of gear and gold so they can sell it to other players. Blizzard has always said that buying gold like that is a violation of terms and conditions and that you could lose your account and be banned if caught. It seems, though like they’ve been doing a little bit better at combating that. One of the reason the gold farmers even existed to begin with was because of some of the ways Blizzard doled out gold rewards rather slowly while also having very high costs for in game purchases (I remember when the basic riding skill, for example, plus the mount itself cost around 40g - these days it only costs around 5g). There is even a Guild Perk within the new Guild Advancement system that generates gold for the entire guild based on a percentage of what its members loot when questing.

All in all, I’m enjoying the new changes to the game and the new friendships being formed with the new guild I’ve joined. I’m still managing, for the most part, to limit my playing time to a few hours a week with the occasional weekend of splurging.

~ JC

Return to Azeroth

“I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass... and I’m all outta bubblegum.”

Two weeks ago I began playing the (in)famous game World of Warcraft again. Despite my list of pros and cons having the cons slightly ahead, I ended up heading back into Azeroth for another round of adventuring and questing. The last time I actively played was during the expansion Wrath of the Lich King, specifically, patch 3.2 “Call of the Crusade”. Since I said my goodbyes to my Guild back in January 2010,  two expansions have come out - Cataclysm (October 2010) and Mists of Pandaria (September 2012), with “MoP” putting the game patch version at 5.0.x. Cataclysm made some pretty major changes to the game, especially in the layout of some of the zones and the ability to use flying mounts in Azeroth proper.1 So much has changed, that I almost don’t know where to begin. For example, it’s rather embarrassing, being that I play an Orc, to say that I now get lost in the Orcs’ capital city of Orgrimmar because it’s changed so dramatically since last I played. Not only have classic zones been revamped, but the game system itself has changed quite a bit as well.

Class and Race Combinations:

To briefly summarize, for those that may not be familiar with the game, classic, “vanilla”, WoW included eight playable races. For the Alliance - Human, Night Elf, Dwarf, and Gnome; For the Horde - Orc, Troll, Tauren, and Undead . There were also nine classes - Warrior, Mage, Druid, Priest, Shaman, Hunter, Rogue, Paladin, and Warlock. Burning Crusade (patch 2.0) added two races; Dranei for the Alliance and Blood Elves for the Horde. Adding Blood Elves to the Horde also gave that faction a race that could play the Paladin class for the first time.  Wrath of the Lich King (patch 3.0) added a new class; the Death Knight.

Cataclysm (patch 4.0) added two new races to the game - for the Alliance, the Worgen and for the Horde, Goblins. These races, most notably Goblins, had always been present, just not as a playable race. This expansion also added several new options for Race-Class combinations, such as Paladin as an option for the Taurens, giving the Horde two races who could play that class instead of just one, and compared the the three races within the Alliance that could be Paladins. There are several other new combinations as well with classes being added as options for races that previously were not possible.

(http://www.wowwiki.com/World_of_Warcraft:_Cataclysm#Race_and_class_changes)

Mists of Pandaria (patch 5.0), which I have not purchased a license for yet,3 adds a new playable race, Pandaren, as well as a new class, Monk. Yeah, I know - apparently the folks at Blizzard watched a lot of “Kung Fu Panda” while working on ideas for the fourth expansion.

New Zones, Rearranged Zones, and Flying Around in All of It:

A few months after Cataclysm had come out, and roughly a year after I had quit playing, I was offered ten days of free game time as an enticement. I took the ten free days because I wanted to see what had changed about the zones. Ten days wasn’t nearly enough time to explore all of it, though. But the new ability to use flying mounts almost everywhere certainly makes it a bit easier.

First of all, flying mounts were previously only usable in Outland, which was introduced in patch 2.0 Burning Crusade (which also introduced flying mounts to begin with) and Northrend (patch 3.0 Wrath of the Lich King) once the Cold Weather Flying skill was purchased. Now, though, flying is available anywhere, even in the classic zones, once the character has purchased the skill called Flight Master’s License (a mere 250 gold).4  Getting the Flight Master’s License is, without a doubt, a necessity to be able to quest and explore for higher level characters.

There are, frankly, too many changes here for me to try to go into all of them, especially since I have had the time to explore it all yet. Some of the more notable (to me) changes are Orgrimmar, the capital city of the Orcs and the Barrens. Orgrimmar looks completely different now and is multi-tiered with lifts to get to the upper tier. There’s been new construction under the new Warchief as well. The city is actually larger now, and I mentioned before, I get lost in it, but I’m learning my way around. The Barrens has been split into two zones, Northern Barrens and Southern Barrens, instead of just one huge zone. I’m pretty sure that prior to the Cataclysm, it was the largest zone in the game. I hated questing in the Barrens, just because of the sheer size of it, and at levels that were too low to be able to get the riding skill and a mount. Now that it’s been split in two, with the Northern Barrens being a lower level zone and Southern Barrens being a mid-level zone, it’s not quite as bad and questing in that zone from levels 10-20 gets completed a lot faster. For more information, check out the WoWWiki Cataclysm page.

Other Stuff of Note:

There are lots of other things that have changed that I am continuing to discover, but to be honest, this blog post would begin getting out of hand (or turn into a two or three part blog over the next few weeks) if I started trying to detail every little thing. There are new guild recruiting and search tools, certain things, like mounts, etc. that were previously “soulbound” to a character are now account bound and useable by any character. Flight points, which previously had to be discovered, are now automatically added as a character levels up so they know them for the zones that are level appropriate to them. Patch 5.04 added something called “Pet Battles” wherein companion, non-combat, pets that were obtained more to get an achievement for collecting them, can now be trained for do battle (albeit, only with other battle pets). Gathering professions such as skinning and herbalism no grant experience points. Speaking of experience points, the experience gains from from quests and combat seem to have been dramatically increased (at least at lower levels). Drop rates have improved - I refer here most notably to the previously mentioned zone, the Barrens, where you’d have to kill four or five beasts to get the one hoof or horn or whatever the fuck the quest called for. Now it’s more like kill two to get one (much much better than before). Archeology was added as another secondary skill - the previous list of secondary skills was First Aid, Cooking and Fishing.

I’ve only been back in the game for a couple of weeks, and I haven’t even bought the most recent expansion yet, so I’m sure I’ll uncover more fun new stuff that wasn’t there before. But for now, I’m just enjoying the adventure.

~ JC

Footnotes:

1. By “Azeroth proper” I mean the original zones located on the continents of Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor. Flying mounts were introduced in the first expansion, Burning Crusade, and were only usable in the area known as “Outland”. They were also allowed in the area “Northrend” which was introduced in the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Cataclysm allowed Blizzard to completely revamp and rewrite the code for the original areas making flying mounts possible there.

2. Previously the only Horde race that could choose Paladin were Blood Elves (compared to Human, Dwarf and Dranei for the Alliance).

3. In other words, while I have access to most of the new content, purchasing a license for the most recent expansion would allow me full access to play a Pandaren or a Monk as well as new dungeon and raid content.

4. I could go into a whole rant about how certain things in the game are obviously designed to be a huge gold sink while other things have been extremely reduced in price since I first started playing, but I won’t. Suffice it to say that I really wish Blizzard would make up their mind about how much the riding skills will cost in terms of in-game currency because it still seems unbalanced to me. I mean, really - 5,000 gold to learn fast flying and another 5,000 for very fast flying - Why?

The Last (?) Temptation of Uhnk

A few weeks ago Blizzard Entertainment released its most recent expansion to World of Warcraft titled Mists of Pandaria. When last I played WoW, Cataclysm was in the works and about a year away from release. The last time I actually logged into my WoW account via the game client was right after Cataclysm was released, and that was only because Blizzard gave me a free 10-day trial and I decided to check out all of the heralded zone changes in that expansion. Ok, and so I could try my hand at playing a Goblin since that was one of the two new races (would’ve tried Worgen too, but I don’t like to play Alliance toons).

Now that Blizzard has released another expansion, one featuring the first ever neutral, playable race (Pandaren) and a new class (Monk), I’ll admit it; I am a bit intrigued, and even a bit tempted to take Uhnk1 out of digital mothballs (otherwise known as archive) and start playing again. And so now, I have to go into the pros and cons and convince myself, once again, why this could be a bad idea.

Pros

1. It was fun - hell, it’s a game; games are fun. It was something to do in the evenings and on weekends and I enjoyed it.
2. Guildmates - I developed several online friendships playing WoW, some of which I still maintain via Facebook.
3. Being able to take out frustrations - we all have crappy days and seeing as how actually choking or stabbing someone would land you in prison, playing a game like WoW and engaging in virtual combat was a way to let off steam and reduce stress.
4. Boredom - let’s be honest here. I really don’t watch that much television anymore. Except for a couple of nights out of the week, there’s not that much on that interests me. The other nights, I end up mindlessly surfing the internet with the TV being really nothing but background noise. I have, frankly, considered starting up WoW again (or some other game) just to have something to do in the evenings.

Cons

1. Cost - there’s the monthly fee for starters ($14.99/month), which I was able to save a little bit on by buying six month’s worth of game time for $77.94 (which breaks down to $12.99/month) when I actively played. Then there’s the fact that I am now two expansions behind, so if I want to actually level up my toon(s) past level 80 I would have to buy both at $39.99 each (maybe not at the same time, but still - that’s an $80 layout of funds that are needed for things like, you know, bills and groceries). Then there’s the fact that I still have an old character on a different server than what had become my primary server. While it appears that Blizzard no longer charges to move a toon, they do charge for a faction change, and I would need to do that since my first toon was Alliance and Uhnk is Horde.
2. Time - I lost so much free time to playing this game that at one point it took me a year to read a book by my (at the time) favorite author. Now that I don’t play games like this anymore, I actually get through a book in a week or two (or four plus if it’s written by George R.R. Martin). Then there’s also the fact that I now live in Atlanta, where there’s almost always something to do (plays, festivals, sporting events, etc.).
3. “The Grind” - all MMORPGs share this problem. Quest, level up, rinse, repeat. And then, once you reach the maximum level, all that’s left is “daily quests” for reputation, tokens, gold, gear, or whatever. If you’re lucky enough to be in a good Guild, there are raids, but sometimes getting a group of 10-20 together to raid is like trying to herd kittens. After awhile, it just becomes repetitive and almost starts to feel like it’s your second job instead of a hobby or pastime.
4. The In-Game Economy - this could be considered part of “The Grind”. As you gain levels, you gain the chance to learn new abilities, but these aren’t free. You have to pay your trainer in virtual gold. This leads to another kind of grind for currency in addition to levels. You have to get your gear repaired, buy a mount, etc. So, you end up selling stuff in the Auction House - but of course you have to go grind for the materials to sell in the auction house. See how this becomes a cycle and what I meant by the game becoming more like a second job?
5. The Guild - I know I already listed Guildmates as a pro, and the friendships I had with them were awesome. But, the problem with being in a guild is the constant feeling of letting down a bunch of people if you’re not logged on. That’s not to say that my ego made me think that the guild couldn’t function without me, but I know what it was like to try to fill raid spots when someone wasn’t logged on. The fact that my rogue was typically in the top 5 for DPS2 during raids and instances certainly made me feel needed and made me even feel a little guilty if I wasn’t online, especially on raid nights.
6. The Game has Changed... a lot - I’ve been reviewing the way talents are now calculated in version 5.x.x, and at this point, it appears that I would essentially have to completely re-learn how to play my characters, not to mention retrain and redo their specializations (aka “respec”). For that matter, the Cataclysm expansion changed the zones around so much, that I’d probably get lost pretty quickly.

What about the freebies or just another MMORPG instead? There are free to play MMORPGs out there. In fact, I recently discovered that even WoW has a free-to-play version now (limited to level 20) and it seems as though all of the subscription ones I knew of have all gone to some kind of free version which allow you to pay for extras if you want. I’ve played a couple of the free ones when I was weaning myself off of WoW3; the idea being that I could get my gaming fix while not feeling quite as obligated to play since I didn’t feel like I was losing money by not playing and I didn’t have a bunch of guildmates waiting on me to log on. They were ok, but as the saying goes, you get what you pay for. The free-to-play games and/or versions of game tend to be very limited, which leads to either it becoming really boring really fast, or being enticed into going ahead and subscribing or buying things from the game’s online store.

So, there you go. There are days that I wish I still played WoW, or at least something like it (like rainy weekend days or nights when there’s nothing on TV of interest to me, for example). But, there are plenty of other things to do (reading, building and painting models, movies, and most importantly, spending time with my fiancée) that it makes the thought of journeying into Azeroth again questionable. Then again, the more I read about the changes, the more intrigued I become. ;-)

Oh, who the fuck am I trying to kid. Yesterday I downloaded and installed the game client4 and plan on trying to get at least 30 days of game time within the next week, possibly even today. As for the expansions - we’ll see if I still like it enough to actually go that far after I’ve spent a few days playing it again. Hell, somehow I even managed to have never deleted the folder that had all my saved addon data from the last time I played it, so I’m not even going to have to do all that much to get everything set up the way I remember it. Truth is, I’ve also already been checking online, including Ebay, for good pricing on the expansion packs.

~ JC

Footnotes:

1. The name “Uhnk” exists for multiple characters across the various WoW servers (http://us.battle.net/wow/en/search?f=wowcharacter&q=Uhnk). I would, however, like to go on record that I have used that name since I was 13 for one of my all time favorite D&D characters and two WoW characters; an Orc Warrior on Shadowsong (deleted) and an Orc Rogue on Blood Furnace (level 80 and archived). It’s also one of the online handles I have used for several years. Case in point, my twitter name is Uhnk13.

2. DPS = Damage Per Second - a measure of the damage dealt by a person or group over one second. DPS is a more practical measure of damage output than plain damage, as it allows characters of differing levels and classes to effectively compare their damage output. (http://www.wowwiki.com/Damage_per_second)

3. Most notably, I played D&D Online, briefly, and Runes of Magic. I recently tried to log into my RoM account, but it’s been so long it’s already been deleted. Interestingly, my DDO account is still active, my characters are just archived like my WoW characters. I wrote a couple of blogs about these two games if you’re interested:

“D&D Online - 1st Impressions” - Sunday, November 1, 2009

“WoW, I Really Like RoM” - Sunday, April 25, 2010

More recently, I tried a browser based game called Drakensang, but found it very very lacking (didn’t even play it enough to warrant a blog post about it). Thanks in part to some recent blog postings of my old college buddy, Sam, I’ve even considered Star Trek Online.

4. I will say this - it took close to 14 fucking hours to fully download the 20ish GB of content. That did not endear Blizzard to me at all. Then again, if I had not uninstalled the game from the last time I had free trial time, then I probably wouldn’t have had to go through that.

WoW, I Really Like RoM

Anyone who has ever read my blog knows that, at one time, I was quite obsessed with playing World of Warcraft. I played it daily, for hours at a time for just shy of a year and half. This past January I finally got bored with it and broke my WoW addiction. I found myself months later, kind of jonesing for a MMO fix, but really not wanting to shell out the $15 per month fee to start my WoW account back up. I just wanted to play a couple of nights a week, not get sucked back into the pecking order for raids and heroic dungeons. So, I started searching the internet for free-to-play Massively Multiplayer Online games. My thinking was, if it is free-to-play, then I won't care so much if I don't get to play every day. I mean, part of my WoW addiction was fueled by the thought that I was paying $15 per month (and I usually paid in six month blocks), so I needed to play as much as possible to get my money's worth. Shortly before quitting WoW, I had dabbled a bit in Dungeons & Dragons Online, which had become free-to-play. I really didn't care very much for DDO, mainly because of the leveling limitations for free-to-play subscribers (the level cap was only 4 unless you paid real money to increase it). So, I began searching and found hundreds of free-to-play MMOs, most of which really didn't appeal to me because I've never particularly been a fan of Manga style artwork. One day, while reading one of my favorite webcomics I spotted a banner ad for a game called Runes of Magic, so I clicked the ad. The game looked fairly promsiing, and the most like WoW I had come across, so I decided to give it a try. I have now been playing RoM for a couple of weeks, and while I'll admit that I'm still learning the finer points of certain aspects, I really like it; in fact, I think I like it a bit more than I did WoW. So, here is my somewhat limited comparison of WoW vs. RoM and what I think each does better or worse than the other.

Similarities & Differences

First of all, let me just say that all MMOs have the same basic concept, that being rolling (1) a character and the leveling that character via questing and fighting monsters and other “bad guys”. In this aspect, RoM is no different than WoW. First level characters begin in a “starting zone” where they can accept a battery of quests that will get them to roughly level 10 before being given a final quest that usually involves taking a message to someone in a village or city near by that has another battery of quests available that will take the character to probably around level 20, and so on and so forth until the character reaches the highest level the game offers (called the “level cap”). For example, the current level cap for WoW while RoM's level cap was recently increased to 60 (it had previously been 55).

Many MMOs also allow the character to learn “secondary skills” or “professions” such as blacksmithing or tailoring, to name only two. RoM is no different from WoW in that it offers this aspect, but it differs greatly in that it allows a character to learn all of the various gathering and crafting skills, while WoW limits the character to only two professions (2). By allowing players to learn all of the gathering and crafting skills, RoM allows them to experiment with each before making the decision of which one to gain levels in beyond apprentice.(3)

Like WoW (and pretty much any other MMO), RoM does have Guilds. Guilds are basically groups of players that have banded together for mutual assistance. This assistance can take many forms, from sharing materials from the gathering skills to helping each other with quests, having a ready made group for doing dungeons that require five or more characters to survive, etc. What differs here is that RoM handles guilds more like Guild Wars with the entire guild having a level as group, being able to build a guild castle and being able to enter player-vs-player combat via guild castle sieges. This isn't really my cup of tea, to be honest, so I'm not going to lie to you – I've not researched this at all. I could be totally wrong in my comparison to Guild Wars. I played WoW on a PvP server, which was kind of fun, but I'm really not into the PvP thing anymore. So, you're just going to have to do some Googling on your own for how guilds and guild sieges work in RoM. Sorry.

Where RoM really stands out from WoW, in my opinion, is in item enhancements. Just like in WoW, as a character advances in RoM, he/she is able to equip better and better gear, and also has the chance to enhance that gear through other means. In WoW, item enhancement is done through either enchantments (which requires the abilities of someone who has taken the enchanting profession) or through attaching gems to equipment that has gem slots (but this typically isn't available until level 60 or above). In RoM, items that have rune slots can be enhanced using runes; the nice thing here is, even as low as level 5 I was able to begin finding gear with rune slots and runes to use in those slots. RoM also has other means of equipment enhancement, most notably the Arcane Transmutor, which allows the combining of several runes' statistic bonuses into a single stone. This is available to all characters beginning at level 10. I have to admit, I have yet to use the Transmutor as I'm still trying to figure out how to do so (if RoM fails anywhere, it is in a lack of online guides/documentation to assist new players with figuring out some of the finer points of the game like the Arcane Transmutor). Even though I'm still iffy on how to use this feature in RoM, I still love that it makes the game seem less like a “gear grind”; in WoW it seemed like that's all I ever did was constantly try to find new gear with better stats, and in fact there were add-ons for WoW to determine characters' “gear score” which could affect whether or not you got invited to participate in certain dungeons and raids since only those with the “best” gear had a chance of being successful.

Another aspect of RoM I like over WoW is the ability to use a mount as early as level 1! In WoW, characters are not able to utilize mounts until level 20 (when I first began playing, it was level 30). At level 20, a WoW character has to find a riding trainer, spend gold to learn how to ride, then spend more gold on the mount itself. At higher levels (level 40 I think) the WoW character can learn to ride faster mounts, and eventually even learn to ride flying mounts – but all of these abilities require large amounts of gold (the game's currency) to learn. In RoM, no training is required to ride a mount, you just have to pay the gold to rent the mount. Yes, I said “rent.” That's the one thing about RoM I don't like is that mounts are only rent-able with gold usually for either 15 minutes or 2 hours at a time. There are ways to get mounts that last 7 days, 30 days, or are permanent, but those require the expenditure of RoM's other currency, diamonds. Diamonds are obtained by spending real money (I'll have more to say on that in the pros & cons section).

Pros & Cons

• RoM doesn't have nearly as much supporting documentation for new players as WoW did/does – lack of fan sites that help in this area as well. I have found two different Wikis for RoM, but wikis tend to have a lot of missing or inaccurate information. WoW, on the other hand has hundreds and hundreds of fansites and guides available just a Google away. Advantage = WoW.
• RoM has a free client via download and is free-to-play unlimited. WoW costs $20 (WoW) + $30 (Burning Crusade expansion) + $40 (Wrath of the Lich King) + $15/month subscription fee. Advantage = RoM
• RoM, however, can cost real money, and a lot of it if you're not careful, via gift a card system to buy in game diamonds to be able to purchase special items such as mounts, house furniture, gear enhancements, etc. I still think RoM has an advantage over WoW here though. Most free-to-play MMOs have some type of mini-store system like this. It costs money for them to keep those game servers up and running, and they have to generate that revenue somehow. I mean, hell, look at how many people have gone into real world debt buying crap for Farmville on Facebook for crying out loud. The thing to look for in obtaining RoM diamonds is special offers. For example, last week (April 16-18, 2010), a special promotion was run to give 100% extra diamonds – in short, my $25 gift card that normally would have been worth 600 diamonds, netting me 1200 diamonds. Plus, there are companies that have partnered with RoM to give away free diamonds for doing online surveys or trying their products. So, while it seems scam-ish at first, it's actually not a bad system overall. Just be careful and don't go overboard, else you'd be better off paying that $15 a month to play WoW again. Advantage = neutral.
• Multi-classing – WoW does not offer multi-classing at all. If you roll a Rogue, then you are a Rogue, period. In RoM, beginning at level 10, a player can multi-class his/her character. Did you roll a Knight, but wish you had access to a Priest's healing spells? No problem, just go to a Priest trainer after you've reached level 10 (or higher) and you can become a level 1 priest, without having to lose you levels in Knight and without having to completely re-roll an entirely new character. While it is true that other MMOs (D&D Online for example) offer multi-classing, I like the way RoM does it better. I like that I can have a character that is Level 60 in both of his classes, as opposed to say, Level 19/Level 1 or some other odd combination (using D&D as an example here – character levl cap is 20 and each time you level you have to decide which class to increase. RoM on the other hand allows to flip-flop which class is primary or secondary so you can level them separately from each other as though they are different characters).

Final Thoughts and Opinions

Ok, so this may not be a complete comparison, mainly because I've been playing RoM for only a couple of weeks versus the year and a half I played WoW. I'm still learning the game. There a lot of in game aspects in RoM that I like much better than in WoW. Basically, RoM's developers seem to have made it easier to level and get around and have included some tools in the base user interface that WoW players have historically had to go install third party add-ons to get.(4) All in all, RoM seems to do more right than wrong compared to WoW. The developers of Runes of Magic obviously did their homework in terms of paying attention to what MMO gamers liked and disliked about various MMOs like World of Warcraft, Everquest and Guild Wars, and tried to incorporate as much as they could of the most popular aspects of those games. The free-to-play aspect makes it much easier to not feel like I have to play everyday. The quick leveling and multi-class system make me want to play often because it keeps the game interesting and moving forward; I don't feel as stuck in one zone or quest chain as much as I did in WoW. The portal ability helps with this as well – bascially, when you learn your secondary class, you are taught two transport spells so that you can go back to one of the starting zones to begin leveling your new class. Being able to transport across the map like that makes it less monotonous when questing because I can easily jump from one side of the world to the other if I'm getting bored with the zone I'm questing in.

No MMO is perfect. RoM has a lot of growing room (how about some flying mounts, eh!) but seems to be trucking along much faster than most MMOs in terms of new content (the game launched March 2009, relased its second expansion September 2009 and its third expansion is due out in May 2010, and in fact is already beginning to be introduced in patches(5)). In short, if I'm going to continue to play an MMO, I'm pretty sure that it's going to be very difficult for anyone to convince me to start paying for WoW again, when RoM is such a superb MMO and is free-to-play. Most free-to-play MMOs look like their free-to-play. RoM looks professional and clean, it plays well and I've actually had less issues with server lag than I ever did playing WoW. Considering that RoM boasts a subscriber base of over 2 million (announced a mere six months after its initial release), I'd say it's a safe bet that it will be around for pretty good while.

Recommended Reading & Resources for Runes of Magic

• “Top Six Reasons to Play Runes of Magic” – http://www.tentonhammer.com/node/68765
• The Runes of Magic Wiki - http://rom.wikia.com/wiki/Runes_of_Magic_Wiki
• Runes of Magic Wiki - http://www.theromwiki.com/Main_Page (this one is the better of the two wikis in my opinion)
• Runes of Magic Wikipedia Article (for a quick overview of the game) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runes_of_magic
• Runes of Magic Official Homepage (U.S.) - http://us.runesofmagic.com/us/index.html
• For Wow Resources, just use Google; there are tons of sites for it, so I'm not about to try to start listing them all here. - http://www.google.com/search?rlz=1C1CHFX_enUS373US373&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=World+of+Warcraft

End Notes

1. The term “roll a new toon” or “roll a(n) [insert character class]” refers to creating a new character. If I'm not mistaken, referring to it as “rolling” is a nod to tabletop role playing games, such as Dungeons & Dragons or Palladium Fantasy RPG, which requires the rolling of dice to determine a character's beginning abilities and health at level 1. In an MMO, these statistics are pre-determined based on the race and class chosen by the player and increase as the character gains additional levels beyond the first. “Toon” is a slang term for an MMO character due to most MMO graphics having a cartoonish look; toon, being short for cartoon.
2. WoW has three gathering professions (mining, herbalism and skinning) and six crafting professions (blacksmithing, alchemy, leatherworking, tailoring, enchanting and engineering). Since WoW limits characters to only two professions, most players choose one crafting profession and one of the gathering professions that most compliments their creation skill (e.g., a blacksmith would need mining to gather ore). The other option is to select two gathering skills and sell all the materials (“mats”) one gathers to other players either directly or through the Auction House. There are also three secondary skills that all characters can learn in addition to their two professions; they are first aid, cooking and fishing.
3. The gathering professions in RoM are woodcutting, herbalism, and mining. The crafting professions are blacksmithing, armor crafting, weapon crafting, alchemy, carpentry, cooking and tailoring. Like WoW, you need the gathering skills to get the materials for the crafting skills, but unlike WoW, characters can learn all of these if they so choose, but they can only master one. Go to http://rom.wikia.com/wiki/Professions for more information about how RoM professions are leveled.
4. Some examples include, a quest log and tracking similar to the WoW add-on “Quest Helper”, transport portals in major cities to make it faster to get from one side of the city to the other quickly, an auto-run feature that allows a player to click on a name or item in the quest log and begin automatically running towards it and I'm sure there are other things I'll uncover as I play more.
5. When MMOs need to fix bugs or add new content, those changes are downloaded when the game client is started. This is called “patching” and is usually a very small download that introduces new content in stages until the full expansion is released.