Common Sense Media Review
By Carolyn Koh
,
based on child development research. How do we rate?
Open chat and deep fantasy gameplay in free-to-play MMO.
Parents Need to Know
Why Age 14+?
Any Positive Content?
Where to Play
What's It About?
When entering the massively multiplayer online game of RUNES OF MAGIC, players select one of six classes, Warrior, Rogue, Scout (your bow-user), Mage, Priest, or Knight and then set off on an adventure in the world of Taborea. This world has a deep backstory, which unravels as you accept quests in villages and cities to learn various crafting skills such as Tailoring, Gathering, Woodworking, and Armorcrafting, or simply to help out or protect the denizens of the cities.
Combat is an integral part of the game and is the way you gain experience and level up your character to make him or her more powerful. Although your crafting ranking is separate from your adventure ranking, in order to harvest raw materials for crafting, the player is obliged to venture into more and more dangerous lands so making yourself a more powerful adventurer becomes important.
Is It Any Good?
Runes of Magic has deep game systems with enough features to warrant a comparison to any of the most popular MMOG currently out in the market. With its dual class system (the crafting ranking and the adventurer ranking), player housing, harvesting, crafting auction houses, and guild systems, there is a lot to explore within this game. The developers name Ultima Online, EverQuest and World of Warcraft as their inspiration and it shows in the familiarity of those game systems within this game.
The land area is vast, quests are plentiful, and the graphics are detailed and beautiful. In terms of grandeur, depth and sophistication, it comes close to the multi-million dollar backed paid subscription games, lacking only some of the ambiance and immersion as the sound and music is not as polished. Currently, only humans are playable, but like any MMOGs, content is released frequently and Elves are the next promised player race.
Talk to Your Kids About ...
Families can talk about online safety and etiquette with their teenagers, especially if they like to participate in the Player versus Player (PvP) games such as dueling and arena battles. Why should you not give out personal information over the Internet? How do you know that the person behind the game avatar is who they say they are? What effect can online anonymity have on a person's behavior? Should you behave differently when you beat someone online than when you win a game in the playground?
Game Details
- Platform : Windows
- Pricing structure : Free
- Available online? : Available online
- Publisher : Frogster Interactive
- Release date : March 17, 2009
- Genre : Massively Multiplayer Online Game (MMOG)
- ESRB rating :
- Last updated : June 19, 2019
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