Runes-of-Magic posts

Each week we find more and more free games that do not quite fit into the freeware mold. Games that do not require a subscription fee to play, but encourage player usage of money through microtransactions or special subscription services. This is Playing For Free, a column that showcases these games.

World of Warcraft is the most popular MMO on the market for a reason. It combines a healthy dose of action with the standard grind of RPGs to make for a truly addictive experience that almost all other MMOs are judged by. Is this judgement fair? Certainly not. However, it's hard not to judge a game like Runes of Magic by World of Warcraft's standards, given that Runes of Magic is basically the same game, just with a fresh coat of paint and some new features. It's a blast to play, and if you don't want to shill out the money for a World of Warcraft subscription, it might be your bag of tea.

It's just a few more days until Christmas but the folks at Frogster and their new subsidiary Frogster America have now given MMO fans an early present; the launch of the open beta test for Runes of Magic, their new free-to-play fantasy MMO (the game's web site even has a Christmas theme now).

As we reported last week, Frogster America was created in part to serve as the US base for Runes of Magic which is being developed by Taiwan-based Runewaker Entertainment. The game has a number of US based servers as well as its own forum for players to discuss the game. The game itself features six character classes to choose from and its dual-class system allows players to pick a secondary class when they reach level 10 in the game for a total of 36 possible combinations.