In all honesty, I’ve been caught unawares by the latest task from my unrelenting task master (who doesn’t pay me…). You see, last year I got a copy of Guild Wars, which I enjoyed, and then forgot. Now, since I actually want to play it again, I both forget all my account details and lose the proof of purchase card. As a result I spent an hour looking for the bloody thing and all I found was a WW2 newspaper article, and my room looks like Megaton from Fallout 3 after detonating the bomb. (Only joking, at least there wasn’t any actual mess left in the game…)

Now, my task is to preview Runes of Magic. See the issue here? Having lost access to a non-subscription-based WoW clone with micropayments funding updates, that was pretty good, I need to evaluate a free, non-subscription-based WoW clone with micropayments etc. After a ridiculously long download of the client (although my Internet connection has all the joie de vivre of a paralytic on Death Row) I eventually managed to start the damn thing.

There was a fairly standard character creator at the beginning (very like Guild Wars and WoW) that is more detailed than either – giving plenty of options for your character. After that, there was a tutorial which explained the basic concepts of the game to me, and then I got thrust into the world. I got greeted by some crazy guide-woman who told me to go over to a town. What followed was extremely predictable: grind quests, fetch-and carry – the usual MMORPG shmuck. There were a few skills, which involved right-clicking trees/herbs/ore deposits to gather raw materials. Yes, it’s a grind game. Whoopee! I got a little house, which was cool, but then it turned out that to make it bigger I had to spend REAL MONEY, which was less so. I’d love to go into more detail than this, but unfortunately I managed to take out the press client via over-zealous use of the ‘delete’ button. However, I think that I learned all that I needed to – MMORPGS are fairly shallow, and the fun comes from playing with friends.

Overall, my impressions were that if you want a World of Warcraft-esque game, which you don’t have to pay for, it might be world giving Runes of Magic a go, but only if a bunch of mates wants to come along for the ride.