Some people in Runes of Magic have been getting frequent crashes ever since the patch a few weeks ago. I would get crashes once in a while, usually when teleporting or leaving my house.
Runes of Magic just posted an explanation of the problem and said they are working on it.
I think it is great to see them communicating to the players in a pretty open and honest way about what is going on. Some players were raging about the crashes. Hopefully knowing that the development team has identified the problem and is working on the solution will help calm everybody down.
Showing posts with label Runes of Magic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Runes of Magic. Show all posts
Friday, August 14, 2009
Thursday, August 13, 2009
What Does Runes of Magic Cost?
This is a post I hadn't planned on making so soon, but after reading this post over at MMOCrunch.com it has been moved up my priority list. iTZKooPA attempts to calcuate the cost of playing and fully equiping a single character in Runes of Magic. He arrives at about the right answer, but for the wrong reasons when it comes to how much Runes of Magic will cost in the end-game.
The bulk of the cost as calculated by him comes from purchasing rune slot drillers. While it would be nice have have each piece of gear maxed out on runes, that definitely isn't going to be the priority upgrade for high level Runes of Magic players. Fitting your armor with runes is nice, but only after you have maximized your armor's stats in every other way you would find yourself turning to runes slots.
What iTZKooPA doesn't know about is that armor (and jewelry and weapons) can be fitted with up to six stats per piece of gear. There are several methods for doing this which I will go into in a later post, but for now it will have to suffice to say that creating the most powerful piece of gear possible is going to basically cost you six Pure Fusion Stones. These can be purchased for 55 diamonds a piece. At $0.033 per diamond that comes to $10.89 per piece of gear. Let's assume you eventually do this to all five jewelry slots, 8 armor slots, and for one weapon. That comes out to $152.46 to fully deck out your character.
How much have I payed for Runes of Magic? Soon after the game first launched I purchased a small amount of diamonds for $25 just to get my feet wet. I immediately wasted these diamonds on foolishly renting bag space and renting mounts. I even think I bought some experience potions and daily quest reset tickets. Any player will now know that these are extravagances that just aren't necessary. I then went four or five months without purchasing anything for diamonds.
I almost felt bad for the developers since I was getting away with playing their game and enjoying it so much, and all it had cost me up to that point was a measly $25. So recently I decided to load up on 3,000 diamonds for $100. About 1000 of those diamonds are now gone. In six months I have paid Frogster $125 which comes out to about $21 a month. But, like I said I still have 2000 diamonds left. So actually I have only "spent" around $60 in six months.
I know there are players who have spent several times this amount and I know there are players with level 50 characters who have not given Frogster a dime. So in the end, the beauty of Runes of Magic is that you can spend however much you want. You can be perfectly competitive by spending as little as $10 a month or you can be that incredible Mage walking around with 11,000 hit points.
The bulk of the cost as calculated by him comes from purchasing rune slot drillers. While it would be nice have have each piece of gear maxed out on runes, that definitely isn't going to be the priority upgrade for high level Runes of Magic players. Fitting your armor with runes is nice, but only after you have maximized your armor's stats in every other way you would find yourself turning to runes slots.
What iTZKooPA doesn't know about is that armor (and jewelry and weapons) can be fitted with up to six stats per piece of gear. There are several methods for doing this which I will go into in a later post, but for now it will have to suffice to say that creating the most powerful piece of gear possible is going to basically cost you six Pure Fusion Stones. These can be purchased for 55 diamonds a piece. At $0.033 per diamond that comes to $10.89 per piece of gear. Let's assume you eventually do this to all five jewelry slots, 8 armor slots, and for one weapon. That comes out to $152.46 to fully deck out your character.
How much have I payed for Runes of Magic? Soon after the game first launched I purchased a small amount of diamonds for $25 just to get my feet wet. I immediately wasted these diamonds on foolishly renting bag space and renting mounts. I even think I bought some experience potions and daily quest reset tickets. Any player will now know that these are extravagances that just aren't necessary. I then went four or five months without purchasing anything for diamonds.
I almost felt bad for the developers since I was getting away with playing their game and enjoying it so much, and all it had cost me up to that point was a measly $25. So recently I decided to load up on 3,000 diamonds for $100. About 1000 of those diamonds are now gone. In six months I have paid Frogster $125 which comes out to about $21 a month. But, like I said I still have 2000 diamonds left. So actually I have only "spent" around $60 in six months.
I know there are players who have spent several times this amount and I know there are players with level 50 characters who have not given Frogster a dime. So in the end, the beauty of Runes of Magic is that you can spend however much you want. You can be perfectly competitive by spending as little as $10 a month or you can be that incredible Mage walking around with 11,000 hit points.
Microtransactions vs. Subscription
"I would never pay a subscription fee for a computer game."
This is a statement that a friend of mine recently made. In my little bubble it seems like he is living in the stone age, but this is an attitude that definitely still exists. It is strange to think about, but for most gamers, even in the era of WoW, paying a subscription fee is still a foreign and strange idea.
A recent Massively Speaking podcast (I'm sorry, I can't find the exact show) reminded me that every gamer at some point has made a statement like my friend recently did. I know about 10 years ago I probably thought the same thing as my friend.
Now business models are changing again and people in the MMO community are saying stuff like, "I would never pay $10 for a horse."
Five years ago, I might have said the same thing.
Never-the-less, even though RoM is free to download, free to play, and even purchasing a permanent mount is far from a necessity (you can rent mounts that last an entire play session for an extremely small amount of in-game gold) some people are going to resist the business model. This is a hurdle developers will have get over. I feel that F2P games have an advantage over subscription games in this area because they generally allow the play to play for free for as long as they want. Players can try the game, see if they like it, and slowly ease into spending money if they decide they want to invest in this game.
Most subscription games offer a 10 to 14 day free trial, but getting that player to actually commit to a subscription after two weeks is much harder that getting a player of a F2P game to say, "You know, I've been playing for a couple of weeks, and I'm going to be around for a while...it would be nice to have that really cool mount."
This is a statement that a friend of mine recently made. In my little bubble it seems like he is living in the stone age, but this is an attitude that definitely still exists. It is strange to think about, but for most gamers, even in the era of WoW, paying a subscription fee is still a foreign and strange idea.
A recent Massively Speaking podcast (I'm sorry, I can't find the exact show) reminded me that every gamer at some point has made a statement like my friend recently did. I know about 10 years ago I probably thought the same thing as my friend.
Now business models are changing again and people in the MMO community are saying stuff like, "I would never pay $10 for a horse."
Five years ago, I might have said the same thing.
Never-the-less, even though RoM is free to download, free to play, and even purchasing a permanent mount is far from a necessity (you can rent mounts that last an entire play session for an extremely small amount of in-game gold) some people are going to resist the business model. This is a hurdle developers will have get over. I feel that F2P games have an advantage over subscription games in this area because they generally allow the play to play for free for as long as they want. Players can try the game, see if they like it, and slowly ease into spending money if they decide they want to invest in this game.
Most subscription games offer a 10 to 14 day free trial, but getting that player to actually commit to a subscription after two weeks is much harder that getting a player of a F2P game to say, "You know, I've been playing for a couple of weeks, and I'm going to be around for a while...it would be nice to have that really cool mount."
Shadowmoon Cove
The pirates of Shadowmoon Cove are short, ugly and mean. The banished sailors are rogues who will poison you, and they will shadow step, instantly appearing behind you so they can avoid your attacks and stab you in the back. The wretched sailors are mages. They will attempt to cast a massive fireball if you give them enough time.
I remember when the poison hurt me badly, and those flames were devastating if I didn't silence the caster. These days I don't worry about them much. My armor is a bit better, and my arrows hit a lot harder than they did when I first discovered this sandy island off the shores of Ravenfell. I usually shrug off the poison, and I can kill those casters before they unleash their magic.
Everyday I return here to collect the things these pirates steal. They are in hot demand by the residents of the Abandoned Fortress. I am also hoping to find some high durability jewelry than can be made into a powerful item.
I remember when the poison hurt me badly, and those flames were devastating if I didn't silence the caster. These days I don't worry about them much. My armor is a bit better, and my arrows hit a lot harder than they did when I first discovered this sandy island off the shores of Ravenfell. I usually shrug off the poison, and I can kill those casters before they unleash their magic.
Everyday I return here to collect the things these pirates steal. They are in hot demand by the residents of the Abandoned Fortress. I am also hoping to find some high durability jewelry than can be made into a powerful item.
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