Exclusive Runes of Magic Beta Interview

[Cody Bye]

The free-to-play marketplace has really emerged out of its cocoon in the last year. For those of you that have been reading Ten Ton Hammer’s F2P Top Ten List, this becomes readily apparent as the majority of the games on that list were released in late 2007, 2008, or are slated for the early part of 2009. One of the most prominent of these games (and holding the #1 spot on our Top Ten list) is Runes of Magic. We recently had an opportunity to submit a number of questions to the RoM developers, and we graciously jumped at the chance.

The goal of this interview was to get Frogster’s reaction to some of the open beta feedback for Runes of Magic. Ten Ton Hammer’s Danny “Ralsu” Gourley bounced around the game’s official forums and snatched up any topics or questions that he thought would be interesting to present to the developers. We’ve taken the time to link every thread that Danny pulled questions from, and Frogster’s director of product management, Daniel Ulrich, has graciously taken time to answer each of the community’s questions.

Ten Ton Hammer: letsgo1818 notes that a lot of players are having a hard time managing inventory with the large number of different items they collect. Players get gear drops, runes for craft, runes for enhancing gear, quest items, daily quest items, and harvesting items. We know it will be possible to rent extra inventory from the item mall at a very fair rate, but some players have asked for a specific bag for quest items. How likely is that to happen, and why or why not?

Daniel Ullrich: That is a pretty nice idea. We’ve already thought about more possible ways to arrange the inventory. We really believe that there should be enough space in your bag, bank and chest to store a lot of equipment. So we will definitely bring in more options to arrange equipment but please remember that you have access to a bag with 30 slots, a bank box with 40 slots and you receive a chest with 20 slots. You can access your bank box in every big town and you can enter your house at the appropriate NPC. From my personal experience, it’s not easy to have everything arranged in one bag, but it’s possible to organize your items with some planning.

You can read the entire exclusive Runes of Magic interview by clicking here!

[Acidbaron]

People who like WoW but don't like to pay monthly this game is for them, it even goes a bit further on the crafting side also by adding housing and their greater focus on a community based game can actually benefit them.

Good to see while it is already a game that can be launched they still list it under 'beta' and continue to take their time.

I think other F2P top doggs like Runescape are going to perhaps have a problem once this is launched.

[Cody Bye]

I think Runescape will probably be okay simply because you can play it on that 12 year old machine that still boasts GEOS. That said, I think Runes of Magic will definitely compete with games like Maplestory and Knight Online for the top place in the F2P market.