Friday, September 3, 2010

Level 30/30 Runes of Magic Update

I finally got around to finishing out level 30 on the Rogue side of my Runes of Magic character this week.  I'd hit level 30 on the Druid side a while back, but the Rogue is feeling increasingly squishy and content is increasingly hard to come by.  As far as I can tell, I've completed all of the soloable quests in the game that are at or below my level. 

I think that I might give up on trying to keep the Rogue side fully up to par going forward - I enjoy the Druid much more, and I can lean on daily quest turnins (farmed on the druid) to get experience for the Rogue side as needed to get useful skills at milestone levels (multiples of 5).

Can A Free Game Require Commitment?
I've got significantly more daily quest tokens than I need to purchase a 30-day rental mount, but I've been hesitating on the purchase for a while now.  I'm reluctant to commit to focusing on ROM as a primary game for the next 30 days, and I don't want to waste my tokens. 

Ironically, freedom from this kind of time pressure is precisely why I prefer not to be locked into a monthly fee in the first place, but almost everything in ROM's cash shop is a rental rather than an outright purchase.  From a business standpoint, I can see why they'd be reluctant to sell permanent unlocks.  Turbine and SOE are both clearly concerned about how to balance lucrative one-time unlock fees against letting players unlock everything to the point where they never need to subscribe again.  Still, I'd rather pay more over time in exchange for the flexibility not to have my purchases wasted if I'm splitting my time and attention between multiple games.

(I might just end up tossing the devs $5 at the next double diamond sale, allowing me to purchase the infamous $10 mount for half off so that I don't have to think about this sort of stuff.  I can then use the daily quest tokens to buy more storage chests for my house, which is a half-decent substitute for the expanded player inventory and bank spaces that can only be rented.) 
Halanna, the 30 Druid/30 Rogue, named for the city of Halas in EQ cause I don't make up my own character names anymore when there are so many good ones to steal out there.

3 comments:

  1. if you wait for a double diamond sale, and then also wait for a sale on mounts, you might get it for even less.

    i'm not sure of the specifics of how you're running out of content, but, I know how you feel.

    First of all i'll say most people in RoM don't even realize that sacillia steppes/dragonfang ridge *exist* let alone are there to level your secondary. unfortunately that ends around level 30 or so at the end of dragonfang.

    I guess its unreasonable to ask them to do that throughout the game, two sets of content just to level might be hard to do.

    Most people simply do the dailies on their primary and turn in their daily 10 on their secondary.

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  2. I think it's easy to get so absorbed in the Beat the Business Model minigame that you forget that it's only $5 and you do actually want to support them from time to time.

    I know I get very focused on clever ways to finesse the free elements and sometimes I have to think - ok, let's pay for something it's not "losing" the metagame.

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  3. I was in a similar mount dilemma late last year, when they launched this appeal: http://us.runesofmagic.com/us/charity.html

    So I bought one of the charity mounts, and as it happens, I haven't played RoM very much since then. But I don't feel like I wasted my money. :-)

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