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Runes of Magic: Community Interview
SBFord
Former Associate EditorMember LegendaryPosts: 33,129
Runes of Magic and its community: MMORPG.com's Richard Aihoshi delves into Frogster's focus on this crucial if sometimes under-publicized aspect of the game experience with Community Manager Jon Virtes.
MMORPG.com: In overview, what's the Runes of Magic community like in terms of its composition and personality?
Jon Virtes: Since Runes of Magic is a successful and high-profile free to play game, it attracts an interesting combination of people. We have a lot trying it who may be completely new to MMORPGs, and also many veteran MMO players who have come here as refugees from other games for an assortment of reasons. By and large, that's a great mix because new players need the guidance of more experienced ones, and we see a great deal of communal help both in-game and in our forums.
Read the entire Jon Virtes interview.
Comments
The only community that ROM likes are people who do not say or do anything they do not like. It does not matter if you violate the TOS, it only matters that they do not like it.
Not only is that their forum policy but also their support ticket policy. I speak with experience,for I was banned for reporting being harassed by another player. You can read all about, see the evidence of how they treat their customers, by viewing actual email screenshots, if you like. The article is here.
There is no community in ROM, it is a dictatorship.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
i never got any help in-game OR in the forums. usually i got some stupid comment like "do you think it is?". Axewielderx is right, it's either do what what they want or be banned.
This interview is hilarious. I can't think of a bigger oxymoron than putting great and community in the same reference of ROM. It is about as absurd as military and intelligence.
I played RoM for a little while and actually found the community rather warm. People grouped with me for all sorts of quests, both my level and visiting high levels. I found a friendly guild to play with. The people were quite nice. Now if only the game wasn't so shoddy and dull.
Important facts:
1. Free to Play games are poorly made.
2. Casuals are not all idiots, but idiots call themselves casuals.
3. Great solo and group content are not mutually exclusive, but they suffer when one is shoved into the mold of the other. The same is true of PvP and PvE.
4. Community is more important than you think.
Why didn't they mention the surveys where they spam your mail and some try to get your SS#? This is such a fluff piece for a game that doesn't deserve to be mentioned at all. The mods are all children with a power trip, and the game is just about who has the biggest wallet.
What community? I enjoy playing with others, but in ROM it seems everyone solos. If you need to do a boss quest good luck in getting someone to help you, very few will volunteer to help. I found the game extremely frustrating under 30.
While I have not participated in the high level game, it is pretty easy to discern from in game comments that you either spend the big bucks or be an also ran. Being able to do end game content requires expensive upgrades to the equipment you find.
This game is a real misnomer when it comes to the free to play label, it is free to try, but you have to spend unless you have unlimited time to grind in game.
Hmm seems everyone is kind of split about the community of the game. Perhaps things have changed since i last played (think it's been 6+ months), but when I played I actually found it to be about an 8 (on a scale of 1-10) for community. There were a couple problem players here and there (such as gankers and griefers) but there were usually several others waiting to move in and deal with the problem players as soon as they showed up. Even in the starter areas there was constantly people asking and answering questions, offering help with boss quests to lower players, and just good natured chat all around. I also contributed a lot to helping out others after getting such a warm reception to the game and would constantly help random people i passed along the way who i saw having trouble completing quests or who asked for help in chat. Hell half the time someone would ask for help with a quest / boss, and before i could respond with offering to help they already had a full party together and no longer needed help.
As i said, perhaps the community has changed since my time in the game, but then again perhaps some of the people complaining only had a hard time due to their own attitude in game. There were some who came into the game without so much as doing teh tutorial (which takes all of like 3 minutes to do) and would constantly ask assinine questions that would have been answered quickly through doing the tutorial or the few beggining quests, as well as people who just couldnt help themselves and constantly begged others to help them do even the simplest tasks. Even when told to go do things such a sthe tutorials they would refuse and just keep spamming chat with nonsense questions. Those types of players often got ignored / insulted of their own accord.
O.o Are we playing the same game?
I love the RoM community. There have always been people who want to group to run instances, and some higher level players are ALWAYS there to help out lower levels with difficult quests. Never has the online community been unhelpful to me. They were always warm, they're just a bunch of other gamers like you looking for a good time.
This article is not about the players. it is about ROM management acting as if they know or have anything to do with creating a good community. If you will note my previous post, is clearly directed at the management of the game, not the players.
A community is not just players, it is players and gms/management.:)
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
I´m quite surprised to see all these comments abouts RoM. In fact I played for 2 weeks now and found none of the negative aspeck the people talk here about. Are you sure we talk about the same game?
I played in group since level 10 ( which is not hard to get. And people was always nice exept for an accasion. In fact I found it a great place to play for free.
The suppport service... I just need them one and where polite and help me quite quick and well.
For the game itself has a great dual class system. And I´m on it actually, spending a great deal of hours trying to grow up my character. The crafting need its time, thats true but not bad at all. So for a free to play I really find it a possitive game.
To all of you that can't see a community in RoM...you're blind... I've always had help from others on any quest I asked. Sure sometimes you have to wait till a busier time..you can't expect help at 4am on a quest boss that needs a small raid...
RoM has the warmest community ever. In the first 3 months of playing, my girlfriend and I have received more help than we did in 5 years of WoW...
From my experience of Customer Support, I have nothing but praise... they replied within 15 minutes at 3am once over an issue, with a working solution...and the few other problems I had were dealt with within hours. So I'm guessing SOME of you guys with problems are either whiners that moan about everything to the point were customer support pretty much dosent deal with you, or you have the patience and attention span of goldfish.
This game feels like a game...you are not forced in one direction only...There is so much to achieve with repecussions to your character in ROM (cards, pets, housing, custotmisation of characers, mounts, guild castle, siege warfare) rather than some other games that give you lame pointless titles and mounts and achievements that mean nothing other than extending your e-peen....The game play appeals to many different types of people, that allows people with similar interests to have a better chance of making friendships and having fun together.
Those of you that have not given RoM a proper go, really need to chill when you play... and I mean be impartial when you start out, take it slow and take in the gameplay, the story, the characters. Look into all the facets of it, and you'll see a game very different to the games you're expecting it to be like...
A huge majority of what ROM offers is what I will weigh and assess future MMORPG's I might try out in the future. There is ofc room for improvements in RoM, but for the most part it's a game far superior in many ways (and inferior in some places I will agree) to whats out there at the moment.
But I am not complaining, it offers me more than I could ever ask for.... for free
If you're playing it for free you're playing it wrong, especially if you are on the PVP server. It is not uncommon for players to spend $400-600 on item shops to buff up their armor and when I played one top level red mage was calculated to have spent over $8K on his gear.
Many of the "features" you mention about ROM come right from the cash shop, the mounts, the character customization, even most of the items for your house are all something you'll be paying cash for.
Which is fine if you don't mind paying it, me, I invested about $100 before I got out when I saw what the future held.
Now outside of the griefers, the community was pretty good, can't say my experience with customer service was good, only called upon them twice and they failed miserably on both occasions.
Been quite a while since I played (before the 1st expansion) so perhaps its different, but overall ROM left a bad taste in my mouth regarding Pay to Win , er oh yeah, F2P games.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Its interesting to note that the main group of people who 'hate' this game tend to be the same types that complain about 'anything' that has the F2P label on it.
Haters gonna hate.
I seem to find myself going back to RoM again and again after my neverending search for something better in the MMO genre. Its like a comfortable, well worn pair of shoes.
Truth is, it really 'is' a by the numbers copy of.. (fill in the blank with any other Everquest clone) , but with just enough little tweaks here and there to raise your eyebrows and make you want to try it out for a few.
The past couple years i've played, i've never visited the forums, so I can't comment on that part of the community, but while you're in-game... its actually rather quiet.
Unless you're in one of the major cities, it tends to feel like a single player game most of the time, aside from the occasional world-chatter who doesn't know how to use the auction house, and feels he must sell his wares in bold, pink font for all to see.
The mediocre handfull of players i've actually ran into in-game were actually rather friendly and helpful, as long as you don't spam the local and zone chat with the same question over and over.
The GM's seem to be rather quick and mysterious beings, seeming to only pop up while you're not looking and striking down the odd gold spammer here and there, though every once in a while you'll find them standing around the 'noob' areas, helping out new players with questions or directions.
Decent game, mediocre community.
You see...you play one way... I play another... I can do that here...and not spend a fortune. I deemed that RoM was worth a box fee at least, so I bought $40 of diamonds during the World Cup that got multiplied to an insane amount...so I am good for ages...to play it for free...
I appreciate that now you're going to say "Well you're not playing for free"... but lets clarify. I didnt want to give RoM my money because I wanted something.... I wanted to give them my money because I really appreciate and love the game they have created and the options I have in my game play...that is above else where RoM is awesome, whether you care to admit it or not.
That is just an asinine statement. If he is having fun then he is playing it right. It is perfectly plausible to play RoM for free and have fun.
Did they pay you to say that? Lmao! Go to the website linked in my 1st post, click on the link to the pdf file and then come back here and explain again how I can be compared to a goldfish.
Their response was closing the support ticket and never replying and it is clearly shown in the pdf. Yet, you want to come in here, with evidence to the contrary, and insult people.
You are a great example of the "community" in ROM !!!!
In fact, anyone who comes to this post and tries to turn it from the fluff piece of bs where ROM management tries to take credit for the ROM community, into some arguement about p2p vs f2p is entirely missing the point and showing just how ignorant the "community" is.
This article is not about f2p vs p2p, so let's not even bring that into it.
If we fail to change the things of today, they will become the lucid nighmares of tommorrow.
Yes I was paid...they gave me a mansion, a Ferrari and a freshly bathed $5000 hooker every day to make me say all that...xD.... as if!!!
If you read my post thorougly, I did say some people, not all... I am very sure there are issues that ROM customer support are crap at dealing with...just like any game... my experience has been nothing but pleasant, so just as I acknowledge your distain, please acknowledge my satisfaction.
Again I said SOME of the customer support complaint...yours is a perfect example of a valid case. But if you see some of the things I've seen and heard people moan about, it's a waste of time. I hope that clarifies some stuff
Perhaps you can see it as... "Sure they suck sometimes, but they are great just as much"...
RoMs community is made by the people there, and if you read a bit more into my post you'd understand why many people think it's a community that suits them... because it offers variety.
Anyway, I am off to enjoy my mansion and the hot Frogster Bitches!
In-house GM ... LOL every gamer's $10/hr dream job.
------
Played - UO, FFXI, WAR, WoW, EVE
Currently - Bored.
to be fair all MMOs are a dictatorship... With devs being on top:)
Playing: Ever quest 2
Played: MS,GW,EVE,LOTRO,WoW,Allods,Aion, CO,CoH,CoV,TQ Digital games, Darkfall,AoC,RS2.
Liked: Dungeon fight online, GW, Darkfall and, Runescape.
Waiting for: Link Realms(can't get my damn beta invite) KOTOR and, GW2
No, its not, but if you can't see it, no point in trying to explain.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
The people that deal with it are the same people that get pushed around in life. The customer service is horrible in certain aspects, as in they don't care. I got banned for pointing out that their surveys are a scam and that some will ask for personal information that can lead to identity theft. I wasn't the only one to point this out, as some had pictures. Which was for all the people that kept saying, "Got proof!" They got it and they still didn't believe us. Which is probably because they spent money in the game and don't want to quit because they spend hundreds of dollars on the game. This is the same game that bans countries to play their game, and never gave them their refunds. Frogster is a fishy company... period.
community interview........thought this would be interviews with the actual community, not someone paid to blow sunshine up everyones ass.
really, a fluff piece on rom? a little late in the day for that.
My alt account got banned because i said somthing about this game being broken since open beta and not much is been done to fix it.... a GM said their blah blah blah excuse they always use, and i post well you guys should let the dervs know there r alot n problem instead of releasing more broken "crap" to make us forget about the old crap... i guess talking back to a GM gets u a bann.
off topic from the original post but yea RoM's service really sucked when i played, maybe its changed but you couldnt get a GM to respond unless you were one of his high lvl exploiting cash shopping friends (which they also let exploit the instances to a great disadvantage to everyone else).
parties and help are a mixed bag, ask for a little and be cool you make some friends, ask for alot and be left to the wayside as a nusance. when the game first started you could sell gear for diamonds and it really was free to play if you did some grinding, then that stopped and you could still buy diamonds for gold in AH, now they dont even allow diams in AH for gold trade which means grinding for cash shop is really hard now.
I found the community really depended on the server and players on at a given time. my one time w support went well but I do know quit a few peeps who got a really raw deal from them.
the game is still full of broken quests and unfinished armor sets, bugs and just lacks alot of polish, they keep dumping new content at the rate they do becuase as soon as "something for hi lvls to do runs out" you will see lots of endgamers leave. and these are the peeps spending the cash usually.
(comming from a player w 3 capped fully geared toons) two of which i did do Free to Play and one I spent over 150 on.