Below the fold, I will be talking about the Runes of Magic dual class system, the item shop, and housing. These are things which are different or missing in WoW. I won’t talk much about upgrading weapons, which is entirely different then WoW because I haven’t tried it yet.
The dual class system allows you to have some of the attributes of 2 classes at the same time, plus some bonus skills which are specific to each combination (elite skills). There are no class combinations which are disallowed except for classes which are restricted from a race. For instance, you’ll never see a priest/druid since priests are limited to humans and druids are limited to elves. The upside to dual classes is that your character always has access to more skills then a single class character. The downside is that you have to level both sides to see the full benefits. There are at least 2 areas to level for each level range. So far, I haven’t run out of quests for leveling in any area. I level each side by 5 levels, go get the elite skill, and repeat. This allows me to use mostly the same level gear on both sides.
The item shop will be completely new to WoW players. It includes several subsections. There is a “token shop” where you can use up your tokens which are collected by doing daily quests. I buy furniture for my house here. There is the diamond shop, where you can buy various equipment upgrades, permanent mounts, consumables, and other things. Diamonds usually cost real world money, but you can buy diamonds on the auction house. 200 diamonds (enough to buy a permanent mount) currently cost either $10, or about 2.8 million gold. To give you some context, in the 2 weeks I’ve spent in the game, I have made about a million gold, but I’ve spent about 500k. I will probably avoid spending real money until I max my level.
Housing is really just an instance where you can put some stuff. The major cities and many towns have direct access to your house. The mechanical benefit to a house is that you can put various pieces of furniture in it which can give you bonuses to experience, training points, and crafting XP. You can also buy inventory space like chests and cabinets. There is also the aesthetic and psychological appeal of a home in the game. Blizzard really needs to get some of this player housing stuff. If a 1 year old game can do it, and other games which have been around a long time can do it, then Blizzard can.
The equipment upgrade system is an order of magnitude more complex then WoW. Any item can be “tiered” from +1 to +6. Depending on the runes and stones you use to upgrade the item, it can have almost any combination of statistics. Some of the upgrade process involves chance if you want to pay a reasonable amount. Once I explore this aspect of the game more, I’ll write a dedicated article on it. There is a beginner’s guide to the arcane transmutor which touches on a major aspect of equipment upgrades. There are other aspects like upgrading stat runes (which are like gems in WoW) and using sun/moon/star jewels to tier your equipment.
Regarding player housing…
I think that Blizzard *could* make amazing player housing for World of Warcraft, but chooses not to. They’ve said that they want the Azerothian cities to remain full of life when asked about Dalaran and Shattrath auction houses, so the same could apply to this situation.
I would imagine that if everyone could go hide out in their player house (or guild house, since players often ask for that, too), then the cities would only be full of level 1 bank alts.
And, then how would my own bank alt be able to gawk at all the new dungeon gear on the level 80′s? :-)
Comment by Mad Scientist Mercury — November 16, 2009 @ 10:15 am
In RoM, there is almost nothing to do in the house or in the guild castle. Well, you could arrange your furniture or grow plants, but all meaningful activity happens outside.
The trade hubs are very busy, and it’s easy to find raid geared people to gawk at near the AH, mail box, or the enchanter.
Comment by John Jorgensen — November 16, 2009 @ 10:26 am