Lost Pages of Taborea: A WoW player's guide to Runes of Magic
Are you praised for your quick wits and fast fingers when 10-manning ICC? Hailed for your uncanny knowledge of talent specs on every class? Then, reader, you'd be a formidable foe in World of Warcraft, but let's see how that helps you in Runes of Magic, eh? There are many more differences than the names of items and spells. While you may feel comfortable at first with the interface layout, new systems abound. An arcane whatsit? Where's my talent tree? No Shaman-type class? Let's ease you into a comfortable transition, to minimize annoyance and bruises. Even if you aren't a WoW player, you should find this to be a good getting started guide.
Setting the stage
Taborea has a traditional Western fantasy flavor to it, peppered with uniqueness. Bright colors abound, even when venturing into the more hostile lands of volcanoes and ash. It could be viewed as slightly more realistic than WoW, although it still has a cartoon style quality about it. Many details of the world's history have been forgotten, so everything about the land seems fresh and new. As you level and quest, you'll learn about the world's lore and uncover the back-story. For the size, RoM has plenty of interesting lore. I'm sure we'll see it expanded even more when Chapter 3 hits this May.
The user interface is almost identical to WoW's. Customizing is also possible with addons., but don't ignore the in-game functions though. You'll find it quite robust. I found some features to be great annoyance busters.
PvP is open and could be considered an all-for-one style. There are two playable races -- Human and Elf -- but there are no player factions. Yeah, it's a bit different, but you'll get used to it really fast. Everyone and anyone on a PvP server will become fair game at level 15. Battlegrounds and PvE are almost identical in operation.
Death in RoM doesn't have you running back to claim your body. You simply resurrect at the nearest spawn point. What it does have is an experience debt system. When killed in PvE, you'll gain a percentage of debt, based on your level. Killing then pays 70% of all earned experience toward that debt until it is paid off. Daily quest rewards count and you do have a tombstone you can try to reach to pay off a nice chunk.
Classes
There are eight classes that cover basic variety in any MMORPG, but RoM has a dual class system that lets you combine any of those you want into one character that you play as primary and secondary classes. Your primary class will always be able to use some of your secondary class's skills, and you can even switch your primary and secondary classes whenever you want, resulting in different shared skills.
You'll recognize mages, rogues, and priests, but others will be slightly different. Wardens and druids are race-specific to Elves, because they're essentially counter parts to knights and priests.
Warriors do provide melee damage per second, but unlike World of Warcraft warriors, they are not your main tanks.
Knights do a better job at tanking with plenty of shield and aggro skills.
Scouts are similar to WoW's hunters, only without pets.
Wardens are similar to RoM knights, and get a pet.
Druids are similar to RoM priests, and have some nature spells, but they can't transform.
Skills
You get lots of talent points through PvE to spend on passive and active skills. Once you have both classes, you'll see general and class-specific skill tabs in your character window. Apart from elite skills gained through quests, all skills open up as you level, so no trips to a trainer are needed. Your primary class can use your secondary class's general skills. When on my knight, I can use my priest's general skills, and if I flip those classes, my priest will have access to my knight's general skills. It's really easy to understandwhen you're looking at your character.
Elite skills
Elite skills are special skills that help further define your class combinations. You'll be able to get one every five levels, starting at level 15. A lot of the elite skills a rogue/priest gets could be compared to a shadow-spec priest in WoW. Both share vampiric type debuffs and damage-over-time spells.
Listing all the combinations and resulting class types would fill a large article on its own, but if you've read the community round up, you can see and play around with all the classes and their skills on getbuffed.com.
