Runes of Magic is a free MMORPG, so if you are sick of WoW, then why not give this game a try?
Now let me give you an insight of the exciting things & features that makes it worthwhile to play:
* Highly customizable characters: it's not like WoW. For instance, go to the character creation screen and you'll see what I mean.
* 8 classes available (some are race-specific):
- Warrior: they are brave fighters, rarely do they miss a good battle; they do not lack the courage nor the strength.
- Scout: they are wandering around the various wildness and they insist on their hunter skills (range).
- Rogue: they are the agile and stealthy bad guys. They are usually happy only around in cities. They are searching life and drive their seek.
- Mage: they only respect their knowledge and so they are the master of the elementals. They are generally visiting ancient places to reveal long-forgotten knowledge or to understand the way of the elements.
- Priest: they are helping the faithful and the weak for glory. They are known to unleash their darker side if they fight against enemies and heretics.
- Knight: these guys doesn't run back from the toughest battles. They are the light servitors: their job is to protect the weak and battle the dark.
- Druid: they are like priests but for the elves. They tend to respect the forces of nature with knowledge and wisdom.
- Warden: they are the guardians of the nature (elves). In times of peace, they must ensure that the rules are abided to preserve the forests of Taborea.
* Duel Class system:
That's right! In this game even if you choose a class you can take up a secondary class from Level 10 and up to 30 individual class combinations. This does not only makes a huge difference between each character: you could meet with a Warrior / Mage any time. It also adds more in game depth: characters will be different in this kind, which is a good feature. (A more logical approach would be the Knight / Priest combination and many more.)
* More than 1000 quests, nice...and they are really comprehensive!
* You can find instanced and persistent dungeons: if you came from WoW, you'll like this one.
* Individually developed skills and spells are also nice features. Imagine that you do not want to upgrade a spell...then you do not need to waste TP for it! You can upgrade just the useful spells that you would like!
* You can also find armor sets with special bonuses! If that is what keeps you back from trying!
* A really nice PvP (Player vs Player duels) system: you can participate in arena battles and different guild wars
* Mounts are also really nice. And you will receive your very first if you complete the tutorial! Just freakin' nice! No more sluggish walking in the areas, you can benefit yourself from the mounts from Level 1!
* And there is also a nice crafting system! Probably one of the best I've ever seen in an MMORPG! Try it out yourself, and you'll see...You can even improve your items with it!
* Being able to get a house, where you can rest after a tough battle. You can even put furnitures into it, so you can customize it as well!
* You can also meet with guild houses in special zones! Nice!
* Customizable UI, so you can use/develop add-ons
* There is an in-game map and radar system to find what you're looking for. For example: if I need to murder several bear mobs, then those type of mob will be displayed on the map with red circles. So we don't need QuestHelper here.
* There is an auction house and a mailbox system as well!
* The neat in game music & sound just made the game a more living environment.
And the negative experience (not so much):
* Was a bit confused first. I just downloaded the US client when I realised that it was wrong (I'm not living there). Instead I should've claim the "eneu" client or so, since that's Europe. There was nothing bad: I just made an account for the "eneu" client side and tried to login with the US client. I must say, that it didn't work. It was my fault entirely, I know. So a waste of 5 GB bandwidth. Needless to say, that such a large file usually boiled down to stopl: I had to use "wget" to continue my download from time to time.
* The servers are laggy and crowded. It's probably not the developers' fault, since I'm sure that more than a half million player base is not very easy to maintain on just a few server considering the price (it's free). Mostly there are only PvE servers, but PvP servers can be found as well. So this point doesn't matter, but still, that little lag is there.
* Hard to get in parties/guilds (probably because I'm newbie, but still). Even if I'm Level 9-10, I was rarely seen that anyone else would want to team with my character nor invite me into a guild. Could be my fault: I just picked up the wrong server, Macantacht.
But I expect the guild invitation: on my WoW private server (which was friendly), I was automatically invited into a guild from the first day, and even with kind words. I've been called for several duels so far and that's it. This negative point is also a half: I could explain, that everyone's busy with something. And that's a good thing: it actually means, that the game fun may not to be achieved with just teaming with the others, but doing other interesting things as well.
* Many useful extras require real money (or so). This is obviously not an impact for the players of negative experience. But what I did found out after a while, that many useful (or little, worthy) features will require some money from your pocket so you can use those diamonds to purchase ... special stuff. Now this is good way to keep up their servers, but also a bad one, as it will ... force you to pay if you need 'em.
So...If there's a game that is a good alternative to World of Warcraft:, then that is this one. Consider the cheap price: it's free to play.
Give it a try. You can only waste 5 GB of bandwidth plus the patches (which is auto-download from the launcher). Is that very much nowadays?
...And as for that lame 6666NightsInHell's review of this game...that was a whining review. Yes, the game has bugs. But the actual devs are much more open and applying the community's input without a hitch, not like in WoW. And I mean useful bug reports, not something like: "Hi, I think that the scout class is imbalanced. Make it stronger, thanks in advance." If you do not believe me, then visit the forums of the game and skim those threads.