So tell me, esteemed gamer, what do you do when your competition is an MMO with a worldwide user base of over ten million subscribers, unparalleled growth and a net income of 1.27 billion? Oh sure, you could attempt to be the next big thing and slay said beast with your own bare hands, but really, trying to be the next Warcraft killer is overrated; Especially when there's another way.

You copy the hell out of it.

Lazy? Maybe. Opportunistic? Definitely. But there is plenty to be said about riding the coat tails of another's success while raking in your own cash, and so what if it looks like half your realm map was lifted directly off the face of Azeroth? We won't tell if you don't, right? Even though such a description really doesn't do Frogster Interactive's new title justice, there is no mistaking the parallels between Runes of Magic and Blizzard's own behemoth. From environmental visuals to combat mechanics, it would be tragically easy to write this game off as a Warcraft clone. To stop there, however, would only overlook a promising new MMO unique in its own right.

If all Runes of Magic were was a free to play clone of Warcraft, it would still be more than enough reason for us here at MMORPG.com to take it for a test drive; and that's exactly what we did. Instead of finding a World of Warcraft proxy, we found something else... A World of Warcraft proxy with a bit of depth.