What is the difference between runes of magic and world of warcraft

1) If you have played WoW, you have played about 80% of this game. The interface, especially on-screen UI, character screen, log-in screen, Quest Log, and even how items are written up in tool tips scream WoW even to people who has only seen WoW screenshots. To me, this is a good thing, because I was instantly familiar with almost the entire interface and was able to gather information about items and how attributes/stats act in the game (although Wisdom in this game affects Mana more like Intelligence in WoW).

The only thing that is very different from WoW is the movement aspect. The game starts off as click-to-move, but you can enable normal WASD movement in the Interface options (and make sure to switch AD to right/left turning instead of strafing like how they have it automatically set up).

2) Combat and even the classes I've tried (mage and knight), play almost 100% like their WoW counterparts (mage and paladin). There are a few differences in how powers work and there are less powers overall. Also, you can dual-class in this game, starting at level 10. I'm not completely familiar with this system, but I have a feeling that doing a mage/knight dual-class was a bad idea. Make sure to research what classes work well together and what class abilities you can use depending on which of your classes are 'primary' at the time. I believe once you choose your second class, it's permanent.

3) For a free-to-play game, there are a lot of quests. They're mostly standard MMORPG quests, but I'm okay with those. So far, as of level 10 mage/6 knight, I have yet to run out of things to do.

4) Equipment and crafting are almost identical to WoW but as this is open beta, I believe the absolute lack of most crafting recipes is due to things being tested. I really hope this is true. The only difference between RoM and WoW in terms of equipment and crafting are two things: 1) All equipment, even from level one, can have 'rune slots' in them and 2) When crafting an item, the final product may have 1 or 2 'rune slots' in them, determined randomly. Runes act just like cut gems in WoW, but you find them off monsters or from disenchanting items (a power all characters get from a guy in the second starter town). Disenchanting seems to work on most equipment, even non-magical ones. However, you only ever have a 30% to get a rune from an item, so disenchant carefully.

The only big problem I have with crafting is superficial--there are three gathering professions (that everyone can have), herbalism, mining, and woodcutting. And all products, from cloth items, to potions, to even cooked food are made from...herbs, ore sand/chunks, and wood. Yes, tailoring uses mostly wood to make cloth items. WTF. That's just weird.

5) There are a lot of either translation errors or the developers forgetting to rename an item across the game. For example, the tier 1 mining nodes say 'Brass Node', but you get zinc from them instead. This seems to happen frequently, but it's normally not confusing once you start paying attention.

7) Yes, you can buy things called Diamonds for real life money and there is an 'in-game store' you can buy in-game items for in the actual game. However, so far, the only items you can get from this store are either a) cosmetic (stuff for your house or little pets) or b) not affecting combat in any way. You can buy temporary mounts or even permanent ones. You can also buy production runes that are used to make tier 2 and above items, but those aren't +stat runes, just things that are needed to make items. That doesn't improve the game, it just cuts down on the grinding you have to do. If the game ever starts selling equipment or anything of that nature for real money, I won't play the game anymore.

8) There is player housing, but it seems like just a place you can put a chest in for now.

All in all, if you like WoW, and you need another MMORPG to play but don't want to shell out another $15 a month for LotRO or WAR, RoM seems like a good alternative. If they polish the game before releasing it, it'll be a nice free-to-play alternative to Guild Wars (which I dislike so this'll be nice).