In an Internet era where the number friends on your Facebook accounts determines how popular you are, with its next update Runes of Magic will introduce a relationship system that allows two players to commit into a partnership. Depending on the relationship, players will then be rewarded with special in-game bonuses.

Lovers are at the centre of this new feature: players can now get engaged by sending a Love Letter, and finally even marry one another. Frogster will provide the two lovebirds, whether they are straight, gay or lesbian, all the necessary decorum for such an important event. The union of marriage can then be celebrated in a romantic new wedding chapel, where they are going to walk down the aisle in one of two new wedding suits and exchange rings in front of all their friends and guild members.

Besides love and married couples, update 3.0.3 will implement several other types of relationships, including Family or Friendship. Two players can declare themselves family members or best friends simply by exchanging a special object that can be bought in Varanas, the capital city of Runes of Magic. A character can then link up to 20 other avatars through these relationships with, of course, just one marriage.

Relationships grant players bonuses when they are together in a group which can for instance raise one of their statistics or the chance to get a rare object when defeating monsters. In addition, characters bound together will be granted a special bonus when their counterpart’s health drops under a certain level. Family members will respectively see the damage they inflict increased, when two Friends will see a part of their health restored. These bonuses get more and more efficient as the link between the two characters becomes deeper, as defeating foes together grants them relationship points and help them to go through the ten different levels of this system.

Obviously, and as sadly as in real life, all links between characters can be ended very simply just by removing them in the Friends interface of the game.

Check here all you need to know about Runes of Magic. And visit its official website.

This entry was posted on Friday, July 9th, 2010 at 4:38 pm and is filed under MMO News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.