UPDATE: According to a press release, nearly 700,000 players registered to play Runes of Magic on its launch day.

Runes of Magic, a 3D free-to-play fantasy MMORPG, has officially launched today! To play, all you need to do is head over to the official Web site, register and download the client. If you'd like more information first, our very own Sam "azerian" Maxted previewed the game before today's launch and wrote a detailed analysis of his experiences in the world. He says that while Runes of Magic is similar to World of Warcraft, the free price tag makes it worthwhile to try out. Of course, this is only one person's opinion, so feel free to leave your own in the comments section below.

As for the big launch day, Frogster has revamped the Web site, cleaned up the official forums and added an update to the game. Today's patch includes the Kalin Shrine dungeon, the Wind Wild instance, a new Epic quest line and other new quests. Experience and TP debt on all characters has been wiped to give everyone a fresh start, and a new German-language server named Riocht has been added to the list.

According to a press release, the population during open beta soared to more than 500,000 players with 725,000 created characters. Time will tell if today's official launch pushes these numbers even higher.