Frogster Interactive today announced that the population of its highly anticipated free-to-play MMORPG Runes of Magic, passed 300,000 players in early January 2009. The steady growth of the population of Taborea will enable Frogster to continuously update and polish the game in the run up to its commercialization in March 2009.

“Frogster would like to thank our dedicated community for their constructive feedback since the beginning of the open beta”, said Daniel Ullrich, Director of Product Management at Frogster Interactive, “With the development of new content being almost complete, we are eager to see whether the community will be as enthusiastic about the new content and features as we are.”

During the festive break, Runes of Magic convinced more critics and won several prestigious awards with the specialized press. After declaring Runes of Magic as the best free-to-play game of Show at the Games Convention 2008 in August, TenTonHammer.com awarded Runes of Magic the “Surprise Hit 2008”. The editors of Mmorpg-planet.com selected Runes of Magic as the “Best Free MMORPG of 2008” and was the only free-to-play title to be nominated for MMORPG.com’s upcoming “Most anticipated Game of 2009” Readers Choice award.

Runes of Magic began its open beta in December with an English and German version. All interested players can now set up an account and download the client for free at www.runesofmagic.com.