Is Ragnarok dead?

[Void]

Regardless if RO is dying or not, I have never seen a better gaming community. I have confidence RO will reach its former glory days soon 

[Triper]

Triper is probably mixing up jRO (lots of players) with kRO (hasn't had lots of players for years).

I'm not, it was when kRO was running some event [maybe the x-mas event?] and someone checked numbers there. I dunno where I saw it but there was even a picture with Ald full of players as in you just see chars in the screenshot.
I also curious on the jRO numbers since the only thing that I found after a quick search was numbers from 2010 that show 30k-40k players ._.

[Triper]

I just saw this, have fun.

jRO add the Char-Code, the same feature added in past months in kRO.
PS: 14 Mains Servers O_o!!

Online on 8 jul 23:00:

Lif 544
Mimir 811
Olrun 1258
Sigrun 1023

Alvitr 839
Hervor 880
Idavoll 1146
Trudr 965

Frigg 995
Gimle 858
Radgrid 799
Vali 1100

Urdr 28 (PK server)
Breidablik 1607

in iRO Wiki Forum, Credits to Ziu and Anub1s

[Judgement]

That's pretty neat.  It's a shame it's all different servers.

[Chilly]

wtf how does an official server go from 10k players to 1k in a few months?

Its all about the events since most kro players are maxed out with nothing to do, this week on kro they started some event where there are mobs with GM sprites on every map that are pretty hard to kill solo unless you are 3rd class, i logged in today to check it out and theres been between 2k to 4k players online all day.

[Marcello]

I feel the same way sometimes but its just the community has figured out everything there is to know. There needs to be in my opinion, 5 new classes.

[Judgement]

Play renewal then.  Or a server with customs.

[Marcello]

Thats what I do. Very pleasant actually.

[Poise]

Personally, I think Ragnarok Online is a forever thriving game. Once a classic RPG, will always be a classic RPG, fond memories have always come together when players gather and create a harmonic community with the little exception of spoiled players.

Ragnarok Online is not dead, and will most likely be around for a very very long time, in my honest opinion it's the players that decide to come and go and or unprofessional management when it comes to (private server fades), for instance the creation of super High Rated servers with the unbelievable over-powered custom items that affect the original mechanics.

[Wave]

Personally, I think Ragnarok Online is a forever thriving game. Once a classic RPG, will always be a classic RPG, fond memories have always come together when players gather and create a harmonic community with the little exception of spoiled players.

Ragnarok Online is not dead, and will most likely be around for a very very long time, in my honest opinion it's the players that decide to come and go and or unprofessional management when it comes to (private server fades), for instance the creation of super High Rated servers with the unbelievable over-powered custom items that affect the original mechanics.

I can relate to the way you feel about Ragnarok Online.

[Deacon]

Right people. Keep.. holding those thoughts. 

[Yuzo]

RO was dead on arrival. The main development team quit after BETA and the official servers are filled with bugs and s*** code. Gravity f*** up by choosing to make the game p2p after BETA, which destroyed the original pop and led to massive private servers. Gravity also went bankrupt from a p2p model and when Samsung bought the company, they left some scrub in charge. So much s*** was left half-done or scrapped because the team was unmotivated (i.e. animated hair, ferus mounts, bank system, mail system, and auction hall). Then renewal just f*** up everything even more with its broken mechanics (3rd class is incredibly broken). Whatever pop is still around is here because of the unique style of the game (which drew people in from 2003 - 2007) and general nostalgia (why most people play now i.e. the rise of the non-trans servers).

Private servers also killed the pop with massive pay2win features and copying the exact RO code. When you copy the mechanics of a broken system, you will also have a broken system. A lot of servers were just meant to make money for their GM teams, and led to a lot of resentment towards the game. That's not to say there aren't some good servers out there, it's just a lot of servers over the course of the past 10 years have been absolute jack s***, or were good, but then were destroyed by mismanagement and general GM abuse. Some servers have tried to modify the mechanics with varying success. The general pop also has become complacent with bad gameplay, though, so there's enough blame to go around.

There's a great post on another forum from 2010 that summarizes a lot of problems with the game:

Hopefully Tree if Saviour is executed properly, becoming the game that RO was always meant to be.

Sorry to quote such a large post but I thought it was worth it.
edit: there was a quote inside the quote that got lost!!


When I played there were two major issues which really bothered me.
1. Staff who became such a****** that the server was really difficult to play. It never moved forward because they were so close-minded. Mostly they just banned a whole bunch of people.
2. Players who became too powerful and went out of control. Players such as these made servers fun, but could also destroy them if they left.


The first issue really caused me a lot of bother. When players from other servers moved to ours, they were clearly ahead of the times. The current crop of players eventually learned and grew with the new, more powerful ones, but the staff remained stuck in the old ways. Eventually players either got sick and frustrated at the staffs' ignorance/arrogance and became smart-asses. The players had so many good ideas, but because they had got on the wrong side of the wrong people, they were shoved aside.


I can't be bothered writing my life story, but long story short I got banned. Rightfully so, too, but my relationship with the staff deteriorated so much that it were always heading that way. Before I grew ahead of them, I was always a quiet and respectful player. I suppose too much air filled my head and it clashed with the all powerful ban hammer. In the end, it doesn't matter whether you're right, wrong, justified or innocent when the ban hammer is in your face. Whoever is wielding it seals your fate, and if they have a bone to pick with you....lol

[Sophia]

I've been playing RO since early 2005, 9.5 years or so.  In the last decade I have gone through tons of servers, private and official. I feel like posting why the game is dead to me nowadays. I didn't draft this or anything, and I might not have all of my motor functions intact right now, so bear with me.

My background is primarily in competitive lowrate or official servers, and I feel like the golden age was really 2006-2008. Ever since then I have been desperately searching for a similar experience, but I've decided it really doesn't exist. While I love this game, I hate how it's played nowadays. I have other projects, ambitions, and games in life, so I can't spend all my time playing the s*** we see today.

There are two major issues: Player attitude and Renewal. I think player attitude is the one worth talking about more, but to touch on Renewal real fast...

It's bad. There's no good game design in Renewal. The classes added aren't well thought out, and skills don't mesh. Sprites and effects look out of place or messy, lots of effects are re-used. When transc came out, it was hailed as the end of RO. They got a bit more HP/SP, and some important skills central to how the classes were built, but it destroyed the game until proper balancing, updates, etc came into play. It took a bit of time for the meta to catch up with the new content transc brought - it got there, but it took time. Now check out how many new skills Champs got when transc came out, it says 4 here. Now check out Sura, I don't want to count. Add that onto stat rebalances, map changes, etc... all this new content coming in, none of it adding to the core design, all of it clashing with each other, none of it having time to develop on itself, it's just bad.

It was a poorly executed desperate attempt for Gravity to save officials, and it sort of worked on jRO, but overall it's just a horrible game. They adopted game design philosophy from other MMORPGs and created this weird mash-up of oldschool RO vs newschool quest systems and it is constantly clashing. I believe that the majority of players who play renewal will probably play just about anything. Fullscreen everything isn't exactly interesting, either. Of course renewal also means that pre-renewal doesn't really get updates, and when it does they're stupid and broken (scaraba), so yeah that's bad too.

With that out the way, what I actually want to talk about is the RO community's player attitude, which I believe has completely ruined all pre-renewal servers.

I don't think I'm just being a nostalgic old man when I call 2006-2008 the golden age. I'd probably extend that into 2009 with servers like ChronosV3 and EternityROv3, but those were the beginning of the end. Anwyays, at that time the game wasn't quite optimized yet but people were always genuinely trying to make new builds and playstyles, and they often did. The main component from back then, which is missing nowadays, is investment. Authentic investment in your character, guild, guildmates, castle, items, etc. RO's competitive aspects (and it is a competitive game) only work on low-rates. I mean, the whole game was designed to be experienced on rates 50-1000x lower than what we play now, and while sure hunting for a card for 4 weeks is retarded, don't you guys think the issue is a little more complex than that, and we might be pushing other aspects of the game out along with those cons?

Low-rates allow interaction between guilds to occur to PVM and drive investment in WoE by making castle invest matter. Guilds that are rival in WoE and PVM crossover a lot, and you get cool s*** like bio MVP competition or just general harassing in PVM, which is a blast. You also spend a lot of time with your guild mates and it creates a pretty strong bond there, nowadays you just BG together for a bit and that's about it. Much different than spending 12 hours a day grinding boring s*** on voice chat, just talking a bunch to get to know someone, for weeks and weeks on end.

Decent players got sick of starting over from scratch though – they played enough low-rates. Obviously, the end-game was the most fun part of the game, with all of its competitive aspects... so, people started making high-rate servers aimed at the competitive community so that they could just hop on, play for a couple weeks, be all geared up and ready to WoE/BG. This actually wasn't so bad at first – if anything it felt like a "short break" from low-rates.

Competitive high-rates did well for a little bit, super WoEs and servers like ChronosV2 or VisionsV1 were a nice break from low-rates (people usually played them in between versions of servers like Eternity). But inevitably those high-rates didn't last long, and eventually all the guilds and players who mattered just quit, or became relatively apathetic. BG supplier, healer, and warper destroyed partying, and at first it wasnt a big deal since everyone was a tightknit guild from lowrates, but nowadays it means PVM is straight up solo fest or dead. Half the game is gone.

PVM usually drives PVP, i.e. your pots, AD mats, etc all actually matter. Champs, when was the time you didn't asura a wizard because you thought "I dont want to waste the blues, a sin or something can take care of that." Hint: years ago. When was the last time you hit an LK or Pally, knowing it wouldn't die, but laughed on vent saying "haha, look at the whites he's wasting." When's the last time creators didn't control the whole f*** game because they only bombed when s*** got real, and it actually felt intense? Long, long ago.

Really ridiculous gear also became standard. Gear that was usually unavailable on private servers, and very limited on officials in the form of event prizes, has become widely available. Holy Marcher Hat [1], Sunnies [1], lower headgear that gives redux and stats, etc... it has become "If my creator doesn't have full redux set on, doesn't have unlimited bombs, AND can't stun, all after playing for 2 weeks or less, I don't wanna bother."

Then there's the blatant straight up cheating, which has made us all play like s***. I think RCX is a good tool. I think it should end there.

WoE GRFs showing dispells or removing all tiles from a castle, AHK, RO Medic, PotNDD with its hax-donkey freewalk s***, adelay, the list goes on. RO has had cheaters forever, people have been using AHK for a really long time, but it was something you wanted to hide. You didn't want to be blatant about cheating, so you toned down your hax. If you were labelled as a cheater, you were shunned; looked down upon as a s*** try-hard player trying to get an edge. It slowly became more accepted to where now the reverse is true; literally if you don't cheat your donkey off, even if you are a good player, you stand no chance against scrubby creators, and they will constantly kill you then call you a noob. It's so bizarre. Just because you can spam skills faster doesnt make the game more interesting, and it doesnt make you a good player. It just means you have some scripts. Good players were doing that long before you, without the crutches. Seriously, learn to play.

And that's the summary of the issue: try-hards. Try hard WPE wannabes is all that's left in RO. Everyone wants to be an e-super star, everyone thinks they're sweet. A lot of people are even imitating the way oldschool guilds TALK, and it's become sort of the "RO language", so they probably dont even realize it. This game has gotten pretty bad with all this, not to mention the competition isnt even good.

This post is too long so I'm gonna end it. Basically screw this game's current direction and f*** all you 3PP players, really ruined something interesting.

Here's to hoping Tree of Savior is fun!

[newalex]

I dont think ro is dead xd

[Playtester]

Nice post, Sophia.