AnesisRO

[Visalain Royark]

AnesisRO......where to start. Very old and dying server. Here is my review.

Stability: 5/10
It is a forced beta at the moment. Lots of bugs, lag, glitches, and occasional random crashes here and there, but not as bad as before. The server just switched hosts so maybe its better. A new patch or something came out, hard to download and work around. Lots of technical problems. Security of server is not secure either.

Availability: 8/10
Aside from the random mishaps, bugs, crashes, and maintenances, server is usually up.

Community: 4/10
Not a very welcoming or friendly community. Mostly all vets with infinite items. Hard to come and play as a new player. You need to come with a group or be bored. Not a lot of players (< 10 active). Players have gradually declined, never increased. Site displays around 40 players now, probably because the dumb new patch issues, GMs stopped messing with player count, and the autovend limit has been changed to 24 hours, so GMs and players can't log on vendors to inflate the number. 

Eventfulness: 4/10
Lack of events and lackluster ones at that. Seem to be trying to copy the sister server atm with restricted stuff, but still meh. Seem so desperate with dumb rewards (instant gear upgrades to draw back vets and kahos). Their restricted events will probably bring back a couple of people, but then be dead again after that. There was hype for the WoE, but it was boring and one-sided as usual. The restricted pvp event has like 2 people signed up after weeks. Also, the most dumb event was their selfie event on facebook because people want to give up their privacy? Whoever thought of that idea is a genius. Only like 2 people participated, but one was the GM who hosted the event....

Game Master Friendliness: 7.5/10
They are alright, though they do seem to have biases and cater to certain groups of players.

Availability: 7/10
Usually absent ingame, but forums presence is getting better. Some GMs, I didnt even know we had, but that could be a good thing because some of them are highly unqualified for their positions. Support tickets are getting better though.

Helpfulness: 2/10
Some GMs have no idea what they are doing and are not qualified. Personally, I think this GM staff ruined the server.

Economy: 1/10
Same old shops always on vend. Same old people. Economy never changed after years. Everyone is a vet that has everything. Impossible for new players to join and be competitive without donating or inheriting items.

Guild Competition: 0/10
Whats guild competition? Whats a guild? Whats woe? GMs are desperate for guilds and players and will bend over backwards for people. Apparently, if you join, you can get a full set of gears spawned by the GMs. The GMs are kinda corrupt on this server and lack leadership skills and experience. 

Class Balance: 5/10
Its alright. GMs dont really know game mechanics, so that explains.

Overall: 1.5/10
The server is basically dead. Leadership on this server is missing. Knowledge of game mechanics is lacking. No players and slowly decreasing. Economy has been horrible for years, no attempts or poor attempts to fix it for years. More things becoming dead. PVP, BG, DA, and WoE are non-existant. Same old minimal security. Only good for stopping some botting maybe if even. Finally, blocked ROMedic, but yet there are still a couple autopots that they don't know about. Auto clickers, Auto macros, Maya Purple Hacks and all that good stuff still work here. This server has claimed to have new staff, new client, and new webpage, BUT they still have the same lazy work ethic and corruption. Yes, people have been saying this and complaining about this server for years, but the staff just dismisses it and bans the "complainers," which is probably why they are where they are now. The staff is poorly organized and not qualified either, and to make it worse, the owner basically quit. Most of the staff are old players and/or have been related to ex-GMs in some way. New names, new clothing, same bs.

[Razer]

The server feels more like its under a caretaker than an active admin. The server has absolutely no blueprint or development path. They waste their energy on things which four years ago would have been considered ridiculous or preposterous. One does not get permanent players with that strategy.

Some of the former staff ruined the game mechanics with the half knowledge products like that infamous Break fall gear. Then someone decided that it was a fine idea to dump items with renewal attributes like WoE Robes into the game.

Its not even a shallow shell of the great server it used to be back in 2006. Such legacy, such waste.

And eww, after so many of its vets told it not to use the names Animus and Anesis - the server owners chose to use these names. Anesis rhymes with anuses. What was the server owner thinking? Do they have that much of a desperate obsession with "A"?

I played that server for half a decade, it was so much fun, I met some of my best friends there. Its hurting to see it in such state. But I guess it has passed its time.

[ImJustAKid]

Anesis rhymes with anuses. What was the server owner thinking? Do they have that much of a desperate obsession with "A"?

You know who the server owner is, right? This is probably exactly what he was going for.

[zetsu~]

You know who the server owner is, right? This is probably exactly what he was going for.

This. Lol. Everyone knows who Merkel is and his obsession with "buttsecks." I think his GMs are running the show now. Hes probably too busy getting high 24/7 or playing League of Legends all day.

I completely agree with Razer. This server is going downhill. The staff, former and present, ruined the game. It should be an essential requirement to understand game mechanics before being a GM, something the staff here usually lack. Hire qualified people - not your friends that no nothing about how to handle a server or understand game mechanics (Ohhh wait that includes the owner...). I think I found the problem. Learn how to do things yourself first..... 

[Thephi]

Those reviews are pretty accurate of the sadly true and destabilizing server.
Excitement is lacking in that game. I would say more but that post pretty sums up everything.

[Subwoofer]

Server is closed. Temporarily, but it was a good run while it lasted.
http://www.anesisro.com/forums/topic/57014-closing-time/

[Razer]

Server is closed. Temporarily, but it was a good run while it lasted.
http://www.anesisro.com/forums/topic/57014-closing-time/

Wasn't a good run with the last administration. As much as staff members like to talk about having lives and such. A good team needs to take responsibilities. Even if the server owner is nothing more than a sponsor - his team needs to be competent and dedicated. Not full of hobbyists who got a GM hat. I suppose Flan, Linus and Kirek(was she still around) worked a bit. No idea what the rest did.

For me aRO ended when Talis gave up the administration. Josh was a competent caretaker who loved the server and tried his best to keep it afloat. But it has pretty much been ZombieRO after that. It required a graceful closing instead of renaming and attempt to milk the dismal playerbase a bit more. The server owners need to realize that their vets will in most likeliness never return, as such if they want to run a RO server in which new things can be done and new players can join - they are actually better off with a wipe and a new server from scratch.

[Subwoofer]

The people have spoken. Merkel is finally gone. Let's see how Flan handles whatever is left of this server.

[zetsu~]

It doesn't matter. The server is still probably gonna go down the drain. The staff is still the same besides Merkel. Flan is probably not much better. Does she know how to maintain a server? Probably not. Does she know how to code? Probably not. She seems more unskilled, extreme and radical than Merkel tbh. They should just let the server die by now. Its time is clearly up and if they cant dedicate the necessary time on it, there is no point trying to drag a dead horse out of the ocean. Keep it there.

[aRO Flan]

Spoiler

AnesisRO......where to start. Very old and dying server. Here is my review.

Stability: 5/10
It is a forced beta at the moment. Lots of bugs, lag, glitches, and occasional random crashes here and there, but not as bad as before. The server just switched hosts so maybe its better. A new patch or something came out, hard to download and work around. Lots of technical problems. Security of server is not secure either.

Availability: 8/10
Aside from the random mishaps, bugs, crashes, and maintenances, server is usually up.

Community: 4/10
Not a very welcoming or friendly community. Mostly all vets with infinite items. Hard to come and play as a new player. You need to come with a group or be bored. Not a lot of players (< 10 active). Players have gradually declined, never increased. Site displays around 40 players now, probably because the dumb new patch issues, GMs stopped messing with player count, and the autovend limit has been changed to 24 hours, so GMs and players can't log on vendors to inflate the number. 

Eventfulness: 4/10
Lack of events and lackluster ones at that. Seem to be trying to copy the sister server atm with restricted stuff, but still meh. Seem so desperate with dumb rewards (instant gear upgrades to draw back vets and kahos). Their restricted events will probably bring back a couple of people, but then be dead again after that. There was hype for the WoE, but it was boring and one-sided as usual. The restricted pvp event has like 2 people signed up after weeks. Also, the most dumb event was their selfie event on facebook because people want to give up their privacy? Whoever thought of that idea is a genius. Only like 2 people participated, but one was the GM who hosted the event....

Game Master Friendliness: 7.5/10
They are alright, though they do seem to have biases and cater to certain groups of players.

Availability: 7/10
Usually absent ingame, but forums presence is getting better. Some GMs, I didnt even know we had, but that could be a good thing because some of them are highly unqualified for their positions. Support tickets are getting better though.

Helpfulness: 2/10
Some GMs have no idea what they are doing and are not qualified. Personally, I think this GM staff ruined the server.

Economy: 1/10
Same old shops always on vend. Same old people. Economy never changed after years. Everyone is a vet that has everything. Impossible for new players to join and be competitive without donating or inheriting items.

Guild Competition: 0/10
Whats guild competition? Whats a guild? Whats woe? GMs are desperate for guilds and players and will bend over backwards for people. Apparently, if you join, you can get a full set of gears spawned by the GMs. The GMs are kinda corrupt on this server and lack leadership skills and experience. 

Class Balance: 5/10
Its alright. GMs dont really know game mechanics, so that explains.

Overall: 1.5/10
The server is basically dead. Leadership on this server is missing. Knowledge of game mechanics is lacking. No players and slowly decreasing. Economy has been horrible for years, no attempts or poor attempts to fix it for years. More things becoming dead. PVP, BG, DA, and WoE are non-existant. Same old minimal security. Only good for stopping some botting maybe if even. Finally, blocked ROMedic, but yet there are still a couple autopots that they don't know about. Auto clickers, Auto macros, Maya Purple Hacks and all that good stuff still work here. This server has claimed to have new staff, new client, and new webpage, BUT they still have the same lazy work ethic and corruption. Yes, people have been saying this and complaining about this server for years, but the staff just dismisses it and bans the "complainers," which is probably why they are where they are now. The staff is poorly organized and not qualified either, and to make it worse, the owner basically quit. Most of the staff are old players and/or have been related to ex-GMs in some way. New names, new clothing, same bs.

[close]

Hello, I'm Flan. I was the High GM when this was posted and now the new owner of aRO as of yesterday. Thanks for the review. I think that it may have aided to me becoming owner. I made a post in the Anesis forums about my knowledge of this post and my hesitation to respond to it because of how true some of this review is. I couldn't sit around and defend a server that I felt wasn't worth defending. I would like to take a moment to respond to it, if anyone wants to take time to read.

Re: Stability & Availability - Truth be told, probably less than a 4. Especially now that it's down. We went through a very rough patch with the map server crashing over and over and over for a month. Yup. I admit it. That was fixed though.

Re: Community - The forum community is basically what you see in this post. A LOT of hate, trolls, anger, and hostility. In game, people are a lot more friendly, helpful, and pleasant.

Re: Eventfulness - We had weekly forum and in game events, a WoE event, a Facebook event, and a PvP event all in the last month. For having so few players we sure had a lot of events. I will say some of the rules were not clear and some events were done without proper notification. This is something I will try to help staff with when the server is up again.

Re: GM Friendliness - I think most of our GMs are quite friendly. I'm probably the "least friendly" of all of them. But I manage to be well liked in-game and in the forums.

Re: GM Availability - I'm always in the forums. Fortunately, I have a full-time job that allows me to be on all day. In game, we had almost nothing after a while. The GM team we had quit because of Merkel. They are back down, plus I have hired a new PR.

Re: GM Helpfulness - I think all the GMs when they are in game are very helpful. There are one or two terribly knowledgeable or somewhat ignorant to what changes have been made to the server. One of the two has been dismissed as a GM. The other, I've never received and direct complaints for the players saying s/he is causing a problem.

Re: Economy - Heh... -1/10 would be more accurate. I do have a plan to bring it up to a 5 when we restart the server. There's not much we can do when you're messing a server that is 10 years old.

Re: Guild Competition - Agreed. I even agree with the spawned gears. I happened to take a look at the item logs today from Merkel. I am horrified. HORRIFIED. I can't even begin to tell you what I've seen. Firstly, Merkel's player accounts have been banned. So none of that will be leaking into the server. Secondly, I am personally combing over his item logs to attempt to remove the wrong that he caused. Aside from rolling back the server to when he took over, this is the best I can do to rid the place of him. I have no idea how long it will take me to undo this or if it's even possible, but I'm willing to try.

Re: Class Balance - Nothing has been changed class-wise since 2012. So I can't really defend what they did. When I was hired on, I was told by Merkel we were going to be revamping almost everything for more balance. So the team waited for him. He'd come back every couple months to say he was going to be balancing everything "soon". We waited. He came on to tell us not to change any of the custom gears. We didn't. That's all we were allowed to do this past year.

Re: Overall - According to your own numbers the rating should be 3.95/10. But that's aside from the point. The server is terrible. I forced Merkel to shut it down because I was ashamed of what it had become. I was so frustrated with the staff and Merkel that I was going to quit mid-month. We are an embarrassment in the RO community as we have been for years. We may be beyond redemption, but that is for me to decide. The OP is in our forums daily watching what's happening. They are free to contact me at any time with thoughts, ideas, complaints, or to return their spawned gear without me having to rip it off their account. All I ask is that players no longer contact the owner or GMs privately for "favors". Keep it to things that can be traced. Put it in the forum or a support ticket. I want to be as transparent as possible this time around.

Thank you for your time and thank you for your review.


--

Official statement regarding Anesis/Anuses: This HAS to change. I have already reserved a couple domains that will fit perfectly with the server and the legacy of aRO as we know it.

--

Those reviews are pretty accurate of the sadly true and destabilizing server.
Excitement is lacking in that game. I would say more but that post pretty sums up everything.

Hello Phi! ThePhi is right.

--

Wasn't a good run with the last administration. As much as staff members like to talk about having lives and such. A good team needs to take responsibilities. Even if the server owner is nothing more than a sponsor - his team needs to be competent and dedicated. Not full of hobbyists who got a GM hat. I suppose Flan, Linus and Kirek(was she still around) worked a bit. No idea what the rest did.

For me aRO ended when Talis gave up the administration. Josh was a competent caretaker who loved the server and tried his best to keep it afloat. But it has pretty much been ZombieRO after that. It required a graceful closing instead of renaming and attempt to milk the dismal playerbase a bit more. The server owners need to realize that their vets will in most likeliness never return, as such if they want to run a RO server in which new things can be done and new players can join - they are actually better off with a wipe and a new server from scratch.

I don't think you've logged in since I've been on staff. I welcome your knowledge and expertise as a a vet of aRO. I am not dismissing a wipe. It may have to be done. I'm not ashamed to admit it, especially with the discovery of how the copious amounts of spawned gear on the server.

--

Does she know how to maintain a server?

Why yes, yes I do. Thank you for your concern. However, with people like Linus, Neviril, and Finnian means the server won't have to depend on me to solely maintain a server. That's why people hire staff.

Does she know how to code? Probably not.

Why yes, yes I do. In fact, I was head GM of another server and I coded many of the scripts they still use. Granted, it was rAthena, not Herculues like aRO's client.

She seems more unskilled, extreme and radical than Merkel tbh.

Seems you have been out of the loop for the past 9 months and haven't seen what I've been able to do with the limited amount of resources I was given. I am more than qualified and highly skilled for this position. Sure, I may be more "extreme" and "radical" than Merkel, but I'd like to call it a multi-dimensional personality don't the typical 1D version everyone is used to dealing with. Perhaps I've scolded you on the aRO forums?

--

Anyway, that's all I have to say. There only defense I have to offer is that of myself and my own actions. Everything else, they are right and there's no defending it. The server is close. It may remained closed. That is my decision to make. Thank you for your time.

[zetsu~]

Yes, you agree that the server you now own has many problems. That is all there is to say. As for being out of the loop, all I have seen through these posts and posts regarding your server is that during your time the server population has significantly decreased until it died now. Good job! Do you just want players to congratulate you for no visible results or a dead server? If you put it as much work as you seem to think you deserve praise for, your server would be lively and you could probably attract more players with honesty and a better attitude. It baffles me that as a high GM, you did not see corruption from the owner and maybe even possibly supported him through all of it. Something seems off here.

[Subwoofer]

Regarding the Merkel gear:

http://imgur.com/wL5SMG2

And given how Merkel is a proven liar and considering how he acts is the equivalent of five year old not getting a toy from Walmart, this shouldn't be too surprising.

[Random Anesian]

.hdhshahjsvandnabbamdvabMd dgaja dgshanabxvsha

[aRO Flan]

@Zetsu - I'm not even going to go crying to the mods that a banned player is making crazy accusations on a review. I could, but I won't. Carry on with your hate. Your feigned lack of disinterest with the server isn't fooling anyone.

Regarding the Merkel gear:

http://imgur.com/wL5SMG2

And given how Merkel is a proven liar and his leadership and discipline is the equivalent of five year old not getting a toy from Walmart, this shouldn't be too surprising.

Everyone is welcome to check out what I've posted on the forums. I have been very honest and very transparent regarding this process. If anyone has questions or opinions I'm happy to answer them. However, I won't make a public mockery of the people who benefited from the spawned gear.

Regarding my ignorance to the item log and corruption - GM Skylar asked me on day two of being high GM to investigate Merkel I couldn't, I didn't even have access to anything. So I asked Merkel directly. He said a couple things 1) he was "testing gear" on his personal account. He said the gear he had never left his account and he hadn't touched in it months. 2) All the staff gets paid in credits. He is free to set his own "pay" so he can pay himself whatever he wants. Basically, if he felt his pay would be 10000 credit he could get all these items anyway. 3) The money was "owed" to him since he had spent a lot of money out of pocket to support the server in the past.  This all seemed plausible to me. Everyone knows Merkel has played since 2006 and never stopped. It would make since he had a bunch of OP items. No one gave me a list of what gear he may have had aside form a couple obviously spawned ones (all the glorious gear) so I shrugged it off.

It wasn't until sometime later that I had access to the item logs. And if anyone has actually seen our logs, they are perhaps the most confusing collection of data ever. I'd get into it, but trust me, 50% of it doesn't work, 10% of it is irrelevant information, and the rest may be correct, but you have to double check it because character IDs and account IDs have changed. On top of that, many of the characters used to move the items and zeny were deleted. I can see that now, but what I was looking at then didn't make any sense to me.

Anyway, it doesn't really matter now. It's my mess to clean up. It's fun to be an outsider and take jabs at the staff, but when it comes down to being staff and having the weight of the server and potentially hundreds of players enjoyment ruined by a decision of yours it's tough. Much respect to servers that have been around multiple years and still manage to get by. Especially much respect to TalonRO. I had everything backed up and ready to do the same thing Talon did many years ago. It wasn't about betraying someone whom I have considered a friend for many years. It was about preserving the game many people have received endless amounts of hours enjoying, the friendships that have been made, and the integrity of the server.

[triett]

Hahaha well since several of these replies seem to involve me, I guess I'll respond to what I can. I will attempt to give an unbiased take on this.

@Random Anesian
Some things are just not worth it.

@Flan
Where to start. I'm glad you finally saw the problems and decided to act upon them. Like I said, I hope it goes well for you. But, though you try to plead innocent, there is no way you did not know Merkel spawned gears. You knew the server was corrupt and always has been. You bragged about having slotted megs back then in reso. Also, where else do you think the endless supplies and stuff came from? Obviously nobody played, so it was blantantly obvious; you may have even been sitting around when stuff was spawned. A dead giveaway was, how did people have accounts with +8 soulbound extended class sqis when 1) they havent played for years 2) they were newer sqis? The +10 siege gears and infinite supply of siege gears and handouts to guild members was also another dead giveaway. Also, on your forums, reso seems to get most of the blame for receiving merkel gears (probably cause its coming from all Vintage members only because they still play), but Vintage got stuff from Merkel too, so its kinda shady to just put all the blame on one guild. For example, we all know Haruu/Skylar liked to brag about "breaking the server," but if I recall correctly, she was also in possession of Merkel's +10 artemis bow. Now lets see, she used it for ET runs, and I would think that that would be an unfair advantage. Also, other Vintage members did use Merkel gears for WoE too, so to make a statement saying they played fair is also rather false as well, but what do I know, they're the only guild left, so try to please them and keep them there.

As you said though, it is your mess and you can clean it up and distort things any way you want. I know you are good at manipulation as was demonstrated in the GM Bacon case, where she thought you were on her side from her story, but I remember you telling me and good ol Pucca over there that it made no sense why she would say that cause you wanted her gone too. All I can do is wish you the best of luck now though.

--
Now I'll do my own brief take on the server.
I think that it is bad that everyone knows who the GM's are. This causes obvious favoritism as well as GMs giving obvious info about players to other players (their friends). The staff does always seem to favor certain guilds at points in time and cater directly to them. Secrecy is a good thing, but there is too much politics and drama on that server since everyone knows the staff. Not much to do ingame. Main problem is lack of players, but that's due to other factors. This server is just lacking something. Sure, you've done a lot for the server in your time Flan, but results don't lie. There may be hope for the server, but who knows. I dont think that this is a bad server, but its just passed its time. Well, what do i know, I'm just a "salty" troll and someone that got banned from this server that "I am so interested in?"

As stated earlier, I will try to refrain from posting here anymore. I said what I wanted to, but if anyone wants to know anything, feel free to pm me here and I'll try tell you what I know about it.