SanctusRO

[Lingering]

So the owner asked me to provide a full review and said I'm full of hatred and told me that I should quit now. First off I should say that in my opinion a good server owner should really try and work out any issues with his or her players. A closed attitude is NOT how you develop a great RO server. Now I'd like to say that I really really really wanted to like Sanctus. I still haven't given up hope yet, but I'd like to say that a few things that the server is advertised as are simply NOT true. I'm trying to be fair, I don't hate the server, I just want to make it better. If you wouldn't like any critiques at all or ways to improve yourself by all means disregard this post.

First of all I'll talk about the things I like. I like the events, and the server is relatively stable. The admin is technically very competent to code all of these things and can be seen online a lot. Features like the warper and the @commands are pretty great. The server family is also pretty good, I met a few people who were extremely nice and helped me out a lot. The freebie package is also great.

Now for the things I dislike:
It's advertised as a purely-iRO like gaming experience, but how can it be like iRO if renewal is not fully implemented. The class and skills are, but many things still aren't there. For example the new casting time system is not implemented. It's very easy to get insta-cast making Warlocks and Sorcerers more powerful than other classes. The whole point of renewal was balance and the removal of imbalanced things like instacast. Magic is thus much more powerful than a vast majority of everything else in the server. Sorcerer's spamming diamond dust and psychic wave can pretty much kill everything in PvP and WoE. AND GTB is disabled so there's no REAL way to defend yourself aside from play a magic class yourself. MDEF gears are useless because of the renewal skills high MATK % modifiers.

The server also is advertised as having no custom items and yet many of the items are edited and in my opinion range from slightly overpowered to very overpowered. I'll even make a list:

Power of thor:
Official- Flee+5, All stats +1.

Sanctus- FLEE + 10, ALL STATUS + 2.
Resist Demi-Human Monsters by 10%
[Mage & Alchemist Class]
Intellect Side of Thor gives 5% MATK
[Hunter Class]
Grants 10% more damage on ranged attacks.
Gives extra 10% resistance against Demi-Humans.
[Priest Class]
Gives 20% more healing power and 5% MATK. SP Recovery + 10%

So basically this headgear gives all stats +2 AND 10% demihuman reduc, and if you're a ranger gives you a total of 20% reducs, 10% increase damage, AND stat bonuses. NO headgear in iRO comes even close to that. The closest is an overupgraded cat ear beret, which still doesn't give half the buffs this does.

Spare Card:
Official- No bonuses except the chance to drop a blank card

Sanctus- All stats +3

A lower headgear that gives ALL STATS +3? Again, rather imbalanced. AND it has a slot. In fact, ALL middle and lower headgears have slots, which again, iRO doesn't use.

Ears of Ifrit:
Official- STR + 1, Mdef + 3
Increases damage of Fire Bolt, Fire Pillar, Meteor Storm skill by 2%.
Increases damage of Bash, Magnum Break, Pierce skill by 2%.
Add a 5% resistance against Fire Property monsters.
Reduced a 5% resistance against Water Property monsters.

Sanctus-STR + 5, DEX + 5, ATK+ 4%, Mdef + 10
Increases damage of Fire Bolt, Fire Pillar, Meteor Storm skill by 2%.
Increases damage of Bash, Magnum Break, Pierce skill by 2%.
Add a 5% resistance against Fire Property monsters.
Reduced a 5% resistance against Water Property monsters.

A midheadgear that gives an addition 4 strength, 5 dex, and 4% attack? The closes thing in iRO is 3D glasses or robo eyes, and robo eyes only gives 2% and NO stat ups. And sanctus added a slot too.

Shining Pirate Dagger-
Official- I can't find it. Regular pirate dagger- reflect 1% of physical damage

Sanctus-ATK + 8%, Increase damage to Demi-Humans by 8%.

8%?! ATK up 8% ANDDD increased damage by 8%? IN A LOWER HEADGEAR? If that's not imbalanced I don't know what is.

Variant Shoes:
The difference is that sanctus version has a slot. +20%HP/SP AND a slot?

I could go on but I'm pretty tired and don't have all day.

Now his claim that donation items are EASILY obtainable in-game. He's right, you can quest for them. Now most, if not all of the donation item quests require 10 platinum coins. Now you can't get platinum coins unless you go through a coin trader, and the highest value coins you can actually get in-game to trade in are mithril coins. It takes 10 mithril coins to get 1 platinum coin. You can only (as far as I know) get mithril coins through the automated events, specifically the maze event. So to get 10 platinum coins you need 100 mithril coins. Now let's say that you win 3 maze events a day (they're every hour but lots of competition. I believe you get 2 for each win) and get 2 coins each for 6 coins a day. It would take 17 days of nonstop winning and assuming you win 1/3 games, 6 hours a day of playing just to get the platinum coins for ONE equip. Now if you want the standard headgear setup of Power of Thor, Ifrit Ears, and Shining Pirate Dagger/bubble gum that's 51 days non-stop playing 6 hours a day.

Now there's the problem that most donators also have proxy skin fragment, as well as glorious (KVM) weapons. Now aside from donating, KVM weapons you can get through KVM. However NO ONE I know on the server does KVM. and KVM you need an 8v8 team, and good luck finding a team. Everyone who has a +20 glorious weapon that I know donated for it or bought it from someone who donated for it. And since it's essentially ridiculously almost impossible to get KVM weapons without donating PvP and WoE is thus also unbalanced.

Those are just some of the highlights. Again, I don't want to trash talk the server, and I want to see it get better, but this is the truth. All of the item descriptions are taken directly off the SanctusRO homepage item database and the quest requirements directly from the in-game quest shop that I'm looking at right now. And I've been playing the server for about 2 months so I'm not just some newbie.

So there. There's my "untruthful" review about the donation items that are "easy" to obtain and the "no custom" items and my "hatred". By the way crab mentality refers to "if I can't have it neither can you", which makes no sense in the context of my review. I want SanctusRO to do well, and I want to enjoy playing it, but clearly as I've shown it's very very difficult to do so without donating and playing in the not fully implemented renewal system.