EssenceRO

[Indued]

1-Bad
10-Excellent

Stability - 5
For the most part, this server is rather stable, although when it goes down, it goes down for a long time, mainly due to the inactivity of the Staff considering there are only maybe 1 or 2 staff members that can actually do anything about it. The most recent downtime exceeded 15 hours, and the one before that lasted for at least a day.

Availability - 7
Server's available for the most part, except when it goes down. No problems here.

Community Friendliness - 3
The server fails in this aspect. The community is split up into 3 main divisions: people who WoE, people who PvM, and then the hat makers. Main chat is full of idiotic people who just talk nonsense half the time and then there are those who violate rules yet don't get punished. Forums are probably the worst part of the server. The PvM junkies try to make game breaking suggestions against certain skills that have a major effect in the WoE/BG/PvP Environment and then lash out at anyone who provides a reasonable counterargument. The hat makers (mainly the Final Sacrifice guild) simply troll the WoE community, and have done so ever since the WoE community asked for an overhaul in WoE, nearly a year and a half ago.

Eventfulness - 2
Terrible. No events whatsoever.

GM Friendliness - 1
The Staff is very hypocritical. I can provide examples of at least 4 incidents in which someone was either hacked or banned without any reasonable justification and although the staff maintains that they will listen to any appeals on the player's behalf, they usually turn a deaf ear to said appeals. They do not listen to the community and instead implement their own version of "what players want," which is usually the opposite of what the playing populace actually wants.

GM Availability - 2
The staff is usually available through the irc channel, but good luck actually finding one ingame to actually ask for support. Most of the time you're stuck having to ask Main chat for a solution to a problem.

GM Helpfulness - 1
Like previously mentioned, the staff fails in this section. They do not listen to the community, and instead just dish out forum bans and ingame bans to those who have valid points. It's gotten to the point where many people who have played on the server for more than a year have just gotten tired of the staff's inaction towards improving the general quality of the server and left.

Economy - 3
The economy is broken. Too many custom items and not enough zeny sinks to get rid of excess zeny. There was a recent spike in inflation and the server suffered dearly for that

Class Balance - 2
Here is another area where the staff dropped the ball. The inclusion of 3rd jobs has literally broken the point of skill builds considering that all 3rd jobs can get every single first and second class skill available to them, which makes many classes quite unbalanced. Most of the skill changes were not even necessary. Take Tarot card of fate, which originally had a static success chance. Essence has quite literally f*** the mechanic of the skill up so that one can stack LUK to give it a higher success chance, which when coupled with Perfect Dodge working on physical attack skills like Asura Strike and Sacrifice, makes clowns/gypsies nigh unkillable. The Level caps are quite ridiculous too.

Guild Competition - 1
Competition? What is that? EssenceRO has no guild competition whatsoever, which isn't a surprise considering the f*** up mechanics of WoE. When you have more SE castles open than guilds who actually participate in SE then you have a VERY SERIOUS PROBLEM. Half the time when someone tried to initiate competition, everyone would back off because it was so easy to obtain castles on the server, so why bother for competition. Also, the server lies about its 1000+ population for WoE. The amount of people who actually WoE nowadays barely hits 100, much less 200. Quite possibly the worst server out there in terms of competition.

Overall Score: 27/100

I do not recommend this server to anyone looking for a competitive WoE environment. The staff bans people unjustly, then turns a deaf ear to their appeals, which is bad considering half the time they don't have any actual proof of any wrongdoing. As a matter of fact, one staff member was using GRF edits and quite literally posted a video with proof on the server, yet the rest of the staff did nothing about it. Another instance was when a gm @kill'd a player because her guild was getting PK'd on an MvP map. Again the staff did nothing about it.
The staff however, is good at silencing people at the first sign of any attempts to incite competition, or when someone is posting solid fact. The staff simply clicks the lolwarn button and that's that. Threads get deleted without any reason, they get locked the moment someone says f***" or s***" or "murked."
The staff also has no idea about competitive mechanics or how to fix them. WoE has been a joke for nearly a year, and yet the staff has done absolutely nothing to fix that. Yet they keep implementing hats and other insignificant gameplay changes because they're all easier to do. Someone suggested that the benches in Geffen be sittable on and the staff IMMEDIATELY moved that suggestion to Pending, whereas the Suggestions to improve WoE/BG/PvP have been sitting idle for nearly a year, with clear solutions posted by the players themselves.
Overall, this server is on a downward spiral and the staff is too busy banning players and deleting important forum threads regarding significant server improvements to notice it.

[Head Monocle of DOOM]

Hmmm. You have lots of words and a nicely formatted review but I see a distinct lack of proof for which to help your arguement.

I like the review but I can't bring myself to believe it if you don't show me proof.

[Usagimimi]

GMs are in-game seldom, true, but they're forum-active and players will help you. Why does it have to be a GM that supports, when the massive player base is only too willing?

They're helpful on the forum, too, always answering questions, responding to bug reports, etc.

3rd jobs are in PvE, not PvP / WoE (last time I played) and they balanced out Sniper to be able to pass Pneuma.

I see a lot of issues with what you've written.

[Chojiro]

Gives a pretty bad impression, huh. I wouldn't play on a server like this. Sounds like the forum is just a load of trolls who don't play the server, community is important to me too.

GMs are in-game seldom, true, but they're forum-active and players will help you. Why does it have to be a GM that supports, when the massive player base is only too willing?

GM support is not the same as player support

I would rather take the advice of people and try to make it better than to simply blow down their arguments and say things are false. I guess that shows the admins attitude.

[Kuprin]

I recall having similar issues with EssenceRO myself. Bad server.

[Betrayed]

I played on EssenceRO for about 6 to 8 months. My time there was forgettable, once I had maxed and hunted the basics, I did nothing but grind for WoE items, and even then, that wasn't great once Shatterpoint was gone.

Honestly, I liked the server at first, especially in the extremely early days, but these days... I don't think I could honestly say I'd have a friend play there.

[MeowyMeow]

Terrible server. Yes, it's all about proof.

To be honest, when I joined eRO, I had much fun. (yes i'm a late player btw). No one really does anything right now, WoE competition is terrible, bad guilds, f*** everything, MvP card spree, everything.

GMs, or Enforcement GMs, ban/warn/delete your posts for anything, and everything. Let's say for example someone's new to the server and we're answering truthfully, they delete our posts too. Truth hurts, yes. But this server should been dead, long ago. Or a wipe, at least.

EssenceRO isn't even Ragnarok Online. For those who played there for long, you'll know what I'm talking about.

[Envirotologist]

I've been playing for about two years on eRO and trust me the last year and a half the server have been going downhill.

GM abuse. GM Aria just a short while after she was appointed as Support GM this happened:
Her and her guild were getting PK'ed by ONE wizard. She got mad and jumped onto her GM character and start @killing. You want proof?
Spoil yourself:



When asked of her respond of this case, she didn't give any form of formal apology, in fact her response were along the line of "not sorry"

Another GM, GM Praetor was banning people including his guildmates for grf-ing. Here's the twist he had known they were using GRF for weeks prior to, here's a double twist, he.was.using.grf.too.

2nd point: WoE scene.

Absolute joke...
Reason being, too much open castle and not enough guild participating for that many castles. 5 castles for FE, 3 castles for SE, obviously guilds will fight for the best castle however the excess amount of castle become a place where guilds that couldn't compete spending 1 hour precasting with no one even attempting to take the castle from them.

The arguments against are that small guilds will be unable to grow, for the past year or so it has been one guild chasing the other guilds, these guys doesn't even care what castles they end up with or what treasure, all they want was battle. But other guilds wants a castle of their own whether the treasure or incentive is good or s***, if they can't end up with the best castle they can still get items from a castle no one cares about.Ask yourself this question; how can small guilds grow if they're not actually 'participating' in battles?

Even for SE which is the supposedly be the main WoE, only 2 guilds competing, for 3 castles...before it was 3 guilds.

If you'd like to spend your time reading http://forums.essencero.com/topic/36286-number-of-open-castles-during-woe/, you'd see after 7-8 months of suggesting to lower the amount of castles, the result is null.

The good news seems fading aswell Tira (server owner) came back and considering the proposal of lowering castle amount, however as soon as she posted this

PENDING: ETA 09/21/2010

ref:http://forums.essencero.com/topic/39767-general-woe-mechanics-finalising/page__st__160

We have yet to hear from her as I'm typing this. Even with 2 Development Staff, these guys are afraid to take the responsibility to their hand and go ahead with the change even after Tira already gave the OK to go.

BG: Oh God BG is dead 1 day after it was launched, no/expensive incentive, consumables are way too expensive to get, even if you do get them they're s***. Blessing scroll for 100 medals? you're lucky if you can get 100 in a few hours. It's slow to start, and you'd probably spend more consumables than to farm them through BG, you probably better off farming outside BG...

Economy: OP pretty much spot on, they just made MVP easier to kill so that everyone can kill them with little help potentially increase the number of MVP cards dropped. Previously you'd need a party of healer/tanker/dps which encourage team work and group participation, that's no longer the case.

Overall the GM staff are bad decision makers, for example a friend of mine have a forum account and was warned 5% for trolling, then he made another account for trolling purpose. One day that trolling account was notified and got warned to up to 25% and his other account got 100% (wtf?) after his banned ended, the 100% was never taken off and the next day both his account are banned and permabanned without further notification.

If you want a server that will hold your hand in joy and harmony, hit and giggles with your friends, making kawaii hats and just terribad playing with other terribaddies. This one for ya.

[Head Monocle of DOOM]

Envirotologist has proofs, go him.

I had a shuffi though the forums already and yup the GMs suck.

[Gankz]

All the "nerfs" they've applied are s*** crazy and it made the community think it's okay to change any skill if they can't win against it. I left that server ages ago and I've never looked back.

[ahbenzz]

All the "nerfs" they've applied are s*** crazy and it made the community think it's okay to change any skill if they can't win against it. I left that server ages ago and I've never looked back.

Exactly, and that's what they call: "capturing the essence of ragnarok online"

[Betrayed]

Don't forget the part where they won't give any nerfs to the Bard/Dancer branch despite how out of hand they've gotten there.

The GMs there really are trash. Hidden does a lot of work, sure, but he's also an idiot. I remember going to PvP one day. Why did I go? To PvP. So some Gypsy that just wants to sit around and talk keeps getting killed by everybody and cries HARASSMENT and gets immunity there. What the hell is up with that?

It's almost as bad as not being able to say "Good game, guys" in a WoE thread because you'll get warned for "trolling"

[Euphie]

I think this is the first negative review I've read in terms of Essence, many people seem to think its one of the best (if not the best) pserver around. Well not that I've searched for reviews of it but still xD
I can say from experience that its quite a big undertaking even to just gm on a large server (with a small team that is), but thats no excuse for corruption or negligence.

[Betrayed]

If you just go play the server and don't get into PvP, WoE, MvPing, the market or the community at all then yeah, it's nice.

But... what would be the point of playing there? That's the conclusion I came to when I left the server months ago.

PvP wasn't fun. GMs giving immunity to people, class balance a disaster and a half, and you'd be lucky to not get ganked walking in.

WoE rarely had two guilds genuinely challenging eachother. I'm not saying it never did, the fact that I stayed there for over half a year for nothing but WoE meant something at least.

MvPing, good luck unless you've got a guild and people that know what they're doing from the get-go.

The market... hah... hahahaha. BlackoutRO is arguably better in this concern.

The community... see, I liked RO from the beginning because it was a very social game. Essence is anything but, with most players held up in private guild towns or not talking to anybody in Old Payon.

[Myteriouss]

If you just go play the server and don't get into PvP, WoE, MvPing, the market or the community at all then yeah, it's nice.

But... what would be the point of playing there? That's the conclusion I came to when I left the server months ago.

PvP wasn't fun. GMs giving immunity to people, class balance a disaster and a half, and you'd be lucky to not get ganked walking in.

WoE rarely had two guilds genuinely challenging eachother. I'm not saying it never did, the fact that I stayed there for over half a year for nothing but WoE meant something at least.

MvPing, good luck unless you've got a guild and people that know what they're doing from the get-go.

The market... hah... hahahaha. BlackoutRO is arguably better in this concern.

The community... see, I liked RO from the beginning because it was a very social game. Essence is anything but, with most players held up in private guild towns or not talking to anybody in Old Payon.

That sucks right there; Game Masters giving Immunity? It seems Essence doesn't care about players, and their staff that is corrupted. It seems they don't care if people leave (from the looks of it). In my opinion, it seems the owner just cares about the money he/she is making off. 1) He/she doesn't care about corrupted Staff members. 2) He/she doesn't care what people have to say (take in suggestions). 3) He/she doesn't care what is happening to his/her own server.