Overview:
HMRO is rather unique kind of server, heavily customized lowrate with increased stat and level cap. Item modfications started out as way to make originally useless items useful, but now evolved to scale where changes list contain several hundreds of items. Despite (or because of) that, the server remains surprisingly balanced. Important thing about this is, server staff listens to players' suggestions and implement many of those. This helps to keep balance in check. Server is less WoE and more party oriented, and is overall friendly and quite drama-free. There are also EXP events, there is always one area where experience gain is doubled to provide alternative areas for leveling.
Now, a bit more indepth:
Stability: 10/10
Over past few months, I don't recall any serious lag problems, so there is no point in rating it any less than 10.
Availability: 10/10
Server is up except for updates.
Staff:
Friendliness: 10/10
Really can't complain there. They never refuse to help with problem, they're easy to talk to, and overall set a shining example of how should server staff behave.
Availability: 7/10
Even GMs have lives. They're not much visible ingame, cause they are often on their legit chars, but are still capable of answering quickly on forums (within 24 hours or less), and problems are usually solved quickly.
Helpfullness: 10/10
No problem or question stays unanswered or unsolved.
Staff overall is excellent. Some people might have problem with fact that they have legits, but server has been up well over year and there's no trace of corruption or favoritism. They really care about server, and are responsible enough to not do anything to harm it. There aren't many GM run events, they are usually run when there is significantly more than average players online, so about once in week on average.
Community:
Friendliness: 9/10
Most of people you'll meet there are very friendly, and welcoming to newbies. There isn't much drama, those few sparks that fly after some WoE are extinguished quickly. Trolls and such are dealt with quickly.
Eventfulness: 7/10
It's quite possible to organize Thanatos or other high-level party if you care for it, and small leveling parties are quite common here. But it is still a low population server, with about 15-25 players online, excluding vendors. It is growing, slowly but steadily. Good thing is that there isn't much guild segregation outside WoE...
Gameplay:
Economy: 6/10
Common problem with low population servers. Newbies will get started fairly quickly since experienced players often don't mind giving away lower grade items, but rarer, sought after items are rarely sold or traded.
Guild Competition: 8/10
Well, the server is quite small, but there are two bigger and several small WoEing guilds. Recently this has improved a lot, I'd rate it 6 a couple months ago.
Class Balance: ?(9/10)
I'd prefer to omit this rating this from my review, because this is still a bit enigma. Most of balancing is done via modifying items nad cards to suit certain underused class/build, and since there isn't a week to go by when some new changes aren't introduced and overall low population that might not be capable of exploring all the options, there might be some too powerful build somewhere out there...but because at this moment, there is no overly played class and you will see usually less played classes like TK ranker or Gunslinger/Ninja around and GM team is capable of acting if such problem arises, I decided to go with 9.
Overall, it is a very enjoyable server, with unique features that make it worth playing.
