I'm going to quote-reply to your review to share and compare my own (cynical), if you don't mind.
MouRO is a server that caters to the "casual" player, and it's extremely evident with the large amount of changes available. However, before you jump to a conclusion let me say that all the changes made have clearly gone through a large thought process. All the changes made are staggering and it would take up this whole post if I were to list them all so I'll start with the more obvious ones.
The problem I have with MouRO is that it takes an established game and tries to modify it into something that essentially plays like a sequel or whatever the MMORPG equivalent of a Half-Life 2 mod would be. Also, when I think casual, I think accessible, and a seasoned RO vet wouldn't find MouRO to be immediately accessible with all changes (some of which don't seem to serve any purpose aside from changing it for the sake of changing it).
@diff - Quite possibly the best command in RO, hands down. This command allows you to change the difficulty of the map, ranging from 1 (pathetically easy) to 200 (unquestionably hard). While at first I thought this would get me easy experience punching ant eggs or obliterating Payon dungeon I found that the XP gain from lower difficulty levels was extremely lower. Thus, I gradually started to use the system to challenge myself or to even simply stay on a level I liked, gradually raising the difficulty to suit my needs.
Set @diff to 55 (Last I recall @diff was between 1 and 100 for some reason, 50 being equal to your level). Bingo, you'll hardly ever have to change it aside from when you want to intentionally make things easier/harder. This assumes you're soloing, which is the worst way to level in MouRO.
Monster Skills - Extremely cool, keeps you on your toes and pretty much eliminates the feeling of grinding. *All* monsters have the power to use a random few skills that change every twelve hours. You could be fighting for your life against some normally easy wolves who are now shelling out LoV's. I learned this the hard way when I was fighting some skeletons and suddenly they used Finger Offensive on me, I was then forced to utilize all the skills my blacksmith had (Hammer Fall, Revo, Mammonite) to keep myself alive and in the fight. Killing monsters that could easily flip the tables on you at any time combined with the @diff command makes PvM fun.
I found it didn't add nearly as much as you're trying to paint it to be. Monster Skills, for me, were an occasionally annoyance which sometimes lead to being killed due to a roll of the dice meaning they stunned me. Dying to something not exactly my fault? I don't consider that "fun".
Random Drops - Cool, but sometimes a bit much? This is a feature where any monster could drop any item at a very low chance. I was once awarded a Valk Armor by a boss skeleton (Although I suppose that makes sense). While it felt like I didn't exactly earn the item, it did give a new meaning to hunting. You could find some nice equipment for your character while you're leveling. Monsters in Mou also drop recovery items sometimes, which is great for keeping you in the fight.
I do like the healing item random drops, since it's a sort of positive reinforcement and it'd be tricky to completely level off healing drops alone (You still want to bring your own, they're just a bonus). The Mercenary scrolls are absurd though, and even high diffs become a joke when you can just double your firepower at will...or higher (if you get a well-build friend on your side)
Huge Party Influence - YES, YES, YES, YES AND YES.[/b] Definitely my all time favorite feature here, parties are greatly rewarded on Mou it seems.
I love and hate the party system. It's great that it encourages parties with a huge bonus, but maybe it encourages parties a bit TOO much. Levelling solo feels absolutely hellish, compared to a party of 2 being able to get more EXP due to higher diffs, and getting more OF it due to sharing.
Gameplay 10/10: The high point of MouRO, the @diff command gave me an adjustable experience no matter where I was fighting. Plus, the party system really gives props to anybody looking for a sidekick in battle. Fighting against monsters here gets downright scary at times, in a good way.
It definitely has a different feel to the gameplay. Which makes me curious why Skoltex isn't making his own game to add his ideas into.
Economy 2/10: Due to the small amount of players, there is none. This isn't the server's fault and is only due to the fact that the server needs a higher population before things can start rolling.
No argument here, everyone can farm their own materials or do item-for-item trades. The mall kind of hurts this too.
Class Balance 10/10: Mou has a staggering amount of changes made to each class, not only in the skills but in the way the class "feels". I expected my blacksmith to simply spam mammonite all day when I joined only to have it go something like this: "Hm, alright, Mammonite level 10, here we go. Die Cookie! Oh wait, why is the after-cast so slow? Is that Thunder Storm it's using? Why is that Myst Case fighting me too? Bah, now I'm dead." I went on the forums and found out that Hammer Fall now has a nice range and is more effective. Needless to say, Cookies aren't much trouble now =P
Your blacksmith being boosted is not class balance. All the changes ARE fun, but I feel like some classes are more awkward to play than they should be, or no longer really fit a certain "role".
Community 9/10: The best I've ever seen, ever. Besides the general niceness of the players you meet, there is even a NPC that lets you rollback your levels to help you level people below you. Many, many players are more than willing to utilize this to help you get your levels as a newbie. (I should mention here that the levels you lost come back after you relog). The forum community is stellar as well, offering you a lot of advice and tips to get you started.
No arguments here. MouRO has some nice folks, but I can't help but feel they're a bit clique-y due to the tiny persistent community.
In short, MouRO, in my opinion, is a fun server to look at for a week or two, but once the gimmicks and features become the norm, it just turns into another boring, semi-flawed RO server like so many others out there.
