My honest review of DeityRO

Started by Scarlet~, Sep 23, 2016, 09:43 AM

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Scarlet~

https://www.deityro.com/
https://forums.deityro.com/ (where the real magic happens)

It's a pre-renewal server btw
QuoteBasic Info: Rates: 50x / 50x / 25x
Quest Exp: 15x
MVP / Mini-Boss Card Drop: 0.01%
Regular Card Drop: 0.50%
Party Level Share Range: 15
Maintown: Midnight Island (with a couple revisions)
Guild cap: 26 (subject to change based on WoE population)
(I copied and pasted that from their forums)

My background:
I've been playing RO since 2003-2004 and have played on anywhere from low rate servers to super high rate servers. I participate in events, PvM, WoE, BG, hat collecting, but not really PvP. The last time I played on an RO server seriously was around 2012. I played a little bit in 2014, but it was only casually for a few weeks.

I've been playing DeityRO for a few weeks now.

First impressions:
I was told that Cubano was making a new mid rate server that would be the server I was looking for. I was skeptical because I believed that RO was a dead game and that I would not have fun playing it again. When I went on their forums, I immediately noticed that one of their admins were Cookie. Although I hadn't played RO in a few years, I remember distinctly that there was usually drama on servers where he was a staff on. I'm not sure of the details, but because I don't think I ever experienced Cookie-drama, that did not turn me off from trying DeityRO. The staff have repeated that he was only part of the server development and nothing else. However, as of 9/4, I believe that Cubano has stated that Cookie was no longer part of the team. I highlight this because I know a lot of players are turned off because they do not want to play on a "Cookie server"- however, honestly he was only part of development anyways and he is 100% not part of the staff anymore.

When I first entered the game, I was not happy that it started with a quest. This quest, called the "Novice Experience," actually did not take too long, and was helpful in leveling my novice. You don't really have to go anywhere except stay on the airship your character starts on. If you make any other character on that same account, you will be given the choice to skip the Novice Experience. However, if you make a new account, you will have to complete the Novice Experience for your first character.

This server also uses a Discord, a chat/voice chat system similar to Ventrillo/RaidCall.

Review: - in order of what I care the most about to what I care the least about
Population & stability: bad (population), good (stability)
I don't think I can even give it a number. At most, the server probably peaks at 30 players not including vendors and dual clients. It would be nice if more people played and would solve many of the issues (WoE, in game events, etc.).

The server is basically online 24/7 unless it's maintenance. The admin/dev will notify the server and post patch notes.

Donations... is it Pay to Win (PTW)?: No. 10/10 (aka balanced donation shop)
I, for one, hate PTW servers. Fortunately, this server is not PTW- you will survive and have fun without having to donate for items. The donation shop has bubble gum, headgear boxes (where a random headgear comes out), field manuals and some other things. Nothing broken, so I believe it's quite fair.

PVP, BG, WoE, castle drops, guild competition 5/10
I can basically clump this all together because the tl;dr is that it's not too good aka bad. However, the specific features of these non PVM activities are well thought out.

PVP is not existent although there are PVP rooms.

BG takes 6 people to start and I've seen it happen a few times. You join by typing like @joinbg or something. The only mode available is Conquest. When the population grows, I hope they add Rush and Flavius. I personally dislike Tierra and KVM, but whatever.

FBH and GTB are disabled in WoE (as they should be).

For WoE, it's only FE WoE 1x a week (okay because of the small population). AFAIK, there are two active guilds with about 10-15 active members each. Cubano said "War of Emperium Second Edition will begin once at least two guilds are ready to actively play WoE SE with 20+ players." He also recently added some guild packs so hopefully more people show up. You can read up more about that here: https://forums.deityro.com/topic/227-guild-packages/

WoE castles drop the same outdated RO gears that they dropped when they first came out. It would be nice if Deity Coins (will get into later) came out of them. If you own the FE castle, you have access to all the FE guild dungeons via the warper NPC. You do not need to go inside the castle and look for the invisible switch.

God items are available via quest on this server, but they are basically 99.9% impossible to make because the requirements have been customized or something. For one of them you need any MVP card that you will basically never get because of the drop rate is 0.01%; plus, you will need a million of the miscellaneous guild treasure chest drops.

Customization: 10/10
Quests for cute hats are available. You can also change any headgear into a costume by using a Deity coin + 1m zeny. Mobs also drop their respective costume hats; for example, Lady Solace drops costume Flapping Angel Doll, Kiel drops costume Kiel hat, Tanee drops costume Tanee hat, etc. I believe MVP and mini boss costume hat rates are 5% and regular mobs are 0.5%.

There are no wings on this server because one of the admins/devs hates wings. A loss for those from highly customized servers but a gain for those who would like to see more than just their own character on screen.

Deity Coins can be exchanged for many things including OCAs, +10 foods, Headgear box that has a random donation hat, etc. It's not too hard to get Deity coins (due to hourly events), and you can also trade cards in for them in a 1:1 ratio. Finally some uses for my Poring cards!

Some monsters drop something called "Fragments." For example, on the novice ground airship, the monsters there drop something called "Novice Fragment" or something and they can be exchanged for 100 novice potions. Basically if you collect x number of fragments, you can exchange them for an item more desirable. However you are not told what drops the fragments and the rate in which it drops.

For example, 2 Deadly Poison Fragments can be traded for 25 Poison Bottles. They seemed to be dropped by Poison Toad at Amatsu dungeon 2, Poison Spore at Payon field 5 and players believe it appears higher than a card rate.

Events: 6/10
There are automatic events every hour, 5 minutes past the hour. They include: Poring catcher (10 coins, 1 winner), Disguise (2 coins, multiple rounds so multiple winners), Dice (10 coins, 1 winner), and Cluckers (10 coins, 1 winner).

There are also forum events that occur all the time. They include: an event where the GM crops a screenshot of a location in the game and players have to find the place, a card event where a RO card art is zoomed in and players have to guess the monster, etc.

However, I give this a 6/10 because there have been absolutely 0 GM hosted in game events since I started this server.  I think my friend said once it was because there are not too many people who wish to participate in game or something, but I'm not too sure about that.

Commands & NPCs: 10/10

  • @go to towns available, as well as @storage, @gstorage, @refresh, @noks, etc.
  • Warper can take you anywhere your heart desires. Basically every field and dungeon are accessible by the warper, except for maps with MVPs (for example, you cannot warp to Payon dungeon 5 because Moonlight flower is there).
  • Healer buffs (bless/agi) and repairs your broken armor
  • You can basically find all the NPCs you need in their hometown midnight (refiner, card remover, etc.)
  • Some players may think the @commands and NPCs spoon-feed the players, but honestly it's 2k16 and no one wants to dual client to buff yourself while farming and then walk three maps to the field you need to go to

PVM/MVP experience: 8/10

  • When an MVP dies, a gravestone appears on that spot. It tells you the time of death of the MVP and who killed it. To me, this has it's pros and cons. Pro: people hunting for an MVP will not be teleporting all day looking for the MVP. Con: the person who killed it will know that others can see the death timer. Nevertheless, it is a better feature than having PVP enabled on MVP maps. To whoever thought of that idea of putting PVP on MVP maps, you tilted me off the face of oblivion all those years ago.
  • There's an MVP ladder for the top 10 (?). The top 3 get bloody branches I think, the amount I am not sure of.
  • Dead branch rooms available with NO PASSWORD needed, thank the lord. It's 1m, and the buyer can basically set it so that it's your party only, or your guild only. It's a nice feature because you won't have to enter a password everything you go into the room.

Staff availability, helpfulness, friendliness
Just because you are available doesn't mean that you're helpful, and doesn't also mean that you're friendly.
Availability: 8/10 - although I have yet to see a GM hosted event, there's always a GM online or in Discord. Also they actual hunt for bots; my friend who was farming one day got jailed because he doesn't check chat and did not reply to a GM when he was messaged. However, he talked to the GM later while in jail and everything was sorted out.
Helpfulness: 8/10 - for the most part, the GM team knows what they are talking about. The server has 3 admins and 1 of them is the main dev; he is really knowledgeable and implements changes/suggestions quickly after discussion. There are 2 event GMs and 3 support GMs and they answer all questions within a reasonable time frame in game and on Discord
Friendliness: 10/10 - they are kind and outgoing- they talk to you as if you are a friend, not someone who is "higher" than you

Final thoughts
Overall, I think this server has a lot of potential. The staff is always available to help, and changes regarding server feature and the direction it is heading towards is always open for discussion on forums and Discord. Customization is high due to costume gears, but not broken, distracting, or overly ugly. Guild packs are available so hopefully it attracts groups. The main issue is that the population is quite low, making other player-dependent aspects of the game rate lower (i.e. WoE).

Sorry for any typos/grammatical errors, it's early in the morning and I'm not fully awake yet

SyntheticSymphony

You went all out, didn't you?  /omg

After reading this, I thought of probably 4837 things I should have mentioned in my review (lol, too lazy to edit mine...)
Anyway, well said. More people really need to put this "QQ it's a Cookie server" crap in the past where it belongs, and give this server a chance.


Scarlet~

Quote from: SyntheticSymphony on Sep 23, 2016, 09:56 AM
You went all out, didn't you?  /omg

After reading this, I thought of probably 4837 things I should have mentioned in my review (lol, too lazy to edit mine...)
Anyway, well said. More people really need to put this "QQ it's a Cookie server" crap in the past where it belongs, and give this server a chance.

Yes! I'm enjoying the server but I just wish more people would check it out before quickly judging it. However, although there are things I enjoy on DeityRO, there are issues too that need to be discussed and resolved.