My initial reaction and extended thoughts on NeuRO
Just a little background, I go by Eeyore and I'm an off and on again Ragnarok Veteran, I've played RO since its first come out in NA back in 2003, I've played on official all the way to 1k rate servers and have well over 500 in game hours put into ragnarok. I will be doing my review portion first and then follow it up with my first impressions of the server.
Availability/Stability: Of the week that I've been online I've actually never experienced any down time based off of when my playing schedule is, and when they did the patch which was a good thing for me and I predict that the admin decided to put the downtime at a low peak hour. Haven't had any lag, nor have I experienced any down time.
Population: The population is steadily growing from what I've seen based off of the twitter page but at any given time its roughly at about 200. I wasn't paying attention during WoE hours so I can't really comment on that specific part.
Community: This is really where from my perspective that this server is actually hurting, it may just be because this is the way RO is now, however no ones really talked to me on the contrariety I haven't really talked to them either, so it seems that the server isn't friendly but I wouldn't go as far as saying that it is unfriendly, I assume anyone could get on the server and have a 100% different experience, I've devoted most of my time to leveling and hunting so the social aspect really hasn't kicked in for me yet.
Staff/Admin: Event wise there was just 2 Admin events today and they seem really nice and talkative and friendly, I can't really comment on how helpful they are because I rarely need help due to how much ingame and server side experience I've had so again I can't really comment.
Competition: Haven't participated in WoE, or anything competitive yet, however there are videos and the competition looks promising.
Economy: This is another point where the server seems kind of like a seesaw, its economy can balance out because of reasons I will list in my first impression section, however there are a few things that have the potential of ruining the experience in the whole zeny hoarding and economy players out there.
Playability: Server is like any other RO server, unique in its on way and bad in its own way, the best thing about this server is that there are always things happening and I hope that these mini events and community groups continue to happen.
Over all regardless of how much this next part is going to sway you in the other direction I suggest you try the server out for yourself, its actually really good; on the opposing side I want to be 100% honest with everyone and voice my concerns and hopefully that'll make the server better in the long run.
Eeyore's First Impressions and Concerns. After installing and getting into the game my initial experience was actually quite bad; I was thrown into a map flooded with poring, poporing, lunatic, fabre, and drops. Which seems like an ideal place to actually start, however what was very disheartening was the wizard doing meteor storm and mass farming all of the mentioned monsters cards. For someone who's played RO as long as I have that is not really the initial experience you would expect or want out of a server, how said person got into the specific room with a second class character I've still yet to figure out. Once I actually got into the main city [I stayed in that first room til level 40 because of super easy experience and the fact that I can get fabre and drops cards for future use was really my main motivation] I found that many people weren't talking even when I attempted to talk to them, so the second sort of thing that irked me is the sort of elitist community, and even 4 days after many people are very.. how do I put this, not talkative. It's not quite a dickish attitude but it's not friendly [I am generalizing this on quite a broad scale.]
Instead of Prontera being littered with vendors they have a nice neat vending room which is really good, however Prontera [main city streets] are littered with "BRB" "POTTY" "B> VALK ARMOR" chat rooms and these aren't regulated off to the side people put them anywhere and everywhere in the streets and it makes it hard to actually click on the npc and such. Of course there are people who have the proper manners and knowledge to actually put these sorts of things off to the side however there are people who don't and it makes navigating the main city very hard.
Once I got into leveling I found the first thing about the server that I actually didn't like a lot and its basically where the dungeon warps are. The dungeon warps always warp you to the first level, however there is a few places that I personally can't agree with having as a warp. Mainly the lack of Glast Heim warps, there are only 2; One to prison the other to the main Glast Heim map. The next warp is Brasilis Dungeon 1, mainly because of the Iara drops [Witherless 12.5%, Crystalmirror 25%, AND the main attraction Heart of Mermaid 100%] Also yes I realize that obeaune have just as good drops however, the witherless drop rate is 5% less, and there are only 40 on a gigantic map where as on Brasilis Dungeon there are 60 in the first medium map and 120 in the second level which is roughly around the same size as the first. I can't imagine how many AD pots there are on this server.
While getting my sniper up to higher levels I found yet another thing that left a sour taste in my mouth and is probably the reason for the amount of snipers doubling the other classes. The fact that snipers can change the element of their attacks based off of the type of arrows they use is the benefit to being a sniper that and quite high dps and lock down capabilities in PvM. Because of this there is absolutely no need for an arrow vendor of every single type of arrow. ESPECIALLY steel arrows! [If anyone needs a better explanation why there should just be basic vendor arrows in a vendor I would be willing to appease you.]
There is one last part about this server that is actually quite puzzling and that is how many different types of currency there are let me break this down for everyone:
Zeny [Standard RO Currency]
Vote Points [Vote for Points]
Kafra Points [Vote Points are changed into Kafra Points on a 1-1 ratio through the site.]
Neu-Coin [Donation coin that can also be redeemed by accumulating 600 kafra points.]
Event Points [I won an event earlier today it said I was rewarded with 100 points and I've looked around to find out what I can use these toward or change them into and there is absolutely no information on it.]
So basically this is the order VP -> KP -> Neu-Coins -> Donation Items. Where the event points fall into the mix is out of my realm of knowledge.
All in all the complaints I have are mostly about how the economy will be effected later, and small fixes:
After saying all of the bad, there are no more complaints on my behalf meaning that I will be playing on this server until it eventually dies [which hopefully isn't for a while.] :]
TLDR: Server is great, if you're looking for a MidRate Server join this one because its actually among the best I've played on.
