NovaRO in-depth review

[KickStart]

First time posting a review on the forums, but since I don't have a 500 character limit.... 
I'll go in-depth on some stuff, and not so in-depth on others.


NovaRO is a server I chanced upon several months ago after yet another half-year hiatus from RO. You know how it goes.
IGN is Ragenarok if anyone stops by. No guild atm.


Anyways, meat and potatoes.

•Overview
NovaRO is a low rate server catering to fans of traditional RO. It's the closest I've found to official once you take the rates out of the equation. Pretty high player counts, no game-breaking items/customs, decent staff and player demeanors, and good uptime.

•Rates
NovaRO sits at 25x/25x/10x . Personal opinion - this is great for the new 175 level cap in Renewal. Faster leveling without being brokenly easy, it plays nicely with the sliding experience penalties in renewal. Drop rates are high enough to make farming worthwhile without feeling entirely hopeless.

•Playerbase
When I started playing here in uh.... July?
Playerbase sat at about 800 with spikes to 900. Playerbase now sits at 900-1k consistently, saw a spike of 1100+ a week or so ago during WOE. A nice mix of vets along with newer players, it feels a lot like traditional RO. But also not, because autoloot, @go, etc.
Pretty good selection of both PvM and PvP/WoE guilds, though it can be hard to break into WOE as a guild until you're established. I did see the server addressing the issue, which earned them major points in my book, as they are doing it by directly consulting players every step of the way.

•Player attitudes
I have yet to run across -bad- people here. You always have your trolls, etc, but it's not super prevalent here that I've seen. Lot of rangers, though. Rangers everywhere .
AFK Alchemists can be annoying , but I think they addressed this by requiring an AI that doesn't kill steal, and removing autoloot from homun-only kills. I did like that bit.

•Customs
There are a lot of hats you can get with activity rewards or via their cash shop. Be online for an hour, and once a day you get loyalty points and/or shop currency.
Mostly just hats/headgears in the loyalty store and the cash shop. Nothing game-changing, no perks for people who throw money around. They just get more hats faster. That is kind of a perk, though. Hatnarok
This is amplified by the fact they have a couple dozen custom headgear quests. Easy access to walkthroughs on their Wiki, which is also a nice addition.
Server uses the typical low/midrate @command suite , @go, @ii, @whodrop, @Mi, @whosell, @Autoloot, @noks , (I'm missing a few, lol.) They have seasonal events like a summer festival, full of custom minigames you play for coins, redeemable for custom summer event hats and the like.

•MVP's
MVP's are free-for-all , but staff is usually great about settling disputes. Haven't seen a lot of griefing personally, though. Since they stay up to date on content, there's usually something new to go for.

•Overall Content
Pretty great content all around, Server is on Episode 15.2 , pretty frequent updates get pushed out. They keep pace fairly well, it's about as close to official content timelines as you get without playing it, imo. Instances work here. Fire Basin, Geffen Magic Tourney, etc.

•Staff
They have a 4-5 tier system with their staff. They have 2-3 main Administrators, 5-6 Game Masters, a couple of Trial Game Masters, and a ton of "Helpers". Helpers are basically community members who help other players on forums, in-game, and on their discord. Someone is available almost 24/7, but I think they need to work on their Oceanic time zone coverage. It is a tiny bit lacking, aside from the Admins who never sleep. They have multilingual staff, though the server's primary language is English. I did like that they cater to all nationalities with that rule in place, still. I have not seen staff mishandle a situation yet, most bans or punishments are fairly warranted.

•Overall
9/10 I'd say, only due to a lack of staff forum presence at times, and the occasional server issue, but that's pretty typical. Mostly stable server with good content and acceptable people.
Their Discord server is a magical place full of memes and RP groups. Oh, I forgot to mention they have a dedicated RP group, which is pretty cool, though it's not my thing.

•Stuff I'm not a fan of
-Lack of custom quests aside from headgear/resource gathering quests.
-Shortage of GM-hosted events (I've only been here a few months though. Cannot speak to this 100%.)
-I see more Administrator activity than GM activity. This isn't bad per-say , but GM presence should be at least as consistent, if not more consistent than the administrators.

I'll fill more of this in tomorrow, will post pics and such if allowed.

[LezzieLez]

Hey! I just join as well. It's been two weeks and I don't know how long you've been on but it seems pretty active with events like the Dice game and Disguise event, just not GM-hosted ones. I like the server  but I do agree that Ranger is very popular. I don't think GM's can really do anything about it, but I think more people should try other great starter classes too like Oboro and RG. They are great farmers in their own right. I've been playing Royal Guard and I've been entertained with its versatility. I also agree with the GM presence > Admin argument, but I have yet to really need their help since the community responds more often anyway.

[Raikon]

Yeah there's few Event GMs. I assume that's why they put so much focus on automated events.

In terms of custom content, the summer and halloween events were pretty damn amazing, but they are sesasonal. Also you didn't mention Monster Hunter! You should check it out in-game, it's a custom instance with custom MVPs, made to be more of a challenge to endgame people.