Let's Play RO [Review]

[CyanideKisses]

Review of Let'sPlay RO


Overview

Evening people, here writing this review for Let'sPLay now that I've spent some time on the server. I've been playing here for little under a month, and have currently four characters. While this review may seem critical, it's not my intentions to do so, but otherwise bring my thoughts into a cohesive place.

Firstly, I chose this server because it seemed like on of the very few 99/70 pre-renewal class servers that deserved my attention. The website was really nice, layout was well done; and the availability of @ commands such as Autoloot and storage were a huge plus.

General

Upon logging in, I was dumped into a pretty standard poring room; with an NPC that gives you a 1 Week timed headgear that allows the use of Agi up and Blessing. Very nice, a very welcomed gift for someone starting from scratch. Leveling was fine, as I knew what I was getting into joining 80/80/50 rates server. Nothing felt too horrible, until i started leveling an alchemist, which was a headache and a half really.

The main town is organized very nicely, Utilizing a district warper to take you to important zones immidiately.
-Town hall (Class up, skill/stat reset, color changes etc etc etc.)
-Vending zone
-Refinery {All refinery related npcs, including card remover and the phracon/emveartecon dealer, which was super nice. Socketers too!)
-Group leveling areas
-Tiered items quests

It was just really nice having everything organized into zones that didn't clump up the main town with a bunch of npcs. My only gripe is that I wish the auto-vendor npc that put you in a vending spot was a bit more transparent on what number goes to what vending cell. Was a lot of guessing games trying to get a good spot to @autotrade at while being visible.

Server Monetizing

Honestly where a lot of my gripes come from. The donation shop is very expensive, especially for a game as old as ragnarok online. Not to mention that you can just flat out buy sliepnirs and stuff. I think the pricing needs to be toned down a bit. While I understand that RO definitely has a hardy playerbase of diehards who will happily spend the money, I believe it'd be better for the server in the longrun to have more accessible pricing. Some headgears can reach up to 20.00 USD a pop, depending on the "usefulness"

((Disclaimer: Maybe this is normal pricing in private RO servers, but I haven't played in years and was a little taken back that the pricing comes straight out of 2005, with no way to earn free currency. ))

Now my biggest gripe. the VIP function. As you can see below the VIP function itself isn't really too bad:



But lets fixate on two things. MVP maps are 100% un-warpable to regular players. Even on a server with an average of 6~10 online, I find it hard to fight timers against a VIP player, to the point the only MVP's I can even get my hands on are Garm and Moonlight, with the occasional eddga. Not exactly high ticket MVP's. It creates unfair imbalance between f2p and vip supporters; which is normal; but this is a 80/80/50 server in which MVP's have a lot to do with general server economy.

Bubblegum is also strictly gated behind VIP/Donations, see below




Compared to the free letplay coin currency:



Note: 1 coin = 1 hour of gameplay. so the VIP box at the top of the list is a huge yikes as well.

Now, Bubblegum *is* obtainable by normal players....for the price of:




Just the small price of 4~5 hours of monotonous, tedious and downright brain-numbing mob killing, longer if you roll a bad quest mob (I got swordfish yesterday, which doesn't have a great spawn count to begin with.)

All of that for a 30 minute bubblegum buff. The dailies need to be readjusted to be proper for a 80/80/50 server, I've spoken with multiple people about this and I've not had one person disagree with me yet. It gets worse by the way




Not sure if they just ripped the npc's out from somewhere else and stuck them into their server, but they're in no way fairly adjusted for the current playerbase whatsoever.

Might be asking why I'm fixated on bubblegum, but the point is 0.50 vs 1% us *huge* when it comes to the amount of time you're spending hunting items. 30 minutes of a paywalled food buff to get to 1% droprates by doing quests that can cost you hours and hours of your day, just isn't right; considering how readily available it is to VIP/Donators. Especially since their donation panel isn't instant, and you'll be waiting 1~3 days for it to go through according to their donation panel.

Staff

Staff is fine. I've only ever seen one Gm, Code. Talked to him a bit, he seemed sweet; and was pretty down to earth. But haven't seen him since. I've gotten answers from him through a ticketing system, but I'm still waiting over a week to turn in items for a teddybear hat, because the NPC you quest it from is straight up missing. Other than that, I suppose there's another gm who's on for CN timezone, but I've not yet seen the person. Discord link on the main website is broken, so you have to navigate through the forums and use the one there.

May or may not add to this in the future as I play a bit more.


Edit: Fixed markup, haven't used a forum in years phew.