[R] NovaRagnarok

[CyanideKisses]

The following review is for:

  Server Information:  25/25/10

  Overall Rating: ⑧ ⁄ ⑩

  Initial Thoughts:
     Initially I went into this server with pretty low expectations considering the drama that had been going on surrounding it. Setting that aside I went ahead and joined anyways just to sort of check it out. At first I was really skeptical, considering I tend to play at the 1k/1k/100 rates without renewal and such, so it was a pretty huge leap out of my RO comfort zone to say the least. The automated events were nice, awarding gold coins (Basically a pseudo cash currency)  and took awhile to get used to.

  Community:
     The community is pretty notable. Almost no hostility between the members and everyone is more or less willing to help should you request. After spending ages leveling through normals means, I had a group of three actually stop me and ask me what in the world I was doing. It was considerably odd at first, but they donated their time to show me around the Eden Group and such, which mind you; is a completely new feature I was unaware of.

Spoiler

Small group in prontera, though most are off hunting/ MVP'ing or doing dailies at this time.

[close]

    The forums are a pretty nice place; A lot of player and staff created guides are there to help your fruition as a NovaR player, though I was ignorant to them at the start. Small chit chat and banter, general boards and everything else normal RO forums have. Nothing exactly special there to note to be quite frank.

    The staff seemed almost non existent until recently, only having small windows of contact with the actual Admin since the staff seemed to be on vacation or something like that. But Like I said before, the community itself is so helpful that it more or less renders support GM's null to a certain extent. Admin is awfully considerate with letting everyone know what's going on. Allowing players to finish up any instances and such before doing a server maint/ quick reboot etcetera.

     The Admin created event that's going on currently is actually really nice. Sort of a bit of a summer celebration that has a plethora of mini-games including countdowns, poring matcher and stacking along with a couple other ones. offering really nice prizes for amassing summer coins and such. (Screenshots below). It's pretty rare to see events like this made from scratch (From what I'm aware of at least) And actually function as well as this one is doing.

Spoiler

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[close]

  Economy:
     The economy itself leaves a slight feel of "meh" to be honest. With item drop rates being awfully low, prices are actually pretty decent, though the scarcity of actual drops/cards/items themselves etcetera are sort of what kills it for me. You can't exactly say "I need this" and go to the market and grab it really quick, like you would most places. On the other hand though, it leaves a small sense of accomplishment when you self hunt and self acquire the gear and items you need though. Server features a standard market place like most, usually holding a good 30~40 vendors give or take. There's no real zeny sinks to be quite honest, not that they're needed. And they farming methods for zeny are... time consuming but the benefits reaped does in fact go hand in hand with the effort you put in.

Spoiler

[close]

  Personal:

At first, I was really getting frustrated with item/card drops; being so far in between it was almost an actual chore to do anything farm-ey if you don't throw bubblegum into the mix. But that's the charm of low rates like this, the sense of accomplishment you get when that 0.1% drop chance item pops up on the top area of your screen. The server itself definitely isn't for someone like me who works 14 hours a day, but it is definitely playable and enjoyable enough to make you want to work with it given you have tough scheduling like I do.

Finding leveling groups for the higher end dailies can be a bit tough depending on the time of day you're trying to find groups, but you'll get used to everyones playtimes and know when to make these groups pretty quickly. The #main/#trade channels were REALLY nice to have. Effectively turning the RO chat into a mIRC-Client more or less. It's very easy to communicate with each other, and spamming is almost non existent considering how many people use it.

In the end, would I suggest the server to other players? Definitely, if they have the time and patience to get the most out of what they're spending their time on. I gave the server an 8/10 if only because of the small lack of a community large enough to support WoE/ Battlegrounds / PvP. We're getting there, but all in due time. At the moment, people seem to have made a sort of "Window" that they log in to BG together and such, which is really cool if anything.




- Nazka

- 3 month membership

[NovaRagnarok]

Thank you very much for your review Cyanide. The community we've managed to build is definitely one of my proudest achievements. It almost sounds like I'm bragging, but I've never seen a friendlier community in my days of playing RO, I just lucked out in having some of the best players in the RO community.

One of the details with the staff is that only two of the GMs have -real- commands, in order to prevent corruption entirely. And those two are Green and I, the two admins, and we've been quite busy.
The rest of our GMs are exclusively support and event GMs (with only @hide, @warp, @disguise, @jail and @ban), and spend most of their time in the shadows, on the forums, or on their legitimate characters enjoying the game. If you ask around for Nova in-game, someone will typically notify me through Skype if I happen to be offline and it's a real issue. I typically spend my time hidden, or if I'm working on new content, offline as to avoid distractions.

And yeah, hopefully more players who enjoy PvP/WoE/BG join soon, now that the Summer Festival is completed, I will soon be focusing on making the content more attractive, either by rewards, announcements, or any other way possible. I'm currently extremely happy with the state of the server, I just wish WoE would go back to the excitement that we had a few months ago. So if you know any Renewal guilds, bring them over, there's two castles occupied by two guilds that operate in distinctive time-zones and they're waiting for a good challenge.

Again, I thank you for your review, and I will continue to work on the server, hoping to bring that 8/10 up to a 10/10.