ShiningMoon RO Warning to all new players thinking of playing on this server.

[kiryutokogami]

I recently tried this server and honestly, the journey was pretty fun in the beginning. The leveling experience is streamlined and the community overall are nice and helpful whenever you ask informations on the chat. The main problem of this server is the population. I think having 200 only players  is a lie as if you try and see, every map you go to are empty including the leveling maps. I only see around 10-20 people sometimes even less talking in the main chat and on their discord server. Thus every problem i am going to point out in this topic is mainly due to the after effects of having low population and the server owner refuses to listen to the newbie players but instead caters to the AFK most of the time veterans AKA his FRIENDS.

After you journey through the wonderful leveling experience in this server and you hit the start of the end game grind, that's where the game becomes a little bit of impossible for you. You just cant get anything done through grinding anymore since most of the contents are designed for party play. With the lack of people playing on the server, there's only 1 group of people who does this end game content and most of the time, its a full party so if youre new and youre not close with them, you will NEVER be able to experience the end game maps on this server.

With this problem in mind, it reflects on the economy as well since this group of players monopolizes the market and dictate the prices of the items. Since they have it on farm means they dont need zeny and can hold on the items and sell it  for ridiculously high prices. I have donated around 400$ on this server and because of the low population count, it didnt even get me a complete end game ready character because all the items are overpriced and since its only 1 group who farms the end game maps, only they have access to it and doenst have competition when pricing these items extremely high.

Another bad decision on this server is getting rid of the ECA (it's a card album that drops all the MVP cards) so as a new player, you will never have access to this. Almost every veteran players experienced ECA so almost all of them have MVP cards equipped on them and have extras but wont put it up on the market unless you pay for again, absurdly high price (the cheapest useful MVP card could cost you 200-300$ if you try to donate for it).

You want to hunt MVPs to get a chance for MVP card to drop? Again, tough luck for you. Since Lunar is friends with most veterans in the server, he already gave them all the necessary overpowered mvp cards like himmelz, gioia, bio5 mvps cards to make their builds super strong and you will never be able to compete on MVP hunting with these players camping the bosses 24/7. Which again, giving these players the ability to fully monopolize the market.

Why isnt lunar doing anything to combat this problem? Easy, because if the prices of the end game items are abusrdly high, people with high income will donate more in order to afford these items thus making his wallet thicker. So in  a way, he wants these players to monopolize the economy as it benefits him as well.

I know almost every server have this problem, but the thing is, the other servers have more population in them and more population can somehow combat and alleviate these issue of monopolization and can help balance out the economy which right now, shining moon RO doesnt really have because of its 10-20 concurrent players.


So my whole point to this is, if youre a casual player who just likes to explore and hang out, ShiningMoon RO is an outstanding server with good stability and friendly community. But if youre like me, a hardcore player who always strives to have the best of the best, then you will find out that this server is just a waste of time for you. So i am writing this review to prevent you from doing the same mistakes as me, I put so much time and effort in trying to achieve endgame items only to realized at the end that its just a waste of time and money that could probably go to other better private servers who doesnt have this issues and is more populated.

[Ariasqt]

almost seems like a bad idea to give everyone MVPs xD but lunar cares about his players and takes a little longer to realize how bad his decisions are

[vohoangquan1996]

MVP camping in smRO hahaha nice one

[vohoangquan1996]

btw you just bad. gitgud. there is possibility to solo grind there. even without the OP  mvp cards". and the only one that require party play is the custom content which only provides cash shop consumable ( if u are playing in helheim, but for nifheim just git gud people soloing that place in daily basis, even then the equipment isnt that amazing neither ) OR you can just farm tho HTF for zeny and buy stuffs a single run of HTF give u 18m zeny already ( 8minute btw) and Sarah memory give u like 6 (3 minute btw) and the very very very high end stuff except for MVP cards cost ~ 600-700m.

TL;DR: YOU SUCK. GITGUD and STOP BLAMING OTHERS.
P.s: "Hardcore" player eh?

[kiryutokogami]

I would highly suggest you check out the server first before spouting non sense or youre probably one of those players who got their mvps during the eca event. Kiel costs 15b, gx card rk card around 50b, gioia 30b, himmel 100+b that is if you find someone selling but like i said, people who hunt mvps here holds the cards and wont sell to you at a fair price.


End game is custom content and with only 1 party running because you its impossible to make 2 parties with the amount of people playing in helheim, if youre not in that circle, you will never experience end game.

Mvp hunt? Goodluck. Like I said, the few people who camp mvps are the ones where either lunar gave mvp cards to or the ones who got their mvp cards during the eca event. Which means a new player has absolutely no way to compete against them because their decked out on MVPs.

Btw eca event? Lunar cancelled it after his friends got their mvp cards already. So absolutely no way of getting mvp cards for newer players.


But yea if you guys want to try the server out feel free and you can see for yourselves if you dont want to take my word for it.

Just dont be like me who donated and invested real cash and time in the server before getting hit by reality.

But yea, just warning new players so they do not make the same mistakes as me. If youre casual then yes the server is fun. But as a min maxer. Dont bother. Absolutely no way you can get mvp cards or farm end game items like BSBs BBs etc.

This is why the server has been bleeding dry. Almost every new players who tried immediately sees these issues and quit after a week or two.

[vohoangquan1996]

excuse me. but i've been back and forth in the server from the beginning of time. even before their pre-renewal server. and u telling me that i know nothing about the sv. sure.

If u play enough of smRO you will have thousands BB. even if you dont play the game. just login daily, there still be hundred of BBs. talking about investing time but not knowing how the server work.
The ECA got cancelled cause kRO decide to do so. He literally put on an annoucement that there will be a last ECA event after kRO decision. And MvP are abundant in the server u can still buy them from others.

And again for both Nifheim and Helheim, the custom dungeon only provide consumables. For actual equipment u still have to grind the actual Ragnarok Online itself. so if no one running Fortessa, just spend your time farming zeny or offical items and exchange for them consumable? And if you are playing on Nifheim, blame yourself for the weak donkey you are.

[kiryutokogami]

Now you see guys see here another reason why to avoid smRO toxic people like the person above exists lol

While Im here providing an honest review and feedback on the server in hopes of lunar will do something about it. People like the poster above cant even be civilized about it and instead use crude and weak arguments that I already addressed on my review.

Anyway the player count says the quality of the server in itself. Less than 30 people online 100+ if you count vendors. I tried leveling a character again and even leveling maps are quite empty now. Like 1-3 people at most. End game party still the same, just one party with the same people in it. Economy is pretty bad. Since the people left are veterans, nobody is doing the other instances anymore or they already geared enough to solo it.

I dont know if the population is stable now though. But i keep hearing that its still bleeding players out.

[Lai]

I don't believe a server like SMRO has so little players.

The server got boosted by literary all Youtubers and generates so many visitors...

It can't have so little players, at least 400-600+ players at all times with this amount of attention the server received.

I wish my new server could get the same treatment

[Condrieu]

Now you see guys see here another reason why to avoid smRO toxic people like the person above exists lol

While Im here providing an honest review and feedback on the server in hopes of lunar will do something about it. People like the poster above cant even be civilized about it and instead use crude and weak arguments that I already addressed on my review.

Anyway the player count says the quality of the server in itself. Less than 30 people online 100+ if you count vendors. I tried leveling a character again and even leveling maps are quite empty now. Like 1-3 people at most. End game party still the same, just one party with the same people in it. Economy is pretty bad. Since the people left are veterans, nobody is doing the other instances anymore or they already geared enough to solo it.

I dont know if the population is stable now though. But i keep hearing that its still bleeding players out.

oops i almost download smRO, thank god i read your post 

[MewMieux]

I'm sorry, did I read this correctly? You donated FOUR HUNDRED US DOLLARS on a server you'd barely played in?? Y'know if I didn't know any better, I'd swear you were just salty over not being able to reach the very top just by doing a little "pay-to-win" action 

But, hey, let's assume good faith and say maybe you're just a very generous person who wanted to go in loving the server. Exactly which end-game content were you not able to reliably do after donating $400 USD? Because even if you made the mistake of donating all that money all at once off-event, you'd have gotten 2000 Cashshop Points for every dollar you donated, if not more. 100 Cash Shop Points (CP from here) can be exchanged for 1 Moon Coin (MC going forward), which generally sell for around 800,000 zenny on the market, often more. You can sell them for less if you're in a huge hurry, but that would be reckless at best at huge quantities.
So even in this scenario, where you wanted to be able to play all content possible, which "end game" content was it that you weren't able to run with, hang on, let's do some math here:

So $400 USD, assuming worst case scenario, at 1:2000, is 800,000 CP. Which is 8000 MC.
MCs sell for 800,000z, but let's assume you sold them at a lower value because you were super duper eager. Let's assume you sold all of them for 750,000z.

EVEN THEN, that's SIX BILLION ZENNY! 6,000,000,000!! And that's SUPER lowballing it. If you donated during a special event (1:4000) and sold your coins methodically at peak market times (MCs currently sell, reliably, for 877,000z, sometimes even 900,000z), you'd be looking at more like FOURTEEN Billion Zenny. What the hell content were you trying to access that fourteen billion zenny worth of gear was insufficient? Were you trying to run a melee-only supernovice or something?? End-game gear with good cards, even at its most expensive and in-demand, costs most like 2b at MOST if you bought everything using zenny. Fourteen billion zenny is significantly more than you'd ever need, even for cream-of-the-crop gear. You're either utterly indulgent or else terrible with your money. Or both. Guessing it might be both, given how we got here.

Your accusations of corruption notably lack any evidence whatsoever. It's literally just wild, unfounded speculation on your part. MVP cards drop very rarely, and the cards that are most valuable are ones which cannot be reliably hunted. But other cards can be. Multiple instances can be run daily, and on the highest difficulty setting the drop rate doubles. This includes Central Lab, which has 3 MVPs spawn every single time, several of which drop highly useful and valuable cards. Obviously this takes time, but that's how you get these rare cards. You put in the time 

I've been playing RO since 2004, and I gotta say, Lunar is probably the least corrupt GM I've ever spoken with. He has whole systems in place to prevent GMs from abusing power, and has, consistently and reliably, immediately terminated any GM who overstepped. That you'd automatically assume his "Friends" are beneficiaries of cronyism on his part says more about you than anything else. That's sad. People worked hard and got lucky. I've only been playing here for a few months and I've gotten 4 MVP cards through luck and hard work, one of which was from an instance that sells for upwards of a billion zenny. That could happen to anyone. It could have happened to you. But it won't if you don't work for it. You can't buy an experience.

The community in SMRO is pretty small right now (though no where near as small as you're saying. It's closer to 150~200 active players on Helheim rn), but people here are unusually kind and generous. They are extremely welcoming to new players, and most of those veterans you spoke of would doubtlessly happily run you through end-game content at the drop of a hat because they're all f*** bored, lmao. This has unilaterally been my experience. It's even overwhelmed me to tears at times (don't tell them I said that). But then, to get that, you'd need to talk to people. Communicate. Make friends. Put yourself out there. Show the content of your character. No one is going to grab your hand and do everything for you. No one's gonna Magic-Pixie-Dream-Girl your way through end-game content. Not even if you pay through the nose to reach it.

I noticed you said you strive to have the best of the best. Not be the best of the best. I think that's apt. You wanted to have all this stuff handed to you, because you were willing to throw in real-world money into the game. You wanted special treatment because you had money to throw around. And you threw a tantrum when you didn't get it. Because for all your boom and bluster, you didn't even have enough money or smarts to buy your way to the top. It's a shame. If you'd stuck around, maybe we could have been friends. But you'd need to get off your high horse for that. And if you did, everyone would see just how small you are.

God forbid.

[shiningMoonFan]

I made an account to make this post, I loved Helheim when it first came out, it was the best server around and it was so much fun to play w/ a bunch of people in parties.  Then lunar killed his own server by adding the ECA event, outrage was huge and it went from having 1000s of players to being a test server for a few streamers/youtubers that cling to it as a 'good' server.

Fortessa is actually really good, the quest to unlock it a bit silly, but feels well enough in the spirit of attunement quests we do.  The way Lunar did his party share system is ridiculously good and borderline brilliant, I love party play encouragement like this.  This is a server I actively watch to see if it will be good again, I'm happy to hear the ECA event is no more, but w/o a reset the damage is done.  I'd love to see a 3rd shard, or just lump Hel/Nif together, and start from scratch.  And this time if you do something where literally the discord explodes with 'OMG RESET OMG ROLLBACK' style complaints, don't just ignore it.  Helheim was some of the most fun I've had before the stupid MVP card event was introduced.  Then everyone quit.

Current state the server is garbage, look elsewhere.  You could use it as a test server to test builds, but no one plays on smRO.

[kiryutokogami]

I don't believe a server like SMRO has so little players.

The server got boosted by literary all Youtubers and generates so many visitors...

It can't have so little players, at least 400-600+ players at all times with this amount of attention the server received.

I wish my new server could get the same treatment

Come check the server and see for yourself I read somewhere too that it has around 200-300 players at all times but when i started playing, i barely see any players on the leveling map. Like 2-3 people at most. and the custom end game dungeon only 1 party runs it. I tried making a group of new players to tackle it but sadly, most new players quit halfway when they already realized that the population on this server isnt that great.  It's one of the contributing factors as to why only a group of individuals controls the server economy.  Population is so small there's barely any competition hence, the small group of owner's friends can dictate the price of the market and they make sure everything is priced at an absurd rate.

I'm sorry, did I read this correctly? You donated FOUR HUNDRED US DOLLARS on a server you'd barely played in?? Y'know if I didn't know any better, I'd swear you were just salty over not being able to reach the very top just by doing a little "pay-to-win" action 

But, hey, let's assume good faith and say maybe you're just a very generous person who wanted to go in loving the server. Exactly which end-game content were you not able to reliably do after donating $400 USD? Because even if you made the mistake of donating all that money all at once off-event, you'd have gotten 2000 Cashshop Points for every dollar you donated, if not more. 100 Cash Shop Points (CP from here) can be exchanged for 1 Moon Coin (MC going forward), which generally sell for around 800,000 zenny on the market, often more. You can sell them for less if you're in a huge hurry, but that would be reckless at best at huge quantities.
So even in this scenario, where you wanted to be able to play all content possible, which "end game" content was it that you weren't able to run with, hang on, let's do some math here:

So $400 USD, assuming worst case scenario, at 1:2000, is 800,000 CP. Which is 8000 MC.
MCs sell for 800,000z, but let's assume you sold them at a lower value because you were super duper eager. Let's assume you sold all of them for 750,000z.

EVEN THEN, that's SIX BILLION ZENNY! 6,000,000,000!! And that's SUPER lowballing it. If you donated during a special event (1:4000) and sold your coins methodically at peak market times (MCs currently sell, reliably, for 877,000z, sometimes even 900,000z), you'd be looking at more like FOURTEEN Billion Zenny. What the hell content were you trying to access that fourteen billion zenny worth of gear was insufficient? Were you trying to run a melee-only supernovice or something?? End-game gear with good cards, even at its most expensive and in-demand, costs most like 2b at MOST if you bought everything using zenny. Fourteen billion zenny is significantly more than you'd ever need, even for cream-of-the-crop gear. You're either utterly indulgent or else terrible with your money. Or both. Guessing it might be both, given how we got here.

Your accusations of corruption notably lack any evidence whatsoever. It's literally just wild, unfounded speculation on your part. MVP cards drop very rarely, and the cards that are most valuable are ones which cannot be reliably hunted. But other cards can be. Multiple instances can be run daily, and on the highest difficulty setting the drop rate doubles. This includes Central Lab, which has 3 MVPs spawn every single time, several of which drop highly useful and valuable cards. Obviously this takes time, but that's how you get these rare cards. You put in the time 

I've been playing RO since 2004, and I gotta say, Lunar is probably the least corrupt GM I've ever spoken with. He has whole systems in place to prevent GMs from abusing power, and has, consistently and reliably, immediately terminated any GM who overstepped. That you'd automatically assume his "Friends" are beneficiaries of cronyism on his part says more about you than anything else. That's sad. People worked hard and got lucky. I've only been playing here for a few months and I've gotten 4 MVP cards through luck and hard work, one of which was from an instance that sells for upwards of a billion zenny. That could happen to anyone. It could have happened to you. But it won't if you don't work for it. You can't buy an experience.

The community in SMRO is pretty small right now (though no where near as small as you're saying. It's closer to 150~200 active players on Helheim rn), but people here are unusually kind and generous. They are extremely welcoming to new players, and most of those veterans you spoke of would doubtlessly happily run you through end-game content at the drop of a hat because they're all f*** bored, lmao. This has unilaterally been my experience. It's even overwhelmed me to tears at times (don't tell them I said that). But then, to get that, you'd need to talk to people. Communicate. Make friends. Put yourself out there. Show the content of your character. No one is going to grab your hand and do everything for you. No one's gonna Magic-Pixie-Dream-Girl your way through end-game content. Not even if you pay through the nose to reach it.

I noticed you said you strive to have the best of the best. Not be the best of the best. I think that's apt. You wanted to have all this stuff handed to you, because you were willing to throw in real-world money into the game. You wanted special treatment because you had money to throw around. And you threw a tantrum when you didn't get it. Because for all your boom and bluster, you didn't even have enough money or smarts to buy your way to the top. It's a shame. If you'd stuck around, maybe we could have been friends. But you'd need to get off your high horse for that. And if you did, everyone would see just how small you are.

God forbid.

You are wrong. I am not salty about spending 400$ on a server I barely know. It's not like its a big deal for me. 400$ is small compared to what i spent on other servers and im not complaining about that.  I just stated that donating 400$ would not get you the best gears on this server as a basis on how ridiculously expensive things are in the server because of less population and owner making the wrong decisions to make it more accessible to newer players.

Youre right about the community being great. Whenever I asked questions on #main i immediately get answers from the same people. Theyre helpful on providing new informations on new players and such. Like I've said on my first post, the journey to end game is amazing and i have no qualms about it.


The main problem on this server is its retention of playerbase and new players.  After new players get to max level, farmed their automatic gears etc. Min maxing  is the next step. How do you min max? MVP cards, refining your geaers, getting the perfect enchants.

With Lunar's friends playing all decked out with the best enchants, MVP cards on almost all slots, upgraded to +16 and above gears. There's just no way to compete with them. Sure you can farm HTF and other instances that has an insanely low drop rate of mvp cards. One good MVP card costs around 15b and above. That's a lot of HTF runs lol.

I cant pretty much  say anything about how the custom end game content is atm since that's the only thing I never experienced while playing in the server, because as I have said, based on my observation during my play time, only 1 party runs the end game instance and that party is a static group already so there's no way for me to squeeze in for a run and get a chance to try it.

I disagree with 150-200 active players though, during my leveling experience, there are like 2-3 people on the map and most of the time, I am the only person in the map. If what youre saying has any hint of truth in it, it shouldnt be that hard to look for leveling parties / end game  content parties. 150-200 people is plenty. But how about you  log in right now and  try and make a pit group with random people, not with your close friends, but with just random people and see how long it takes you to fill it up, that is if you can even fill it up.

The end game content right now is only accessible to veteran players and MVP hunting is only for those who are able to take advantage of ECA event / Friends of lunar who was given their MVPs and pls dont deny this lol. Every server has this issue not just  SMRO. its just that its more noticeable here because of the lack of population. Other servers also do this I am sure but they can get away with it because more players play thus these players can group up and be a competiting force vs the players who are given items by owner. But who knows, maybe its just a coincidence that the people who are close  to the owner of this server are the ones who have almost all their gears slotted with MVP cards. What a coincidence


Anyways, arguing with the veterans of this server really isnt contributing much to this review. This is from the point of view of a newer player. Ofcourse as veterans you will have some biases on the server as youve already took advantage of the event or you're already close with the owner to get certain special privileges that your experience significantly varies from a newcomer's perspective.



But for those who are wanting to try this server. Feel free and check it out. The issues ive listed here arent really hard to prove and you can feel it in a week or maybe a week and a half time of playing. you can even do little experiments to prove this like

while your leveling, try doing LFg and see how many people will join you
Go to vend area and see how many merchants belong to only 1 person. These are the limited individuals who controls end game instance thus only them have access to min maxing items
hit 200 and try joining a pit run via LFG or making your own party (its a  waste of time but atleast you can see it for yourself)
try going to different MVP maps and see who killed the boss ( only the same individuals because no matter how hard to try and camp it as well, they just out damage you with their full MVP slotted gears)

[Lai]

Nah it's fine.
I believe in you.

Erm if you like kRO progression server... I'd love to become your friend 
I play in kRO actively, have a Shadow Chaser and now just recently turned a Inquisitor to 200.

kiryutokogami 

[risy]

Hi! I've been playing SMRO on and off since a month after it opened. I know Lunar well, especially after playing so long on the server. I have his phone number and email but yet I didn't receive a single MVP card from him nor the ECA event. My two MVP cards were obtained from actually playing the game. How did I get my high end gear? Farming zeny + donating allowed me to purchase gear from other players.

I'm really confused as to where you got the idea from that he gives his "friends" MVP cards. Can you explain how you came to that conclusion? Where is the evidence?

[ULQUIORRA-SAMA]

MAYBE Lunar done some mistakes
But as a free player
I can say that you can make zenny and strong gears withouth even opening a shop