[Non-Renewal] Ragnarok in 2013, and what we can do to grow the community

[jblazer]

I also think that customs are not really needed to make a server interesting for players. Of course players also want new content, but might as well be official content or custom content that's there "just for fun" without changing the normal gameplay.

Just think about it: Why does the majority of the players don't play on official servers?
1. Official servers have 80% bots. Really. Hardly anyone talks with you because it's most likely a bot.
2. Official servers have stupid restrictions, like not being able to change to 2nd job without paying. Also your storage is small as free player.
3. More lag because Aegis is not as optimized as eAthena.
4. Rates for free players are just sadistic, 100% exp and 3% death penalty. VIP with 150% exp and 1% death penalty already starts getting acceptable, put requires you to pay monthly and then we are back to why private servers originally were made (avoiding monthly fee).
5. iRO does weird custom changes themselves that makes it kinda feel like a private server as well and kRO is of course only in Korean and you're not allowed to play on it anyway.
6. Not really a big issue but the lack of autotrade and thus forcing players to always let the game running can be a reason as well. Plus private servers are a bit better with making rules on where to create shops (like sidewalk only or at least 2 tiles away from an NPC).
7. Some players just want to do PVP, but it's endgame-only in RO and some people don't want to go through the tedious grind (main reason for existence of high rate server).

I'd claim hardly anybody will quit official servers and look for a private server because he thinks it would be cool to have custom overpowered equips or because he thinks RO doesn't have enough different maps and certainly not because he thinks the spawns are stupid.

So I think just aiming to make a server like official servers that just fixes the main problems of the official servers is already a good aim.

Plus you have to look at it this way: Because there is currently no successful close-to-official private server at all, this is like a "market gap". So it would be special even if it didn't add anything special.

Agreed most players want to PvP these days. Most people prefer low rate pvp because it's more challenging, but just go on high rates simply because they don't  want to see years of work down the drain. If you can find a professional, stable server then there should be no problems. You just gotta show people your server is reliable.

But I think even 5+ years from now when the population is much lower, it will be better. Because now we have the community into one server, instead of splitting up into a 100 servers and quitting because almost all of them are not professional.