Arcadia Online REOPENING ANNOUNCED

[iMissDecentServers]

Website: https://arcadia-online.org/

Discord invite link: https://discord.gg/hcC6eB7f (Expiring in a few days. Fresh invite links will be provided as the current ones expires)

They have just announced that they will be reopening on 21st of August.



NO WIPE, NO progress lost, nothing changed other than new content and A LOT of quality of life additions/life-long bugs fixed. Your accounts and characters will be just the same as it was 2 years ago.


Yes, IT'S FINALLY HAPPENING. The best private server in history is at last reopening after almost 3 long years of hiatus (but with PLENTY of work done, fixes, new REAL quality-of-life additions AND DIRECTX9 CLIENT)

Some of most amazing/impactful work they've done during this time:


New custom settings window (big highlight to the "Enable smart processing of skills for movement and range checks.")

This "smart processing" is one of the biggest FIXquality of life changes to ever happen in any RO server. There has been a long bug in this game that was never fixed at all by the creators that did impact the gameplay and overall experience (especially for Melee characters) in a very negative way, which now is not gonna be a problem anymore. Also the way the game now handles your pathing is much smoother, making it possible to cast on corners and your character will be as minimalistic, precise and efficient as possible with its pathing, positioning and skill range, using the mechanics to its full potential (HUGE impact change for both, PvE and PvP).

Reuploaded some of the videos they posted about their progress on their #devlog throughout the past 2 years.


PATHING / CORNER PATHING:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLK18EhYCSc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8mikjoucV28


OLD vs NEW (FIXED) ATTACK/WEAPON-TYPE RANGE:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=715JqeTGoek

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lLndJ2onbbY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UH-3HCOs5qo
(Bonus video showing the potential of the corner pathing)


SOME ORIGINAL AND ACTUAL CLIENT QUALITY OF LIFE THAT ARE HUGE GAME-CHANGERS:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eflMTy81IhU
(New [Hindsight] + Magnifier (+ I believe any other similar UX window, such as [Create Elemental Converter], [Arrow Craft] etc)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8sYEBJIx7E
(3 smart, quick-set equipment set that works much more smoothly than any other version of similar feature from newer versions/clients the creators made)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yl1q8Nw_eDw
(Showing a bit more of the potential + customizable shortcuts)


Even before some of these new quality of life done during the hiatus, this server was already WAY ahead with its unique features, REAL quality of life, such as:

- Really good API for the community to work with, creating powerful and useful tools;

- Only server to FULLY PREVENT BOTS due to their in-house anti-cheating system nobody was ever able to break through it, and extreme success fighting macros/macroers, to the point you will almost never see any case of such.

- Almost no toxicity or negativity throughout the history of the server, as the server's staff is known for being extremely rough to those trying to disrupt their server's nature by acting quickly on such cases and giving appropriate punishments (main reason why on this server you don't find the usual toxic players, groups and guilds we all know about, that has been plaguing the RO community for decades now);

- RMT is pretty much non-existent on this server, as the "rotten apples" within our community doesn't last much long on this server, meaning they aren't able to establish any sort of blackmarket (or find any interest) before they're permanently-banned;

- Original gameplay with next-to-no changes, meaning it has an extremely healthy and vivid economy, especially due the absence of RMT causing the usual inflation;

- Most complete and accurate wiki for a server you will ever see, due to the wonderful work from the community to polish and keep it up;

- "Master Account" system where you could create as many accounts you wanted, never ever having to enter your login credentials in-game, you launch the client of the characters you want directly from the Launcher itself, with zero trouble or having to handle usernames or passwords;

- "Guest Account" system where you can safely share your in-game accounts with whoever you want, by creating a temporary passkey with limited account-features you can enable/disable per passkey, such as Enable/Disable Trade, Equipment Swap, Buy/Sell to NPC, Join/Leave/Recruit/Kick to/from Guild, etc. Making it so safe to the point you can share in-game accounts with valuable items with zero worries about being robbed;
- Real time check of your Vending/Buying Stores (autotrades) from Control Panel;

- Server is great for both, those who enjoy multiclient and those who doesn't, as Arcadia Online is the only server to successfully implement a counter-system to the Multiclient Solo-Level abuse by HEAVILY punishing people trying to do so, as well as punishing the whole party if there's a single member in it trying to abuse it in some way (with ways for the party to check and know who is the player screwing with the Bonus Exp).

- DirectX9 Client HYPE.

ARE YOU GUYS READY? JOIN THE DISCORD RIGHT NOW!

[Jinbou]

- Almost no toxicity or negativity throughout the history of the server, as the server's staff is known for being extremely rough to those trying to disrupt their server's nature by acting quickly on such cases and giving appropriate punishments (main reason why on this server you don't find the usual toxic players, groups and guilds we all know about, that has been plaguing the RO community for decades now);

lol, are we talking about the same server? Because before they closed down their discord server was often a toxic cesspool. Partly because the staff members were quite toxic themselves, fueling the flames instead of trying to calm things down whenever people started fighting each other, consistently talking in a rude, insulting manner to players.

It's not like they were trying to hide that or fake positivity anyway, skyleo has a well-known reputation afterall, it looked like they genuinely didn't care about how they looked. That's why I got confused if this post was about a different server when I saw that "no toxicity or negativity ever" advert, makes sense that opening post wasn't written by the staff. I think they have enough self-awareness to not claim something like that.

But well, whatever, I guess its good news for people who still enjoy playing there for some reasons that I can't comprehend. Hope they at least hired some GMs with good communication skills that will actually show effort to create a friendly and positive atmosphere, and will leave public communication to them this time, at the very least.

[iMissDecentServers]

Nope. He isn't.

Damn, this name, avatar and account that is so nostalgic. Reminds me of Haru and the old OriginsRO forum @.@

lol, are we talking about the same server? Because before they closed down their discord server was often a toxic cesspool. Partly because the staff members were quite toxic themselves, fueling the flames instead of trying to calm things down whenever people started fighting each other, consistently talking in a rude, insulting manner to players.

It's not like they were trying to hide that or fake positivity anyway, skyleo has a well-known reputation afterall, it looked like they genuinely didn't care about how they looked. That's why I got confused if this post was about a different server when I saw that "no toxicity or negativity ever" advert, makes sense that opening post wasn't written by the staff. I think they have enough self-awareness to not claim something like that.

But well, whatever, I guess its good news for people who still enjoy playing there for some reasons that I can't comprehend. Hope they at least hired some GMs with good communication skills that will actually show effort to create a friendly and positive atmosphere, and will leave public communication to them this time, at the very least.

You probably mean specific Discord channels? Because the server/Discord community in general is as mature as you can find these days. The only other community I can think of of more warm and welcoming is Kokotewa's.

Or perhaps you're confusing it with the "Community Discord Server", which is an community-ran unassociated Discord server mostly used by the WoE community for banter and trash talk? Because if that's the case, then yeah, that Discord is indeed (and intentionally) a huge toxic cesspool.

The thing about "well-known reputation" can mostly be viewed or explained from a cultural point of view. While it's understandable some behavior can be seen or is toxic, it's often for reasons we (unrelated people) are unaware of, such as workload, for example. As a former game staff myself, I can guarantee to you that it's not easy to handle people all day everyday, especially when people refuse to comply to things they should have read or be aware before (even more so when dealing with cheaters and liars, as they agreed to a damn Terms of Service before starting their journey there). Repetitive occurrences can lead to a lot of stress and I don't disagree that in such cases, having someone specifically to deal with PR is the ideal, but on a passion-project where they RECEIVE NOTHING IN RETURN, they have to be careful and very picky with who they give a chance in their team, which may explain why they don't have someone of this position yet.

I myself am pretty loved/hated for the way I handle things (which is no different from the person you're talking about), which makes people either respect me a lot or hate me a lot. Like I said, it's all about the individual's culture, and since RO is very popular worldwide, we have people from every part of the world around you. What one can see as toxic, others can just see as normal or efficient.

Anyway, lots of respect for Skyleo despite us having disagreed many times in the past, fight a few times and even more for sticking to their rules and banning me on an occasion where I reported a lot of wrongdoing but also lashed out toxicity in return, which showed me they're impartial/neutral no matter who you are. I guess we can say efficiency takes its toll? I rather have someone like him around than some naive, inexperienced, easily-manipulated individual in a higher-up role.

But yeah, in short, you nailed it that every organization should have someone/a team to take care of the Public Relations.

[distilled1]

Finally! A very missed, a very welcome, and a very authentic pre-renewal RO experience returning to the community after so long.

It is ever tiring to see server after server falsely claiming to be "pre-renewal" then introducing post-renewal and/or custom sprites, skills, instances, maps, settings, quests etc.

Those new "special settings" sound particularly phenomenal. Long overdue fixes to the poorly coded RO of the past. Well done!

If the multi-clienting "punishments" or limitations mentioned are true, it sounds like a decent compromise.
Would I prefer if multi-clienting was entirely against the rules and completely impossible? Of course.
Allowing multi-clienting causes players who only want to play support characters the inability to find leveling parties and partners, especially at lower and mid levels, but it's also difficult and time consuming for admins or GMs to entirely administrate single-client usage against players who are dead set on abusing multiple machines, virtual machines, VPNs, etc.

Welcome back, and thank you so much.

[Jinbou]

...

I was talking about their main official Discord server. I don't know how it is now, I was there between 2015 to 2020-ish probably. Every other server I have played in since then have had GMs that are a thousand times more polite/respectful, and their discords have a way more friendly atmosphere too thanks to that, so I'll just say "doubt" to what you said about warmth and maturity and leave it at that 

For me it was way worse than what can be passed off as just "culture difference". I also worked as volunteer on some platforms and communicated with users while representing those platforms, of course I know that it's a very stressful job that can take a toll on a person. But that was never an excuse for taking it out on the users and treating them like garbage, and a proper team leader wouldn't allow this to happen in the first place. I'll also say that even in a service run by volunteers, it's really not that difficult to find one or two friendly community managers and recruit them without giving them all of the risky GM powers, and Origins definitely had the popularity to find good volunteers, there was no excuse for not even trying to improve things for so long.

But anyway, whatever bad experiences I've had with the gms from there happened so many years ago, no need to take this seriously, can just ignore this. Maybe things are better now I don't know I don't care. Its just that, that paragraph about '0 toxicity' was so polar opposite to the image of the server I remember that I couldn't help but make a snarky comment. If you're saying the GMs are good now, and its really not stockholm or a coping mechanism like that talking, then great, I'm happy for you guys, have fun. for real.

[Metan]

I did quit oRO some 3 years ago (almost exactly one year before the hiatus, going by old screenies) over some personal disagreements I had with the server direction, and while I gave a second thought to some of them after playing and watching other servers, others I now suppose were unfounded, and others still I've decided to give another chance. So for me it's good news, hope I'll have some fun again as I did with my friends and guildies.

[Arcadia Online]

To address the toxicity debate:

Generally we go along the lines:
- Will someone's behavior deter people from enjoying our server?
- Is the community better off without this person?
- If this person stays, will tens or hundreds leave?
- Do we think what the person is doing is ethically wrong?

One example, based on a real story would be:
- Player A drops his item for trading with another character to the ground in Prontera.
- Player B, who has a clean record, picks the item up.
- Player A asks back for his items, claims he wanted to trade it to another character.
- Player B says "It's your own fault, you weak human.", "You're a fool, weak flesh" and other insults out of nowhere. Clearly stating he will not return the item and that Player A deserves this.

Now this was reported by Player A. We checked the chat logs and if the item was actually dropped by A and picked up by B.

Due to the severe negativity of player B towards a stranger who nicely asked for his stuff back,
due to the fact that we think this is very wrong ethically and that at least in a game we can get some slack of the cruelty of this world, player B was permanently banned, despite it being his first incident.

Now someone may argue that they think everyone's responsible for themselves and if I manage to scam or play someone, it's their own fault, and they are free to do that on a server that shares this mindset. We do not share this mindset.

This kind of toxicity is not welcome.

Nor are "simpler" cases welcome where people:
- Spread bad rumours about any user or staff.
- Write genodical slurs.
- Insult people based on their religion, ethnicity, sexuality, place of birth, looks etc.
- ... and more rules like these in our Terms of Service in relation to Harassment.

We also punish people on our discord server, who break our rules. One simple rule is that it's forbidden to ask for estimates, the very first channel is only about this rule and it states that we will permanently ban people from our Discord Server only for breaking it.

Some people have mistaken skyleo's German directness as being rude. This is not the case. If you state your matter directly, skyleo will gladly help you out or lead you to the correct platform, such as our bug or support issue tracker. If you ask him if he's available instead of stating your matter, he won't be available.

If you read FAQs, News and such first before asking a question, adhere to our Terms of Service and share our general principles regarding toxicity, feel free to check us out.


Oh also:
We don't have systems in place that punish multi-clienting, but systems that promote single-clienting and playing with real people. If you form a party that only consists of essentially single-clienting people, you'll have an EXP buff.
And War of Emperium strictly forbids multi-clienting and bypassing this will result in a permanent ban.

[distilled1]

We don't have systems in place that punish multi-clienting, but systems that promote single-clienting and playing with real people. If you form a party that only consists of essentially single-clienting people, you'll have an EXP buff.
And War of Emperium strictly forbids multi-clienting and bypassing this will result in a permanent ban.

Hey that's better than nothing at all. Better than inadvertently encouraging every player to multi-client for the sake of efficiency and optimal leveling.

Is there a chance you might be able to elaborate exactly on said EXP buff numbers?
Is there a chance you might be able to implement a bonus to drop rates as well when a party consists entirely of unique players? Otherwise players like me who choose to never multi-client are at an extremely huge disadvantage to earning zeny because 99% of other players are choosing to multi-client when deciding to farm items and zeny.

Thanks!

[Arcadia Online]

Hey that's better than nothing at all. Better than inadvertently encouraging every player to multi-client for the sake of efficiency and optimal leveling.

Is there a chance you might be able to elaborate exactly on said EXP buff numbers?
Is there a chance you might be able to implement a bonus to drop rates as well when a party consists entirely of unique players? Otherwise players like me who choose to never multi-client are at an extremely huge disadvantage to earning zeny because 99% of other players are choosing to multi-client when deciding to farm items and zeny.

Thanks!

You'll be able to see the amount of details of this Single-Clienting Party EXP Buff in our wiki once we're online. We don't fully publish how it works, since it has and may change in the future, and people tend to take things as promises, nor do we want to make it easier to abuse / bypass this system.

Hell no to boosting drop rates of any kind. I can't think of a single time that we've done something that increases drop rates. Not even an event.

We'd rather continue introducing ways to fight inflation.

It's debatable if one's at a disadvantage when farming zeny single-client. Some people say it's unfair that guilds are farming rare items so much faster (and thus zeny). We won't change multi-clienting due to such debates. No one's forced to socialize with others.

Also: We restrict the amount of Homunculus you can have out on multiple-clients, for obvious reasons.

[iMissDecentServers]

Finally! A very missed, a very welcome, and a very authentic pre-renewal RO experience returning to the community after so long.

It is ever tiring to see server after server falsely claiming to be "pre-renewal" then introducing post-renewal and/or custom sprites, skills, instances, maps, settings, quests etc.

Those new "special settings" sound particularly phenomenal. Long overdue fixes to the poorly coded RO of the past. Well done!

If the multi-clienting "punishments" or limitations mentioned are true, it sounds like a decent compromise.
Would I prefer if multi-clienting was entirely against the rules and completely impossible? Of course.
Allowing multi-clienting causes players who only want to play support characters the inability to find leveling parties and partners, especially at lower and mid levels, but it's also difficult and time consuming for admins or GMs to entirely administrate single-client usage against players who are dead set on abusing multiple machines, virtual machines, VPNs, etc.

Welcome back, and thank you so much.

Fully agree. Most servers make big and bold claims about being "authentic", "classic", "pre-renewal" etc just for you to find a bunch of custom or renewal content, features you only see in modern MMORPGs and Mobile (yuck) games, such as Daily Login/Attendance Check, Freebies for staying online (to artifically boost the Player Count Number), and worse, which is by no means authentic or classic whatsoever. RO is a very raw and rough game from the early 2000s that very few are able to withstand the lack of QoL additions more modern games brought over time, but still, that "raw and rough" part is very important when the server claims to be authentic and classic. It's even sadder when a server starts fine and truly classic but deviate from it over time with customizations or "rebalance", such as RagnaGoats (mentioned because of your "Current servers"), which used to be a pretty good server before all the changes.

While those new special settings/life-long bug fixes/new QoL are amazing, even before these changes the server was already ahead its time by miles with its true quality of life (mostly related to client and control panel) and features, all while staying true to its pre-renewal roots.

I worded poorly in the OP, but like @Arcadia Online said: there's actually no punishment for people multi-clienting, just huge benefits for people playing a single-client with other single-clienters, with the punishment (total bonus exp loss) only occurring if someone on the party has a another client logged in (or even if logged out) on the same map.

Most servers fail miserably to understand what makes multi-client bad or good in comparison to single-client. Banishing multi-client doesn't magically make people play together, instead it just limits the options. Instead of limiting the current options, you're better giving new, better options through incentive (in most cases, by hugely buffing the exp for single-client-only parties, to the point of not being worth leveling with multi-client/ers), which is precisely what this server has done and why it was so successful.

You will have no problem finding parties from all level ranges, even as a Support, which was one of the things that made me stay on the server as well.

- Will someone's behavior deter people from enjoying our server?
- Is the community better off without this person?
- If this person stays, will tens or hundreds leave?
- Do we think what the person is doing is ethically wrong?

Perfectly put. Those are things I've been saying for years now that every single server/server owner should think of when trying to build a successful server/community. Sadly most of them are smoothbrains who can only see current numbers growth instead of thinking ahead/in the long term, so they allow a single group or guild destroy the longevity/future of the server at the cost of a few dozens more players for a few weeks. There are individuals that will always be a net negative to the server no matter what, and those deserve to be excluded from everything and everywhere.

[distilled1]

It's debatable if one's at a disadvantage when farming zeny single-client. Some people say it's unfair that guilds are farming rare items so much faster (and thus zeny). We won't change multi-clienting due to that. No one's forced to socialize with others.

Fair enough. I guess there are certain setups that parties of unique players can have to farm zeny at comparable speeds as someone multi-clienting.

Also: We restrict the amount of Homunculus you can have out on multiple-clients, for obvious reasons.

Excellent.

Thanks again! That's an awesome sounding server you guys are setting up there.
I'm sure the community is very much looking forward to it.
Keep us posted!

[iMissDecentServers]

Since no embeds for YouTube links, I turned the videos into GIFs for those who can't open the links (or don't want to watch):



- Official behavior: (likely bugged/unintended or code limitation at the time). Your character will not move to its target if there are some obstacle (shootable and non-shootable cells) between the character and the target.

- On Arcadia Online: With "Smart Processing" enabled, the character will perform the most efficient path to its target and attack at its full range potential, i.e: Spear-class weapon innate 4 cell range (HUGE comfortably attack Geographers as Swordman without having to manually position yourself on the 4th cell, check the next GIF); Long Mace special 4 cell range.



- Official Behavior: No matter what, if the character has to close gap (move) to its target or targeted ground, it will always perform the action within 1 cell closer to its maximum potential range, i.e: [Double Strafe]'s maximum cell range (with Lv10 [Vulture's Eye]) of 14 will make the character attack with only 13 cells range; to attack from the 14th cell, you have to manually move 1 cell farther from your target. [Acid Demonstration] or any other (most ranged skills in the game) 9 cells range skill will be cast at 8 cells only, unless you manually place yourself at the 9th cell, which is precisely why broken sh*t such as LGP, Greymap etc are so prevalent amongst bad/trash players and cheaters: they can't range-check themselves, they need cheating tools to help them with targeting.

- On Arcadia Online: With "Smart Processing" enabled, your character will always attack its target or target the ground from its maximum potential range, even if they need to close the gap (move).



- Official behavior: [Bash] and [Pierce] attacking 1 cell closer than its maximum potential.

- On Arcadia Online: "Smart Processing" enabled, [Bash] and [Pierce] will attack from their respective maximum potential range, 3 and 4.



- Official behavior: Depending on the ground (if your target or targeted ground isn't parallelly horizontal with your character) and/or cells between you and the target (number of cells, formation of cells and type of cells (shootable or non-shootable)), your character may or may not (check GIF 1) move to Line of Sight with the target, but not attack/cast the skill.

- On Arcadia Online: "Smart Processing" enabled, the character will ALWAYS move to the target taking the shortest/most efficient path AND perform the action of attacking/casting the skill.



- Official behavior: Sometimes (especially common when you spam the skill/action) when trying to target through obstacles/corners, your character may move but get "stuck" on the obstacle/corner moving around it until you manually click elsewhere within your Line of Sight.

- On Arcadia Online: No more with "Smart Processing" enabled.



- Official behavior: This didn't exist during the version of the client this server uses. Similar feature was created at least 2 times for Renewal but was never really mechanically good, very responsive or fleshed out, leading to almost no use.

- On Arcadia Online: Simple, intuitive and instant, with 3 different loadouts for you to have even more options.



More fleshed out version, featuring a 'Clear set' button to quickly unequip everything from the current loadout and an 'Equip set' button hinting we can set hotkeys for the loadouts.



- Official behavior: Either, mouse-wheel up & down to move between the options and double-click or click the option + confirm button. Same rule for all similar UX window: Magnifier, [Arrow Craft], [Create Elemental Converter] etc.

- On Arcadia Online: Same as official + (keyboard's) Arrow Keys to move between options + Enter Key to confirm/choose. New behavior works for all similar UX window as described above.



- Official behavior: By default, damage numbers appear on any map not flagged with GvG-settings. Crit bubbles still show on GvG-settings maps though.

- On Arcadia Online: You can disable damage number and Crit bubbles game-wide (unconfirmed if only on damage dealt or if also applies to damage received). Visual effect of hit splashes (and sound?) still applies.

These are just a few of the things they teased the Discord Server in the past 2 years, you can check the rest of the work they logged in their #devlog.

All in all, the new additions/fixes/quality of life (especially the Smart Processing) are such big impact game changers, that alongside the new DX9 Client, it shall give us a never-felt-before experience in RO, as everything will be much more responsive, making the gameplay more fast paced, especially for competitive and minimalist scenarios (WoE/PvP/MVP).

[Zulf]

Dang, you added the meme video with the Watame(lon) gif.

If you want to add something else: we fixed the old quest log and turned it into a Encyclopedia (using the 2nd iteration of the quest window).

[Bullet]

Website: https://arcadia-online.org/

To all ragnarok-rians,
Kindly take note, the OP and the excerpt of (profile) discord announcement has nothing to do with me.
I'm not in any part associated with this game server or group behind it.

For those assuming its me, my discord profile is "Sylar" .
I play on another server, IGN "Bullet", im just a player with guild name "O m a s h u". I don't run or play other ragnarok server.

Notes:
by the way, I also checked out Arcadia website, looks promising and well thought setup. It does give me reminiscence of experiences several years ago and the registration for game account is easy and does not require telephone number. Wishing them all the best.

thank you.

[Arcadia Online]

All in all, the new additions/fixes/quality of life (especially the Smart Processing) are such big impact game changers, that alongside the new DX9 Client, it shall give us a never-felt-before experience in RO, as everything will be much more responsive, making the gameplay more fast paced, especially for competitive and minimalist scenarios (WoE/PvP/MVP).

Don't overpromise on DX9. 

Also to clarify: We're not using Gravity's DX9 Client.
We've ported our client to DX9 on our own.

The main selling point of it is that UAC Prompts don't crash the client anymore, nor does Windows + L.

FPS tends to be more stable, less fluctuating, but it's not gonna magically increase your FPS.