Most incredibly odd idea you've ever had for a server?

[Triper]

Sorry to drag this off-topic, but what is the story of RO? Never knew it had one.

If you do every single quest, you can check this. It talks pretty much about every dungeon in the game and even some towns/specific places and npcs, it's really well done. My favourite part is about the origins of the guardians at thors that you get from doing some hugel quests.

[Veruno]

Most private servers have all the official quests in, so you can follow the story even there. I think RO has actually one of the better stories of all MMORPGs. It doesn't force the story on you, but it's pretty awesome if you follow it.

I played for many years and never heard this -- neat! Where does this story start? Is there a quest line that you need to follow? What's the conclusion?

[Bue]

Wait wait wait. What story line? Anybody got any sources that give a TL;DR? Same as the guy above.

[Playtester]

There is no quest LINE as the quests are unlinear. Every quest gives you a small bit of info on the world. If you put the puzzles together you can find out many things that happening in the background. You will find out what the church in Midgard did. You will find out what the purpose of all that mining in the Einbroch/Einbech area was for. You will find out about politics and war between the nations. It goes even so far that you can find out the history of various characters that are already no longer (or roam as undead / ghosts). And you can also find out what the history of certain regions are. What is Thanatos Tower? Why is Thanatos there? Who is Thanatos anyway? Why are there angel-like creatures? All that is answered when you do all the quests.

Most interesting are the Arc Quests: http://irowiki.org/wiki/Quests

If you really just want to be spoiled you can also check this thread: http://forums.irowiki.org/showthread.php?t=49821

[Fruit Pie~]

The Thanatos line is genuinely interesting. Kiel Hyre, Bio Labs, the Cursed Abbey... they all have quests and NPCs providing cool bits of background info to what would be generic dungeons/bosses in a generic fantasy MMO. In general the quests show that RO is a much, much darker game than one would initially assume from super-deformed warriors poking pink, cheerful blobs until they burst.

It's the right way to do MMORPG "story", IMO, since it focuses on what matters (the world and its history) and forgoes the idea of a protagonist. But you go tell that to the latest WoW clones.

It really depends on your server's translation team, though, which is unfortunate. iRO's translation is like the bare minimum effort, and stock eA private servers have it even worse.

[Thoth]

RO's quests have had some serious problems, like finding the npc, just being a wall of text with npcs that never move, and having to repeat exactly the same thing on every character you have. and the quest reward exp wasnt really worth it either. its a shame the presentation is lacking... storywise its better than recent mmos often just say "go kill this 10 times" for no real reason other than to justify the existence of whatever colorshade of the monster.

[Playtester]

I don't think that's a problem of RO. I actually think the way RO did it is MUUUCH better. That you have to do the quests with every character makes sense as with a new character you write a new story (though I think players should always only play one character, playing multiples ruins immersion). And that the reward isn't worth it is particularly good because that means you can do whatever you want and if you do quests you do them for the story.

Imo all MMORPGs should be like that. Offer lots of quests that are solely done for the story or to get connections / fame for more regions / stories, but that give no other reward whatsoever, so if you do them you do them for the story and fame.

[Triper]

I must agree with that after playing tons of mmorpgs. Having quests non-mandatory to do is awesome. You can explore the game without probs, see if you like it or not, and later, if you've interest on the lore, attack it with quests =P

I can post here some of the last mmorpgs that I've played and all are the same: mandatory story, you're forced to play the story even if you don't care about it and just want to see how good is the game. This freedom that RO offers is rare to find nowadays.

[Patton]

Sorry to drag this off-topic, but what is the story of RO? Never knew it had one.

Oh, don't feel bad, same here kinda Lol. I always knew the quests and that there was some sort of deeper story probably but never explored it.

[Thoth]

I can post here some of the last mmorpgs that I've played and all are the same: mandatory story, you're forced to play the story even if you don't care about it and just want to see how good is the game. This freedom that RO offers is rare to find nowadays.

the freedom you mention is largely an aspect of private servers, not default RO. having to do nameless island/biolabs/etc entrance quest on every single character is tedious. its ok the first character but after that...
although this is also a problem of having quests that don't change and have no variation.

[Triper]

the freedom you mention is largely an aspect of private servers, not default RO. having to do nameless island/biolabs/etc entrance quest on every single character is tedious. its ok the first character but after that...
although this is also a problem of having quests that don't change and have no variation.

Probably is [and even more if you compare officials to privates with main chat] but you still have a couple of maps to explore and see the game. That's a freedom that I just can't find around on any other that I tried on the last 12 months. Most of the new ones are just like 1 tutorial map->another map to explore->another map to explore->repeat.

I dunno how it was at the begin since I only started at around EP 10-11, true fact, so RO may be a ton different to my eyes from what it is now but it's awesome in what it turned out in terms of explore.

[Roda Frog of Sakray]

Probably is [and even more if you compare officials to privates with main chat] but you still have a couple of maps to explore and see the game. That's a freedom that I just can't find around on any other that I tried on the last 12 months. Most of the new ones are just like 1 tutorial map->another map to explore->another map to explore->repeat.

I dunno how it was at the begin since I only started at around EP 10-11, true fact, so RO may be a ton different to my eyes from what it is now but it's awesome in what it turned out in terms of explore.

When I first tried RO at around episode 1-4 (forever nebulous because I was 8 years old at the time, but I do know it was practically at the start.) there were very few if any quests. Hell, the first quest I ever remember doing was when Umbala came out. However, even without the quests people positively immersed themselves in the RO world....and if one paid attention even without the quests the game had a very definite feel to it.

http://www.rpgfan.com/pics/ragnarok-online/index.html Take these SS's from Alpha for example. They thoroughly immersed themselves in the world, and people went so far as to forge a story for their own characters. Personally, when you look at these old screen shots there seems to be a sense of innocence coming out of the players experience. A lot of the screenshots in the link I gave show players exploring towns and dungeons...and merely taking in the world. It seems that much of this innocence was lost with time. Simply compare some old RO guides from back in the day on IGN and their equipment and stat suggestions to more modern ones. I won't say PVP ruined the genre, and I for one do enjoy many aspects of WoE and PvP, but I certainly think there was a different air and appeal to MMORPGs and RO back then.

Of course, I don't think the quests are bad.....I personally would love the Curse of the Gaebolg quest in an oldschool server for instance. I simply found it interesting. But RO was not always a game thought of due to it's quests and PvP. Personally I think part of the reason RO isn't gaining new players is because it has lost too much of that unique feel it had long ago. If you look around you'll notice that most of RO's cult following consists of people who played in it's early years.

[Chemical Crush]

It wasn't an incredibly odd idea.  But I wanted to revamp some of the things in RO, mainly to do with quests and story lines.  I know RO has one, just some people actually enjoy quest lines. 

I wanted to do special zones for each Class, which all had different quests for class specific headgear, or maybe just headgear you can only get in that zone or something, so you HAVE to have an Archer to get whatever headgear but you can use it on whatever character.  Idk, its in my head but hard to explain.

Basically just class specific quests and story lines, custom maps and all. 

I play WoW and like the idea of 'rare' mobs, I know thats kinda like MvPs, but in WoW you can kill rares at level 10 or whatever, cause the Rare is level 10, they dont' drop awesome super great stuff, but its usually useful so I wanted to put that in, in someway.  Even if it was just a recolor of a mob, point is, its a rare and it drops interesting stuff. 

Daily/Weekly quests.  Again, there is a lot of thought into it, but way too much to type.  I LIKE QUESTS DANG IT.

=]

[MoyitoV1]

I remember long ago like, 7 years ago i once played a server with a max lvl of 32k it was insane. Never got up there, lmao

[RoseTea]

So for an odd idea I talked about with Fruit Pie once and was inspired by a similar thing from Team Fortress 2:

Multiply a Skill's formulas by 10.

Faith gives 20,000 HP.  Songs/Dances have a 70x70 area of effect.  Bolt spells shoot 100 bolts.  Priest Spirit makes Holy Light +4000% damage.  Berserk gives you 30x your maximum HP, gives you 20x damage, and +300% ASPD.

It'd be worth a laugh, and at least is funny to think about.