AghartaRO

[RoseTea]

If you've read absolutely any of my posts that I've made here on RateMyServer, it should really be no surprise to learn I love spewing massive amounts of words onto a forum post, none of which have any merit or quality to them whatsoever.  Take, for example, that last sentence.  Because of my pseudo-intellectual manner and fancying myself as a writer due to an awful, awful case of the Dunning-Kruger effect, I thought roleplaying would be a perfect thing to try.

Later still, I got into Ragnarok Online, and learned there were roleplaying groups for it.  Certainly, I love RO and its setting and I love to roleplay, this seems like a swell combination.  I recently participated in a semi-hilarious slapfight about AghartaRO, a roleplaying server, on these very forums.  Adopting the pseudonym Remedy, I investigated the server (Fruit Pie wanted no part in any of this) in my typical first-impression style, trying to answer the question, "Is it really that bad?"

See for yourself.


The website is...functional, I guess.  I can see the tiny graphics for the links being unwieldy at higher resolutions, but I'd have to ask Fruit Pie about that.  I actually kind of like the graphic of I think it's a Huntress holding a map and looking away.  Which is good, since it's on the login screen too, but we'll get to that in a second.

The actual About page is pretty brief, probably because if you're here you already know what you're in for anyway.  To actually download the game, you need to make an account on the forums and make an introductory post too.  I can at least sort of understand this because, well, it's an RP server, but this will come back to bite us in the butt later.

The donations are cute: MVP cards.  50 for GTB!  You can also buy Battle Manuals, Enriched Elunium, and other completely worthless things in an RP environment.  The most important thing to donate for is to get your custom items/maps/wildest dreams to come true... assuming you have them for the staff to easily put in.

Fascinating donation items!  Do you take Talon Coins?

The rules are a hoot!  "Follow what the storyteller says. If something happens that you don't agree with, then keep it to yourself."  Read: If your character gets killed off, then tough cookies.  In fact, there's a lot of rules that say "if you do bad things you will get owned", which is upsetting because I hate things being forced on my character, and hilarious because there's basically 0 effort to make a new character to play once you get established, so who cares if they get jailed.

"Please do not ban evade."  I'm pretty sure if someone's going to get banned they don't particularly care for the rules, champ.  "No digging through our .grf. If found to be doing so, there will be severe punishment."  I don't even... what?  How do you find that out?  What's the Mystery of the Druids found deep within the .grf that may never be unleashed upon the earth?

I don't quite think this is how copyright works.

The wiki is a mess, and briefly skimming through it you'll learn a nice pile of bad news:

For one, Agharta isn't based on actual Ragnarok Lore.  Hell, a good 80% of it is just brand new things, or different concepts grafted with RO names on them.  Rune-Midgard is now the the Kingdom of Elysion for whatever reason, there's a Kingdom of Mu, apparently for the races (There's races, by the way), and whatever remains of RO's been usually modified to suit their needs.

This is actually extremely disappointing.  RO has a fun setting!  It has equal parts goofy and dark, and if you kept the RP light it'd be hilarious and entertaining (especially if everything was taken at face value).  It's probably come off like a saturday morning superhero cartoon with some grim moments at times.  Instead, if you want to roleplay here, none of that matters: read this fanfiction instead, but according to the wiki it's "something much more settled down and less fantasy".  I can appreciate less fantasy in a setting where magic, ghosts, and robots literally exist, lemme tell you!

Speaking of that, the logic really does not mesh well at all.  Kafra Teleportations are an actual, in-character thing you can do.  Yet apparently nobody's thought to even bring bits and pieces of technology (let's assume a size limit anyway) via teleportation to spread technology around.  Magical teleportation literally exists!  It should completely turn the world upside-down by being the ultimate solution to logicistal problems!  But Nope.  You can teleport to Morroc, but they don't have televisions.  By the way, Magic is its own share of fanfiction, but that's another story.

As for Comodo... I don't know anything about Comodo, in fact.  Or Ayothaya for that matter  A lot of the pages are either barely written at all, or somebody's Original Page Do Not Edit that's full, full, full of things.  Again, Comodo's page is basically empty, but someone wrote about The Republic's Gunsmen, a group of firearm-using guards.  This baby is at least three pages of things detailing the subtle differences between the uniforms of each rank between men and women, how the employment contracts work down to the ages and year lengths, and the dental plan (no, really).  If I don't know crap about the setting on a fundamental level like "what are the towns like", why would I care about this?

Don't rely on the Timeline page to try and catch yourself up, either.  It was last updated the 12th of March... of 2012.  Things that happened within the last WEEK are a complete mystery to me.

Well, that's okay, I guess.  Let's get playing!  First, make an account on the forums, make a post there to introduce yourself.  You probably want to get on the IRC, since I can't imagine how to do anything without constant contact with people about it.  Ask the admin, Tande personally via forum PM for a wiki account to get it.  Super!  Now write your character and hope you don't break ~lore~ (alternately, research the lore).  Don't forget to get the RO client and make your in-game account!  Name your character the actual IC name and away you go.

In the actual game after a generic novice creation process, you'll find yourself at the OOC room.  This room is basically every single NPC possible jammed together into a single place.  Here you can also buy suits to change the look of your class.  There's a healer, a warper, a job changer, a resetter, and a variety of other silly NCPs like bullets/arrows and other nonsense.  Hilariously, the card removal NPC is rather brutal for a server that cares nothing for the actual game: 10 million to remove a card and you might lose your stuff anyway.  Just don't idle here: the rules say don't do that, for ___________ reason (fill in the blank yourself).

And yet, like every good terrible server, Grape Juice is easily purchased.

Prontera is custom!  I thought that was interesting, but the map didn't exactly blow me away with its looks.  All RO maps have a sort of problem with building proportions, but when my character can probably climb on top of a roof, things just look silly.  It reminded me of that teeny-harbor in Gonryun Field.

I am GIANT MAN!  Although those are also some seriously big flowers.  Aren't they from Mt. Mjolnir?

One little feature I thought was cute were the dice items.  You received a dice box which, on opening, gave you a ton of little dice you can use to roll.  Another, more major custom were the hats.  There is basically a giant hat-mall, so you can buy all the hats you want for about 50k or so (why do they cost anything?).  These hats have no stats and are mainly for looks... but if we're supposed to go by character-profile descriptions on the wiki, there really is no point to accessorizing your RO avatar.  Also, their description is in all lowercase, which is makes me uncomfortable for some reason.

Wait, a collection quest?  Is this IC or not?  I can't actually tell anymore.

But now, finally, it was time to get into the actual meat of the server: the roleplaying.  For my first real stab at it I went with something simple with another person.  Douglas here comes from Einbroch, so starting by marveling the beauty of Prontera was good.  We talked a bit about pollution and nature, things about firearms, and a tempting hook for later things about showing off shotguns and getting drinks at a bar.

There was just one problem that kind of stabs at Agharta's main issue here.

At no point was the RO client ever actually necessary.

To actually RP this out, I was on the IRC and asked if someone wanted to play something.  The person agreed, we both got on the game, did our bit, then signed out.  The one million dollar question is: If we were ALREADY talking to ourselves on IRC, why is the RO client even a thing?  They even do RP on the forums anyway!  I could have saved both of us some time by going into PMs and acting it out, but my understanding is that's just not something that happens here (and I haven't seen it even proposed).

It doesn't help the game isn't really played for the actual RO game.  I think only one person really uses the MVP Room (they have an MVP Room here, by the way) and there really isn't a lot of point to leveling because, well, I guess you could if you wanted to, but there's better servers for PvMing.

((Literally while I was typing that last paragaph, somebody named 'butts' joined the IRC room.  Turns out it was the SERVER OWNER after she lagged out of IRC.  Charming, wacky, random, and delightful, I'm certain.))

Anyway, really it seems like the point of the RO client to RP in is for everyone to sit/stand around and use the incredibly limited lines and @mes to RP with.  If you want to battle... you don't use RO PvP at all.  You either narrate battle or one of the several dice battle methods.

So... the RO game itself isn't used.  The RO lore isn't being applied.  It's actually MORE limiting than straight-up IRC or the forums.  Your character's avatar isn't actually what they're supposed to look like (check them on the wiki first, I guess)...  Why are we using this, again?  There is, frankly, no reason for the RO server part at all, and in fact I would imagine things would go a lot smoother without it.

These bullets are not canon.

The greatest thing about the server is the community, some people were real sweethearts to me (Rhiann, you're super-nice and awesome, I will call you out on that).  On the other hand, people were occasionally gigantic buttholes to me for no obvious reason.  And then there was Tande, who, as a server owner, puts members on ignore when they bother her and forgets to remove them.

So who would I recommend Agharta to?  Well, based off what I've seen, here's who I would NOT recommend it to:

* People who want to roleplay with the RO setting.
* People who want to roleplay semi-efficiently (come on, logging into the client is a waste at this point).
* People who want to roleplay in a well-developed setting.
* People who want to play RO, but, frankly, why are you searching for RP servers anyway?
* People who want lots of people RPing at once.  Player count never went above 5, and even the IRC had maybe the same amount chatting at any given time.  There's lots of CHARACTERS, I guess?  You'll be playing with the same people over and over, though.

If you're not into any of that, then Agharta might be something you're interested in!  As for myself, I couldn't get over the fanfiction-y lore (I really, really do not care about your beastmen species' mating habits.  Why is this even a thing.  Why do you have a wiki page on crossbreeding, how was this ever an issue), the rather awkward way RP is conducted, and ignoring all the potential of RPing in the RO world and instead grafting in something that really does not work at all with the medium you're trying to do things in.

You can scratch your RO itch in the hundreds of other servers, so PvMers should look elsewhere.  If you're wanting RP, if you want the RO setting, not here.  If you're fine with it and want to wrestle with an abitrary client, go right ahead.  If you prefer IRC or forums, you also probably want to look elsewhere (yes, forum RP happens, but maybe six threads have posts in them within March, so...).

It's a bit depressing since I legitimately did want to do some RP and the community was sweet and really reached out to help me get started, but Agharta created its own problems, and I just can't cope with them.

Anyway, I now take my leave of the server, since I get the feeling I won't be welcome back if anyone there reads this (then again, I doubt I could show my face on heRO either), even though I'd love to just chill in the IRC and chit-chat without playing.  Oh well, it was nice hanging out with you all!