FeelRO

[Xarale]

Hey, and welcome to my lengthy server review for FeelRO!

So, I'm sure that anyone who's checked out the top200 page has seen FeelRO sitting happily on top, yet.. not one person has written up a detailed review yet here on RMS.  Well, things are about to change!  I present to you, the first loooooong in-depth review of FeelRO!

I joined FeelRO back in April '08, where the max population was just peaking over 300.  Just over 5 months onward, and the player peak has topped 1300.  How did this unknown server come out of nowhere & grow so fast?  Well, that's what I'm here to tell you.

Alright, I'm going to break down the review into several catagories.  Firstly, we'll start with..

Community
When people are searching for an RO server, they'll often firstly check out the server's community. (at least I do anyway)  Thankfully, the community here at FeelRO is mostly friendly.  You can often meet new people by simply sitting around the main towns & talking.  Infact, that's pretty much how my guild started out.  There is also many nationalilities playing too, from European players, to US/CA, Aus/NZ, Asian, and pinoy players, so you're bound to meet other players from your country/area.  The server is actually based in Europe, so there is a fairly large amount of Europeans playing here.

Features
So what makes FeelRO stand out from other servers?  Well as the server slogan states, "Feel the balance", the GMs have tweaked the server a little, so that things are a little more balanced. 
-The main thing included here is 25% EDP/10% AD damage reduction in WoE, which may seem bad if you're a SinX/Biochem fan, but in all honesty.. you can't deny these 2 classes were overpowered.  Despite this, AD & EDP still hurt quite a bit, and can still drop many people in WoE.

-The drop rates have also been tweaked in a clever way, so that certain extremely sexy drops are much harder to obtain then the original server drop rates state. (ie. Gloves of Orlean's dropping at 0.03%, despite the server drop rate being 25x)  Also, several "overpowered" cards have been removed from the game.  Sorry, but there'll be no GTB cards for you to waltz past a WoE precast with.

-MvPs have all received the gravity buffs.  Not only this, but FeelRO has slightly buffed them further to make them more challenging.  Don't let this put you off though, they are still easily taken down in parties, and occasionally solo. (depending on the mvp)

-The donation items aren't too bad.  The top donation item available is a slotted type of tiara that gives 15% reduction vs Demi-Human, along with +5 vit.  Many might claim this is overpowered, but really.. it's not bad at all.  For those who cannot donate, you can simply buy donation items from other players, as trading/vending donor gears is perfectly legal here.  You can also vote daily to receive 2 "coins", which can be used to purchase donation gears once you've collected upto 50-250 coins.  The major downside of the donation system, is the fact that any rich player can simply join & purchase several donation items, then sell them to earn 100mil+ zeny within a day.  This does unfortunately give an advantage to those who can donate over those who cannot.

-FeelRO also includes a customized capital town named Ostia.  This is quite a nice town to look at, but the highlight of this town is when it turns to night.  It looks amazing when the pixel sun has set.

-There are also many custom palettes here that aren't found anywhere else.  The sprite artist (GM Alara) has done an amazing job making the palettes.  Thankfully, there is no retarded wings on this server.

-There are various mini games around the server.  The Alde Turbo Track (as seen on iRO) basically pits you against 4, 8 or 16 players in a race through 8 trap infested rooms.  Although I personally find this great fun, the majority of the server don't come anywhere near this place.  There's also Poring Ball, which is pretty much like an RO version of football/soccer, but with a Poring for a ball & PvP enabled.  There are other minor mini games lurking about too.

GMs
I believe there is around 5 GMs on this server.  Until 2 months ago, the GMs were fairly active on the forums, and a special event GM would do 3 events every week.(on non-WoE days)  Although the GMs are rarely spotted in-game, they did appear to be quite friendly.  As far as I know too, there is no GM playing a "legit" character, they simply observe WoE from their GM characters.
Sadly over the last 2 months, GM activity has dropped.  Apparently, they went on vacation, but no notice was given to the players, so everyone was left wondering what happened to them.  The majority of them have returned recently, and things are slowly picking up again.  The 3 events a week thing is also back to normal again now too I believe.
Despite this though, when the GMs are active, they do a pretty good job of maintaning the server.  They will fully investigate all cases of scamming, resulting in the scammer getting permanently IP banned, and the victim getting his/her items returned to them, which is something I don't see on a lot of servers.
The only issue I have with the GMs, is that they often ignore suggestions posted on the forums, aswell as promising something & not actually doing it.  For example, back in February, the GMs made a poll suggesting a variation in WoE times so US players could have a WoE time of their own.  This clearly gives the impression that they're going to add a new WoE time someday.  Sadly, this never happened.  Despite 60% of the forum voting & requesting new times, the GMs simply read (yes, we've seen them reading it) & ignored the threads without a response, hoping they'll go away.

WoE/PvP
WoE - The highlight of many RO players.  WoE occurs 4 times a week on FeelRO, each session lasting for 90 minutes.  Before I go any further, I must point out that these times are pretty much favoured to EU players.  Many US players who have work/school during the day, will not be able to attend the 3 weekday WoE's. (Mon, Wed & Fri)  This is something you may wish to keep in mind if you're living outside of Europe.  Also, each of the 4 WoE's occur at exactly the same time each day. (7pm-8.30pm GMT)  There is no variation of WoE times here at all.
Two castles from a specific town are opened on each specific WoE day.  For example, 2 Pront castles are opened on Monday's WoE, whilst 2 Geffen castles are opened on Friday's WoE.  The castles also remain the same each week, so 3 of the castles from each town are never opened at all.
As for the WoE action itself, it usually results in the following:  One castle is usually held & defended by one of the top server guilds, most often the castle is never taken at all during the 90 minutes.  The second castle is often taken every 2-5 minutes by various smaller guilds.  While the second castle often has a lot of action in it, it is often only won by whatever guild gets the lucky emp break at the end, it is rarely defended properly.  As briefly mentioned earlier, if you don't join up with a European WoE guild, don't expect to win, unless you get a lucky break in the final minute.  WoE times here are currently favoured to European players.

On most servers, there is always one strong guild that pretty much dominates WoE, and isn't afraid to brag about it.  Sadly, FeelRO is no different here.  Simply read the WoE/Guild sections of the FeelRO forums, and you'll find plenty of elitist/egotistic remarks from the players of this guild, despite the fact this guild is on a break just now.  If you fail to prove a challenge to this top guild, prepare to be mocked/insulted & laughed at in the forums by them.

PvP - FeelRO offers a wide variety of different style PvP rooms.  The list of rooms is as follows:

Collesium (A custom FeelRO PvP room)
Collesium - No pots (Same as above, only pots will not work here)
PvP Arena (Your basic Izlude town arena)
PvP Arena - No Pots (A small square arena with pots disabled)
GvG Arena (Special arena for guild vs guild fights.  Think of it like WoE, but without the castles)
Event Arena - (This as the name states, is actually used for events.  Although it's on the Arena list, PvP is actually disabled here)

A very nice custom feature that comes with the 2 Collesium rooms, is a Spectator Mode.  That's right, you can actually spectate all the PvP action without ever stepping foot into the main arena & getting killed.  This is great if you'd like to watch some PvP without actually taking part.

As for PvP itself, well.. it's pretty much the same as on any other RO server.  If you randomly kill someone, you'll often be killed on sight by everyone in the room for "randoming", especially if you attempt to kill someone popular.  Sadly, there are also many players who take it too personally if you randomly kill them in PvP too, but then again, this happens in every RO server, so don't let this put you off.  Lastly, all PvP rooms will automatically debuff linker/gospel/bragi buffs as you enter, so if you're the type who has to gospel/link befor entering PvP, you may wish to re-consider playing here. (You may also wish to invest in some skill if you need to do this anyway to win)

Economy
Until recently, AFK'ing with an alchemist was prefectly legal to do so here.  While it may not sound so bad, it got abused heavily to the point where Gonyrun Dungeon was impossible to hunt in due to having upto near 100+ Afkchemists on the map.  This means that there is 1000's of cheap zipper bear/hydra cards around on the market.  This may be good & bad news for newer players.  The good part is, players will be able to afford these cards much more easily.  The bad part is, they won't be able to sell them for much if they happen to find them themselves.
Aside the above, the economy isn't too bad.  As in any server, prices fall & rise randomly, depending on what's being farmed & what's currently high in demand.

Server Stability
No complaints here!  Server barely ever goes down, except for planned maintenance.  The only issue is that it can get a tad laggy now & again, not enough to ruin anyone's game experience though.

Summary
FeelRO is one of the better servers I've played on.  The majority of the community is friendly, the donations aren't too bad, and there isn't too many custom items which may ruin the original RO game.  Although the number of players online might seem high, you have to keep in mind that at least 300-400+ of these are vendors, and another 100 or so are AFK in towns.  The only thing really that I have against this server, is the fact it is advertised as International, when it is clearly favoured to Europeans.  If you wish to WoE on any day aside Sunday, you'll need to learn to speak German/Russian/French/Italian.. etc, as the majority of US/100% english speaking guilds cannot attend WoE here except for Sundays.  If you're from a US timezone, you may want to look elsewhere if you wish to WoE.  If you're not into WoE, then you may wish to check this server out & challenge the slightly buffed up MvPs, or just to enjoy the community FeelRO has to offer.

Personally, I would advise anyone to at least give it a try.  Hopefully this review has helped you to feel (pun! har har) the world of FeelRO a little better.

Well, that's it!  Hope you enjoyed reading the review.

X.

[Hutchy]

Nice to see there are more good, balanced servers out there.

[Rudolph Zyaber]

My big hang up with Feel Ro is that their donation system rewards donators heftily to the point where if you donate you are 10x better than any non-donation player.

That is not to say that the donation items themselves are overpowered, they kind of aren't really...

But what I mean is that if you donate, as opposed to say grinding for weeks for 35+ million zeny to buy 1 donation item,  you're already instantly millions of zeny richer than any non donator who doesn't work their donkey off for the money.  Sure you can vote 2x a day for god knows how many days to finally get that 250 coin helmet or slotted mid gear, but the donating crowd is still going to be worlds ahead of you in terms of market value and player status.

just seems to me that their whole non-donation system is very flawed and that it's a very donation heavy server.  That's just my opinion however, as I personally hate any server and boycott them immediately if they even give any kind of obvious advantage to a donator. 


EDIT: by the way, you never really mentioned anything about class balance and that's always an important issue when considering a server to play on.

[Xarale]

-The main thing included here is 25% EDP/10% AD damage reduction in WoE, which may seem bad if you're a SinX/Biochem fan, but in all honesty.. you can't deny these 2 classes were overpowered.  Despite this, AD & EDP still hurt quite a bit, and can still drop many people in WoE.

I didn't feel the need to mention class balance, since they are unchanged from Gravity's default setup aside the 2 skills mentioned above, but thanks for the feedback.

Also, I agree regarding the donation system.  Anyone can become rich on FeelRO by simply donating & selling the gears they purchase, which in a way does give them an advantage over non-donors.  I'll add this to the review.

Thanks!