Reviewing heRO

[Seishe]

Most recently, I came back to Ragnarok as a whole. After finding out certain big servers were shut down for good *cough cough* I decided to start again on iRO. It... it's not too good there still haha. So I decided to browse private servers.

I came back to this server after 6 years, with what I will call "complete amnesia" about anything that happened before. I had a lv 81 sniper and some other chars, and a lot of stuff. I think I must have played the server for like a month or two way back then, but don't remember ANYTHING.

Regardless, as far as low rate servers go, it can feel pretty standard.
However, they do have a lot of customized content. The one problem with it so far, that I find anyway, is that a lot of it you either have to have a decent party (with no multiclient, and a small playerbase, this can be hard to achieve) or be relatively endgame and stronk like that.

From what I have been able to gather in the short two (or maybe three?) weeks I've been back so far, this server has a lot of love put into it. The customized content is, for the most part, well-written and engaging. The server as a whole feels like a remixed classic, that strays from the original Ragnarok in some interesting ways.

There are certainly still players online, and I actually have yet to meet anyone who's like nasty or mean or anything.

The economy runs well. It's sort of low-end costly, like as in if you had 5 million zeny, there are potentially quite a few things you could buy (unless we're talking end game gear, which from what I've seen is typically priced 5m and up) So far, it hasn't been too bad. Mavkas are a tried and true source of money, but there are other things you can do too.

Speaking of low rates, I know the server lists itself as 5/5/3, with 3 being the card rate right? At least, I think it's supposed to be. But, card rate is actually 5x for normal mobs, and 4x for bosses. So, it's actually just a little bit better. (In this past week of playing, I've actually gotten like 11 cards from farming monsters haha)

They do have a "Hero's Journey" questline, which takes your character from 1/1 to 80/45 (second job pre trans) in a matter of hours, but I actually appreciate this more than just finding it a little OP. I mean, grinding up first and second job pre-trans is honestly one of the worst things you'd have to do in a low rate pre-renewal server (at least in my opinion, unless you're a masochist with a lot of free time.) And besides, it only gets you to 80/45, not max level. The grind from 80 to 99 can still take quite a bit, and then you have to rebirth lol.

The donor system isn't too p2w. I think the strongest thing you can get from it is the Pandaring backpack(?) Or OCAs? The most helpful thing that it seems like people keep up with is the monster boosts, where you can donate to have a monster have like its exp gain boosted for a limited time or something. But otherwise, you can pretty much just get gacha items that may or may not help you out.

I think my only real problem with the server so far is the lack of players. While there are people who play, and it's not just one person on 10 alts keeping up some "facade" of liveliness, I feel like it would be nicer if we had more people. At least, if we had more people in my timezone haha.
There may be a giant gap between people who have played the server for 15 years and people just starting out, but I feel like coupled with the friendliness of the players and the stuff you get as a newbie, you don't have to feel like achieving the end is impossible.
(Even though, imo, the point should be less about the end and more about what you do on the way there haha, but enough of my moral lecturing  )

TLDR: Overall, here are my ratings out of 10 on each thing I think people really look for in a private server, for the heRO private server:

P2W Aspect: 5/10 (Some donor stuff, but nothing too broken)

Custom Content: 10/10 (There's so much custom stuff, including revamped renewal mechanics and items. A lot of custom pets, including some official ones that are more widely available. Lots of headgear quests, too.)

Stuff to Do: 8/10 (There's hella stuff to do, and the wiki is still mostly a good guide. They have fishing and mining, too.)

Finding Friends: 9/10 (The heRO discord is the best place to look for people to talk to.)

PVP: 3/10 (From what I hear, regular PvP isn't really a thing, BG is set up so everyone wins AKA it's not very serious (But you can still grind it for good gear and consumables if you get enough people), and WoE is dominated by one guild of like 3 people.)

The Grind™ 7.5/10 (About what you would expect from a 5/5/3 server, although if you can party up with people you earn EXP bonuses for killing monsters together. The economy isn't hugely inflated, so it's kinda easy to buy starter gear from other people too. There are people from all kinds of timezones, too, so you could potentially always find someone.)

Language: English, mainly I think.

Ingame Eventful-ness: 6.5/10 (There are player-run automated events, but you have to get Event Bags from certain things in order to run them. GM events are way less common because the GMs the server currently has are all, for the most part, busy with their jobs and real life stuff. There are seasonal events too, and they're usually pretty fun and rewarding.)

Overall Overall (The overall of the overall): 8/10 (I think this server is relatively laid-back and not too serious. It's not very intense, and I feel like there's no pressure to keep up one specific endless grind. When I get tired of doing one thing, I switch to something else no problem. Starting a new character is easy enough, so breaks are easy. The players are nice (I just wish there were more of them), and not stand-offish or cliquey (Like some servers can be, small or large). The GMs aren't corrupt, even though, from my experience with small servers, they totally could be lol. The custom content is interesting, and while I've actually seen some of it before in other servers I've played (Which, by the way, is quite a lot of servers), there is a lot of it that I haven't seen which made it extra exciting to me. I feel like the server owner, Pandora, has done a lot to maintain what feels like a balanced Ragnarok Online experience that's interesting and fun.)