MouRO

[You]

Looks like a high rate, plays like a low rate, MouRO is a land of mysteries and confusion, and unless you wipe everything you know about RO from your mind before joining, you will continue to be confused for the rest of your stay, because MouRO is the farthest thing from casual I can think of.

MouRO happily advertised itself as a server for casual players, because playing RO should be fun and not a boring experience.  I bought this up quite quickly, disregarded the low Base EXP rate, and went straight to their site to register and download.

The very first sign that something is amiss is when you try to "download" MouRO.  Apparently the Admin looked at the installers every other private servers have, considered them crap and instead guides the players to manually doing everything an .exe would have.  On top of this, there are two guide versions, one that describes every step in excrutiating detail, and another that is so brief it might as well be worthless.

While you're waiting for things to patch and download and so on, why don't you check out the Game Mechanics of MouRO?  In fact, go ahead and read everything there first, because god knows not a single thing was left unchanged when they went through it.  For a casual server, there's a lot of "Un-learning" that needs to be done to fully grasp what the hell is going on.  Also, check out this gem:

Rates: Base 10x, Job 1000x (Max per kill is 30%)

Yes, thank you for making the job rate 1000x, then completely making that pointless by making a hard cap of 30%.  I guess we have to play by YOUR pace, because while 4 creatures for a level isn't a bad trade, it makes early grinding much longer than it really should be.  Why would you do this?

After getting your Bachelor's in Ragnarok Installation, you may be surprised to see that it doesn't work.  Don't worry, this is the first of many puzzling events you'll be having on MouRO.  If it does work, prepare to enter a baffling universe that will make you think you installed the wrong server somehow.

Immediately, you are assaulted by a Valkyre NPC who goes ahead and switches you to your first class.  Nice.  Notably, Extended Classes aren't in, you have to rebirth a first class to change to them.  Why would you do that?  That's more grinding for something every other server gives you like the normal system does.  How annoying and ridiculous.

By the way, I ran into a slight problem, apparently with this immediate promotion thing, the game still doesn't acknowledge my basic skills.  None of the players around me I asked aloud to knew either.  Seriously now.

A bit more wandering past wherever the hell you start with, and you run into the mall.  This mall features almost every item I could possibly imagine in the game, including cards.  GTB and Doppleganger are only a million or two here.  There's weapons with five slots, damn it.  What the hell is going on here?

Enough complaining, how about we get right to the fun part?  I needed a guide to show me the field that the NPC said was outside town (great navigation assistance, there.)  I'll kill a fabre.  Wait, the Fabre used ruwatch.  And I'm suddenly ganged up on by the normally-passive porings and Lunatics.  I'm frustratingly stun-locked from this sudden aggression, but I manage to kill the fabre.  I never expected level 1 combat to be an epic adventure, and while I'm sure that's a bit exciting, I just wanted to click the damn catapiller and kill it.

Wait, what?  For that epic spartan battle with the Fabre and it's 12 buddies and I, I got 25%.

Oh yeah, despite the high-rate mall out in the open when you register, this is apparently a 10x.  Surprised the hell out of me.

Anyhow, I decided to play with the difficulty command.  You'd think for monsters to be twice your level, you'd set difficulty to 200%, right?  Wrong, it's 100.  In fact, I decided to completely disregard the difficulty setting, because god knows if I'll be able to figure this out.

In fact, after all I went through, I decided to go ahead and disregard MouRO altogether.  You may say I didn't give it a try, but frankly the first impression is the strongest, and MouRO is NOT the casual player environment it like to claim it is by any respect at all.  Only dedicated players can utilize the partying, levelling-down, and difficulty systems to maximize their gains, and anyone who just wants to level casually and chat with players is much better off on a server that doesn't have such a web of shenanigans.

Confusing, puzzling, and nonsensical.  That was my experience, maybe it won't be yours.

[Loki]

Looks like a high rate, plays like a low rate, MouRO is a land of mysteries and confusion, and unless you wipe everything you know about RO from your mind before joining, you will continue to be confused for the rest of your stay, because MouRO is the farthest thing from casual I can think of.

MouRO happily advertised itself as a server for casual players, because playing RO should be fun and not a boring experience.  I bought this up quite quickly, disregarded the low Base EXP rate, and went straight to their site to register and download.

The very first sign that something is amiss is when you try to "download" MouRO.  Apparently the Admin looked at the installers every other private servers have, considered them crap and instead guides the players to manually doing everything an .exe would have.  On top of this, there are two guide versions, one that describes every step in excrutiating detail, and another that is so brief it might as well be worthless.

While you're waiting for things to patch and download and so on, why don't you check out the Game Mechanics of MouRO?  In fact, go ahead and read everything there first, because god knows not a single thing was left unchanged when they went through it.  For a casual server, there's a lot of "Un-learning" that needs to be done to fully grasp what the hell is going on.  Also, check out this gem:

Rates: Base 10x, Job 1000x (Max per kill is 30%)

Yes, thank you for making the job rate 1000x, then completely making that pointless by making a hard cap of 30%.  I guess we have to play by YOUR pace, because while 4 creatures for a level isn't a bad trade, it makes early grinding much longer than it really should be.  Why would you do this?

After getting your Bachelor's in Ragnarok Installation, you may be surprised to see that it doesn't work.  Don't worry, this is the first of many puzzling events you'll be having on MouRO.  If it does work, prepare to enter a baffling universe that will make you think you installed the wrong server somehow.

Immediately, you are assaulted by a Valkyre NPC who goes ahead and switches you to your first class.  Nice.  Notably, Extended Classes aren't in, you have to rebirth a first class to change to them.  Why would you do that?  That's more grinding for something every other server gives you like the normal system does.  How annoying and ridiculous.

By the way, I ran into a slight problem, apparently with this immediate promotion thing, the game still doesn't acknowledge my basic skills.  None of the players around me I asked aloud to knew either.  Seriously now.

A bit more wandering past wherever the hell you start with, and you run into the mall.  This mall features almost every item I could possibly imagine in the game, including cards.  GTB and Doppleganger are only a million or two here.  There's weapons with five slots, damn it.  What the hell is going on here?

Enough complaining, how about we get right to the fun part?  I needed a guide to show me the field that the NPC said was outside town (great navigation assistance, there.)  I'll kill a fabre.  Wait, the Fabre used ruwatch.  And I'm suddenly ganged up on by the normally-passive porings and Lunatics.  I'm frustratingly stun-locked from this sudden aggression, but I manage to kill the fabre.  I never expected level 1 combat to be an epic adventure, and while I'm sure that's a bit exciting, I just wanted to click the damn catapiller and kill it.

Wait, what?  For that epic spartan battle with the Fabre and it's 12 buddies and I, I got 25%.

Oh yeah, despite the high-rate mall out in the open when you register, this is apparently a 10x.  Surprised the hell out of me.

Anyhow, I decided to play with the difficulty command.  You'd think for monsters to be twice your level, you'd set difficulty to 200%, right?  Wrong, it's 100.  In fact, I decided to completely disregard the difficulty setting, because god knows if I'll be able to figure this out.

In fact, after all I went through, I decided to go ahead and disregard MouRO altogether.  You may say I didn't give it a try, but frankly the first impression is the strongest, and MouRO is NOT the casual player environment it like to claim it is by any respect at all.  Only dedicated players can utilize the partying, levelling-down, and difficulty systems to maximize their gains, and anyone who just wants to level casually and chat with players is much better off on a server that doesn't have such a web of shenanigans.

Confusing, puzzling, and nonsensical.  That was my experience, maybe it won't be yours.

From reading your review, it surprises me. And also makes me wonder.

Why?

Because as you said "In fact, go ahead and read everything there first, because god knows not a single thing was left unchanged when they went through it.  For a casual server, there's a lot of "Un-learning" that needs to be done to fully grasp what the hell is going on".

I'm not sure anybody in MouRO ever told you this, but you need to read through the changes made on the forum or the website to even grasp the way of playing MouRO. I was confused at first too but after reading through the changes and guides, I started to think "Hey, this might be fun". Note, this is a party based server, hence the mobbing monsters(which was also stated in the changes).

Notably, Extended Classes aren't in, you have to rebirth a first class to change to them.  Why would you do that?  That's more grinding for something every other server gives you like the normal system does.  How annoying and ridiculous.

This was due to the fact that extended classes is under-powered compared to the normal classes. So, Skotlex decided to tweak this classes by changing them into extended second classes and can have their first classes skills.

By the way, I ran into a slight problem, apparently with this immediate promotion thing, the game still doesn't acknowledge my basic skills.  None of the players around me I asked aloud to knew either.  Seriously now.

After reading in the forums, you would know that you would need several base levels to do some of this and that.

A bit more wandering past wherever the hell you start with, and you run into the mall.  This mall features almost every item I could possibly imagine in the game, including cards.  GTB and Doppleganger are only a million or two here.  There's weapons with five slots, damn it.  What the hell is going on here?

Alas. May I ask again, have you even read about the server's modifications? GTB does not nullify magic attacks but only gives you a decent amount of MDEF and a resistance to most element. Doppelgangers still gives you a boost in weapon speed but in return you do less damage. Every class has a different max ASPD to balance the game, hence Doppelganger cards are not that OP. And what about 5 slot weapons? Its not un-balanced or OP. Only a few lower damage weapons or a certain few special weapons have 5 slots and they make no difference to the game balance. Cards are all maintain to accommodate with the amount of slots and game mechanics. Weapons that are of higher class and damage would just have 1-3 slots. You won't see people doing 999k damages per 0.5 second even with 5 slots weapon.

Enough complaining, how about we get right to the fun part?  I needed a guide to show me the field that the NPC said was outside town (great navigation assistance, there.)  I'll kill a fabre.  Wait, the Fabre used ruwatch.  And I'm suddenly ganged up on by the normally-passive porings and Lunatics.  I'm frustratingly stun-locked from this sudden aggression, but I manage to kill the fabre.  I never expected level 1 combat to be an epic adventure, and while I'm sure that's a bit exciting, I just wanted to click the damn catapiller and kill it.

Oh my. If you've read the modifications made on the server, you would know that monster have random skills and will aid their monster friends when attacked. At this stage, you would still survive even with 100% diff. Someone in RMS even confessed that he gained 60 lvls solo-ing. I can't say its your fault for not having a party due to the fact that not many people play this server but just for your information, you gain lvl faster with partying. Not only that, you'd get the fun out of partying and ganging up on mobs who's also trying to gang up on you.

Oh yeah, despite the high-rate mall out in the open when you register, this is apparently a 10x.  Surprised the hell out of me.

I thought you joined this server having full knowledge of it being "a rather different and weird server"? Why would that surprised you? Besides, its not exactly that easy making a million and getting MVP cards every chance you get. Players do sell cards for a much lower price compared to the cards in the mall. But some are reluctant as they don't get it everyday.

In fact, after all I went through, I decided to go ahead and disregard MouRO altogether.  You may say I didn't give it a try, but frankly the first impression is the strongest, and MouRO is NOT the casual player environment it like to claim it is by any respect at all.  Only dedicated players can utilize the partying, levelling-down, and difficulty systems to maximize their gains, and anyone who just wants to level casually and chat with players is much better off on a server that doesn't have such a web of shenanigans.

If you're casual enough, you would have enough leisure time to read through the guides and modifications. Doesn't mean you would have to grind your brain and read everything in one go. You could always play and learn with other players in the server as well.

EDIT: On behalf as a MouRO player. I apologize if the guides and information about the server in the forums or website is confusing and hard to read. You could always suggest a change for a simpler way of making guides in the suggestion section of the forum.

[Macros]

So, to summarize the first TL;DR post in this topic... you whine about MouRO because:
-You hardly tried anything on the server.
-You were looking for another stereotypical high-rate RO server.
-Your IQ is probably too low to praise you with "adaptability".
-You dont like the Valkyrie sprite.
-You have no clue about MouROs economy.
-You were butthurt by some Fabre and porings.

A breathtakingly amusing post you made there, You. 200% difficulty made me chuckle.

Loki, gosh, why are you hurting your fingertips for writing such long answers. Clueless people dont need that much attention

[Hutchy]

WOW. Is nobody allowed to dislike a server without getting b**** at anymore?

[Guest]

>.> guyssssssss you are only suppose to start up debates in server reviews if your trying to dispute if FACTS in the reviewer's review are true or not, not just if you have a disagreement and think something differently then what the reviewer thinks

reviews are meant to be be the PLAYER'S experience there, you can't dispute how the player feels about the place, the only thing you are PERMITTED to dispute are the facts, (like if he says its a custom, and its really a kRO clone)

• Try to keep debates off of your review topics.  The only time a debate is to challenge a false FACT.  Facts being things that are provable to non-players.

*grumbles 'no one ever reads the rules' mumble mumble*

[Dew]

The very first sign that something is amiss is when you try to "download" MouRO.  Apparently the Admin looked at the installers every other private servers have, considered them crap and instead guides the players to manually doing everything an .exe would have.  On top of this, there are two guide versions, one that describes every step in excrutiating detail, and another that is so brief it might as well be worthless.

You just install normal RO and drag a few files into your RO folder, what's so hard about that?

While you're waiting for things to patch and download and so on, why don't you check out the Game Mechanics of MouRO?  In fact, go ahead and read everything there first, because god knows not a single thing was left unchanged when they went through it.  For a casual server, there's a lot of "Un-learning" that needs to be done to fully grasp what the hell is going on.  Also, check out this gem:

You can read... or just ask the players around you. It can be a whole lot for a new player... but after a while everything just falls into place. It's not standard RO, and it's only natural an oldtime player( which I asume you are) doesn't feel at home with such changes. I now find regular servers dull, as every part of it's gameplay have been chewed up by the thousands of people playing it. There's a guide for everything, and one can hardly call buildmaking original. I've been on Mou for a long time now... and still, no grand build.. near endless ways to work on your character.

Yes, thank you for making the job rate 1000x, then completely making that pointless by making a hard cap of 30%.  I guess we have to play by YOUR pace, because while 4 creatures for a level isn't a bad trade, it makes early grinding much longer than it really should be.  Why would you do this?

Like said, when you're in a party exp is much greater. Of course if you're by yourself it'll go slow. Try asking people to join you. Share range being far greater... and even active by a percentage after that makes it the best way. Try that and you won't even notice the 30% cap. From my own experience.. Lvl's from 0 till ~100 are obtained way faster then any other server with the same rates.

Immediately, you are assaulted by a Valkyre NPC who goes ahead and switches you to your first class.  Nice.  Notably, Extended Classes aren't in, you have to rebirth a first class to change to them.  Why would you do that?  That's more grinding for something every other server gives you like the normal system does.  How annoying and ridiculous.

You like the weakness of the original classes?
Gunslingers, Ninja's & Taekwon are allot better off then anywhere else.
Gunners:
1. No longer f*** by their bullet element. Magic bullet grants several "exotic" elements to choose from.
2. Better hp, they get the HP you'd expect from a class with such a badass name
3. They get a cart... how can you be mad?

Ninja's
1. Buffs actually work with you... and are more then just Pvp tools
2. When I originally joined RO I always thought it was odd Ninja's didn't belong to the thief tree... they just belong there.
3. Boosted fuuma skills, enhanced magic types
4. and also, better HP

Taekwon's
1. No messed up s*** with Hatred & Feeling, which normally is just a very lame way to leech. Or beat things you're actually not suposed to beat by yourself.
2. Esma working like a laser beam, hitting multiple enemies. I've played these on normal servers... and the constant estun->esma sucks total balls, big improvement.
3. Both better HP
4. Ranker and glad merged, HURAY!
5. Linkers are like Priests.. and glads are the counterpart of Champs. That makes sense right? Korean logic doesn't control the world.

They've been made into real characters, I don't get why you prefer somewhat easier lvling to... not having a halfassed character.

Grinding may have increased on those classes... but rebirthing doesn't lower your level. You won't be forced to go all the way back to H.novice. I find that a good "trade".

A bit more wandering past wherever the hell you start with, and you run into the mall.  This mall features almost every item I could possibly imagine in the game, including cards.  GTB and Doppleganger are only a million or two here.  There's weapons with five slots, damn it.  What the hell is going on here?

Skipping to your encounter with fabres, you might understand why these are available. Nearly every Mvp card has been tweaked. They provide a boost, with a penalty... that's just it. You can rack in all the Mvp's you want... but you'll never be godly. As the comon strategies of RO are pointless, mobs are faster, stronger and smarter. Without the cards.. noone would survive. Sounds spooky I know, it really isnt. Mou just isn't molded into the same strategies over and over again.

Anyhow, I decided to play with the difficulty command.  You'd think for monsters to be twice your level, you'd set difficulty to 200%, right?  Wrong, it's 100.  In fact, I decided to completely disregard the difficulty setting, because god knows if I'll be able to figure this out.

If the command was named @level I would've understood that. Kinda funny... but everyone's a beginner at some point.

In fact, after all I went through, I decided to go ahead and disregard MouRO altogether.  You may say I didn't give it a try, but frankly the first impression is the strongest, and MouRO is NOT the casual player environment it like to claim it is by any respect at all.  Only dedicated players can utilize the partying, levelling-down, and difficulty systems to maximize their gains, and anyone who just wants to level casually and chat with players is much better off on a server that doesn't have such a web of shenanigans.

I agree, you didn't give it a try, not to be rude... but even a monkey can grasp the idea of @diff. You came to find a regular server.. and that's just not what Mou is. First impressions are different for everyone.
Lvling is casual, once was a review stating it actually was too easy
People are friendly, with the way how people obtain items there's little greed. Newbies don't get denied help. Often get handed a good amount of starter equips as well.
And last... it's a perfect place for chatting. Newbies and older players get allong very well. And the size of the server allows one to actually get to know the people. I've chatted more on Mou in a day, then on servers 10 times Mou's size in a week.

Think you just need someone to show you around. If you change your mind( hope you do) I'm happy to help out. IGN
Jacob, Kraftwerk, Gauloises etc etc.

Ps.

Don't mind Macros, he just has has a bad case of "having a stick up his donkey" it's a weird disease ... you should see the pictures of his mom during pregnancy, f*** freakshow.

Donkey? donkey donkey donkey... A S S isnt a bad word yaknow

[Loki]

>.> guyssssssss you are only suppose to start up debates in server reviews if your trying to dispute if FACTS in the reviewer's review are true or not, not just if you have a disagreement and think something differently then what the reviewer thinks

reviews are meant to be be the PLAYER'S experience there, you can't dispute how the player feels about the place, the only thing you are PERMITTED to dispute are the facts, (like if he says its a custom, and its really a kRO clone)

• Try to keep debates off of your review topics.  The only time a debate is to challenge a false FACT.  Facts being things that are provable to non-players.

*grumbles 'no one ever reads the rules' mumble mumble*

Well, we're just saying he hasn't experienced much of MouRO 

That's not debating isn't it.

[Macros]

WOW. Is nobody allowed to dislike a server without getting b**** at anymore?

Dislike a server? Why yes, of course, everyone is allowed to dislike a server. But if you saw the first 5 minutes of a movie, would you write a review about it? Isnt it arrogant to throw bad light on a server one does not even know? MouRO has been constantly improving for years by now, and it has almost grown into a totally different game, compared to the original game. I have seen dozens of people leaving the server just because "it wasnt too normal for them", but is that a valid reason for creating such a bad review?

>.> guyssssssss you are only suppose to start up debates in server reviews if your trying to dispute if FACTS in the reviewer's review are true or not, not just if you have a disagreement and think something differently then what the reviewer thinks

reviews are meant to be be the PLAYER'S experience there, you can't dispute how the player feels about the place, the only thing you are PERMITTED to dispute are the facts, (like if he says its a custom, and its really a kRO clone)

• Try to keep debates off of your review topics.  The only time a debate is to challenge a false FACT.  Facts being things that are provable to non-players.

*grumbles 'no one ever reads the rules' mumble mumble*

The Facts are, that the reviewer here does not have sufficient experience with the server, to write a review. MouRO states everywhere that it is highly customized, and one has to approach it almost as a new game, not as "another RO server". Tell me, do you think the reviewer got even a SLIGHT impression of the servers complexity? Everything he wrote in his review states otherwise, and most of his "facts" are just half-hearted attempts to throw some bad light on a server, which doesnt deserve it.

Ignoring the fact that just by reading the review, its rather simple to deduce that the reviewer was really really stupid.

Don't mind Macros, he just has has a bad case of "having a stick up his donkey" it's a weird disease ... you should see the pictures of his mom during pregnancy, f*** freakshow.

Donkey? donkey donkey donkey... A S S isnt a bad word yaknow

That is one catchy disease i have, isnt it. Apparently, you got it from me >:] Way to solve your complexes, lol.

[Loki]

WOW. Is nobody allowed to dislike a server without getting b**** at anymore?

Dislike a server? Why yes, of course, everyone is allowed to dislike a server. But if you saw the first 5 minutes of a movie, would you write a review about it? Isnt it arrogant to throw bad light on a server one does not even know? MouRO has been constantly improving for years by now, and it has almost grown into a totally different game, compared to the original game. I have seen dozens of people leaving the server just because "it wasnt too normal for them", but is that a valid reason for creating such a bad review?

>.> guyssssssss you are only suppose to start up debates in server reviews if your trying to dispute if FACTS in the reviewer's review are true or not, not just if you have a disagreement and think something differently then what the reviewer thinks

reviews are meant to be be the PLAYER'S experience there, you can't dispute how the player feels about the place, the only thing you are PERMITTED to dispute are the facts, (like if he says its a custom, and its really a kRO clone)

• Try to keep debates off of your review topics.  The only time a debate is to challenge a false FACT.  Facts being things that are provable to non-players.

*grumbles 'no one ever reads the rules' mumble mumble*

The Facts are, that the reviewer here does not have sufficient experience with the server, to write a review. MouRO states everywhere that it is highly customized, and one has to approach it almost as a new game, not as "another RO server". Tell me, do you think the reviewer got even a SLIGHT impression of the servers complexity? Everything he wrote in his review states otherwise, and most of his "facts" are just half-hearted attempts to throw some bad light on a server, which doesnt deserve it.

Ignoring the fact that just by reading the review, its rather simple to deduce that the reviewer was really really stupid.

Don't mind Macros, he just has has a bad case of "having a stick up his donkey" it's a weird disease ... you should see the pictures of his mom during pregnancy, f*** freakshow.

Donkey? donkey donkey donkey... A S S isnt a bad word yaknow

That is one catchy disease i have, isnt it. Apparently, you got it from me >:] Way to solve your complexes, lol.

Calm down now Macros. Calling other people stupid doesn't solve anything 

[Macros]

Calm down now Macros. Calling other people stupid doesn't solve anything 

And writing essays does? Solve anything? But what do you want to solve? The You guy is not gonna return. The only problem here is that this topic throws a negative light on the server, while... Noone did anything wrong! Does the server deserve negative advertisment just because some random guy holds grudges against the Valkyrie sprite, and because he is too lazy to kill 4 MONSTERS to level up?

Goosh, if you had a favorite literature writer, and someone would read a SINGLE page from any of his books, and would write a clueless review about him, would you stay totally calm?

[Loki]

Well we can't solve anything if its about changing people's opinion. Maybe we can influence but its their decision of what to make out of the server. But I do agree that players shouldn't write reviews about the server when they have not enough experience and done some more reading.

Do you want people to think that MouRO has some seriously ill tempered players? I think not.

[Rudolph Zyaber]

yeah basically what the OP is saying is that "MouRO is presented as a Casual Players Heaven, when it is infact exactly the opposite" and I would have to tend to agree with him/her.  After doing a bit of research, a fair bit of what the OP says is somewhat true. 

You have to manually install the server, no fancy patchers or installers.  It's only 3-4 files but it's still a big turn off from actual "Casual" players to have to do this.

Customizations out the donkey on every single aspect of the game.  almost every MVP card is customized or has some drawback, and some armors have more then one slot I take it? You can overupgrade stuff past +10?  Skills are all modified out the donkey? I doubt an actual casual player would take the time to re-learn everything all over again just to play here.  And that is honestly what you are forcing players to do here.  Re-learn everything.  sure, some things are the same but for the most part the games core mechanics are fundamentally altered.

And then the OP plays and finds out that monsters are way harder to promote party leveling which is a big thing on MouRO apparently.  Well of course he is gonna be turned off if it's hard and he has to go through all those prior things with little to no help,  and then when he/she comes here and trys to voice his/her hard time with the server, trolls come out and give the server another black eye, bad community.

I think all this culminates into the major problem that MouRO apparently has, low population. 

My suggestion. 

1.Make an easy installer, other less customized RO servers do it, I don't see why MouRO cant.
2.Make players start off in some kind of training ground that explains the MAJOR changes to them before they can actually start playing.
3.Try not to be so judgemental or standoffish when someone says something negative.  Hutchy is right. It's starting to get that people can't like a server around here these days.  Do your job JJJ or I will complain to Yc that you don't.

[Pandora]

1.Make an easy installer, other less customized RO servers do it, I don't see why MouRO cant.
2.Make players start off in some kind of training ground that explains the MAJOR changes to them before they can actually start playing.
3.Try not to be so judgemental or standoffish when someone says something negative.  Hutchy is right. It's starting to get that people can't like a server around here these days.  Do your job JJJ or I will complain to Yc that you don't.

Quoted for truth. While I have the utmost respect for MouRO, I think the reviewer gave his honest opinion on his experience and we got to respect that, surely something can be learned from reading it, rather than treating it as an attack.

Casual players usually seek convenience, so make an installer, seems like nothing for someone who can make all those cool mods. The training ground idea is also a good suggestion, or at the very least gather all the relevant information in one place, make a "newcomer guide" if needed with a good summary of the changes the server offers, perhaps add pictures for and good formatting for easy reading for the casual player (not just a huge change log).

[Macros]

Casual players usually seek convenience, so make an installer, seems like nothing for someone who can make all those cool mods. The training ground idea is also a good suggestion, or at the very least gather all the relevant information in one place, make a "newcomer guide" if needed with a good summary of the changes the server offers, perhaps add pictures for and good formatting for easy reading for the casual player (not just a huge change log).

Making an installer is extra work Skotlex would have to do... while it might seem easy, he would have to redo the installer every time the bdata are updated, which could get a little tedious. Also, Skotlex is under a constant and extreme strain because of the ammount of things he has to do. He studies for a masters degree, and most of his spare time he spents on updating and fine-tuning the server. While doing that all, he still checks the forums very frequently, and promptly helps with troubleshooting. Yes, it would be very convenient to make him create patchers so that "casual players" can just click click and everything is done. But is it necessary? Look, literally hundreds of people vere able to install MouRO without any major problems. Its just downloading and copypasting three files. The installation of MouRO is definetly more user-friendly than the download and installation of the Ragnarok client itself.

We do already have such a newbie helper NPC, right in the room where you spawn. We also have a warper that sends you to a field which is specifically modified to provide a convenient place for low level players. You even get an Adventurers Suit with Thara frog cards, and 5 job levels right off the bat, to ease your leveling. Over the time i play on MouRO, i created over 35 characters there, and i leveled them all without any major help from the initial levels, and i never found it really difficult. Everyone had to start once, and our starting conditions were all pretty much the same. Why do some people complain about the initial monsters, and some dont? The writer of the review was rather lucky too, he only had a fabre with Ruwatch. They could get Asura strike or Storm Gust.

yeah basically what the OP is saying is that "MouRO is presented as a Casual Players Heaven, when it is infact exactly the opposite" and I would have to tend to agree with him/her.  After doing a bit of research, a fair bit of what the OP says is somewhat true. 

AFAIK, MouRO is presented as "The different server for a casual player." Could you explain, how is it exactly the opposite? After the time i spent on MouRO, one thing i know for sure, you dont know what its all about unless you get your very own hands-on experience.

Customizations out the donkey on every single aspect of the game.  almost every MVP card is customized or has some drawback, and some armors have more then one slot I take it? You can overupgrade stuff past +10?  Skills are all modified out the donkey? I doubt an actual casual player would take the time to re-learn everything all over again just to play here.  And that is honestly what you are forcing players to do here.  Re-learn everything.  sure, some things are the same but for the most part the games core mechanics are fundamentally altered.

You just scratch the surface of things, without going any deeper. So what if the MvP cards have drawbacks and are customized? Do you think we just slapped all the MVP cards into the shops and let the players go wild with them? Accesible MvP cards called for a new kind of rebalance, hence why they are modified. You doubt a casual player would "re-learn" everything? But MouRO is not the old RO you knew, its a totally different gameplay experience. When a casual player buys a new game, doesnt he have to learn at least _something_?

Monsters are harder. Hmm. Well, different is the word i would use. The monsters on MouRO dont let you kill themselves like the monsters in normal RO do. They cooperate, they can hit back. Nonetheless, it is still perfectly fine to go solo. From my own experience, all it takes to get a character to higher level is using a ctrl+click on the monsters. The hardest part is to learn to not assault big groups of monsters, since they will gang up on you. Do you need a masters degree, or hours of time to comprehend that?

[Hutchy]

T_T

[Fruityla]

Learn to take criticism @_@ Sheesh.

Instead of jumping down the poor kid's throat because they didn't like their experience on your server, try taking what they said into consideration. It's not like the OP was flaming you.

[Macros]

Instead of jumping down the poor kid's throat because they didn't like their experience on your server, try taking what they said into consideration. It's not like the OP was flaming you.

...because MouRO is the farthest thing from casual I can think of...

MouRO happily advertised itself as... I bought this up quite quickly...

Apparently the Admin looked at the installers every other private servers have, considered them crap and instead guides the players to manually doing everything an .exe would have...

...because god knows not a single thing was left unchanged when they went through it.

I guess we have to play by YOUR pace...

After getting your Bachelor's in Ragnarok Installation...

Don't worry, this is the first of many puzzling events you'll be having on MouRO.

Why would you do that?  That's more grinding for something every other server gives you like the normal system does.  How annoying and ridiculous.

A bit more wandering past wherever the hell you start with...

There's weapons with five slots, damn it.  What the hell is going on here?

Yes, i will gladly learn to take criticism, once its constructive. Did i really have to do what i just did, point at his sentances, and say: LOOK, HERE WHEN I AM POINTING, THIS IS CALLED "ARROGANCE"? Many people criticised MouRO, but they at least were so polite that they treated Skotlex with respect. I am perfectly fine with constructive criticism, but you want me to treat someone who has no right to criticise nicely? The "You" guy is wrong in pretty much everything, and his "review", based _solely_ on "first impression", is outrageously shallow.

Also flaming MouRO pretty much = flaming me. Duh.

[Hutchy]

Learn to take criticism @_@ Sheesh.

Instead of jumping down the poor kid's throat because they didn't like their experience on your server, try taking what they said into consideration. It's not like the OP was flaming you.

Unfortunately, this will do no good. Nobody has enough sense to listen.

[PoisonWolf]

Instead of jumping down the poor kid's throat because they didn't like their experience on your server, try taking what they said into consideration. It's not like the OP was flaming you.

...because MouRO is the farthest thing from casual I can think of...

MouRO happily advertised itself as... I bought this up quite quickly...

Apparently the Admin looked at the installers every other private servers have, considered them crap and instead guides the players to manually doing everything an .exe would have...

...because god knows not a single thing was left unchanged when they went through it.

I guess we have to play by YOUR pace...

After getting your Bachelor's in Ragnarok Installation...

Don't worry, this is the first of many puzzling events you'll be having on MouRO.

Why would you do that?  That's more grinding for something every other server gives you like the normal system does.  How annoying and ridiculous.

A bit more wandering past wherever the hell you start with...

There's weapons with five slots, damn it.  What the hell is going on here?

Yes, i will gladly learn to take criticism, once its constructive. Did i really have to do what i just did, point at his sentances, and say: LOOK, HERE WHEN I AM POINTING, THIS IS CALLED "ARROGANCE"? Many people criticised MouRO, but they at least were so polite that they treated Skotlex with respect. I am perfectly fine with constructive criticism, but you want me to treat someone who has no right to criticise nicely? The "You" guy is wrong in pretty much everything, and his "review", based _solely_ on "first impression", is outrageously shallow.

Also flaming MouRO pretty much = flaming me. Duh.

Macros,

Honestly, if you can't even take negative reviews, get Skotlex to close up MouRO, and keep it to just the circle of friends you have on the server. That's the best way to get the shaft out of your rectum right now, in my opinion. If you're going to have a public server, take the good and the bad that comes with it. Sure the OP could have presented his opinion better, but does it justify the necessity to jump down his throat for it? It really makes you no better than a pompous prick in my opinion.

Even Skotlex is not here doing anything about it, and even if he did read it, I'm sure he would not be as fired up as you are right now. If you really can't take negative reviews, just don't come to the RMS forums. That will save you a lot of headaches.

The way I see it, take what the topic creator(TC) said, and take it in a positive light. So right now, it seems that MouRO is really just too difficult for the average-player who just wants to come in and level up, so make changes in the game to notify them of these things . A good suggestion was the training grounds. And please don't give the "he's too busy with real-life excuses". If he's too busy to even begin with, he wouldn't even be hosting the server. I go to college as well, I work during the week, I do a lot of other things, and I still find time to utilize patchers and all the shenanigans just to make things easier for newcomers. For you it may be easy to do it because you've been playing there for a long time, but you need to look at people who may or may not be as tech-savvy as you are.

If Skotlex isn't willing to make things easier, you can take it both ways. One, this will act as a buffer for filtering players that you don't want in the server (perhaps people who don't like customizations), two, this will also act as a reason as to why the population is constantly so low, even after so many years (I've heard about MouRO well over for a year now, or was it a year and a half?). It's really Skotlex's call on his behalf in this regard. He can spend an hour or three during the weekends learning how to setup Triads, creating more informative NPCs about the server (really, just make a giant handbook that functions as an etc item that will contain all the useful tips/hints, or he can continue fine-tuning the server.

Your call. And please, stop being so pissy, you're starting to make MouRO look bad.

Cheers.

[Fruityla]

Yes, i will gladly learn to take criticism, once its constructive. Did i really have to do what i just did, point at his sentances, and say: LOOK, HERE WHEN I AM POINTING, THIS IS CALLED "ARROGANCE"? Many people criticised MouRO, but they at least were so polite that they treated Skotlex with respect. I am perfectly fine with constructive criticism, but you want me to treat someone who has no right to criticise nicely? The "You" guy is wrong in pretty much everything, and his "review", based _solely_ on "first impression", is outrageously shallow.

Also flaming MouRO pretty much = flaming me. Duh.

That response isn't helping your case any and tells me I should just walk away. Which is exactly what I'm doing. o_o;

[Ominoto]

Thing is, this board is for players to share their experiences on a server, and let other people comment on them, regardless of however long they have played on the server, or in this case, how far into the server they got.

The thing with MouRO is that it's customised to the point that next-to-nothing is the same as say, your average RO server.  Now lets take the average RO player at the moment, who has most likely played RO for about a year - two years.  They have to adjust to this server's mechanics, but rather than actually learning much about these customs ingame, they have to read walls of text on the forums.  The least you could do is make a Training Ground which gives a good explanation on part of the customs.  Not going through the whole list, but enough to give the player a general idea without having to read guides in order to play.

I'm going to use YggdrasilOnline as an example.  For the customs in their server, they added a custom training ground in order to explain some of these changes.  Sure theres not as many as MouRO, but atleast they explained it without having to go to the forums, and in a very simple way too.  When you're online, you'd want to play the game, not read on the forums how to play, that's just plain boring.

That's my two cents.

[Macros]

The way I see it, take what the topic creator(TC) said, and take it in a positive light. So right now, it seems that MouRO is really just too difficult for the average-player who just wants to come in and level up, so make changes in the game to notify them of these things . A good suggestion was the training grounds. And please don't give the "he's too busy with real-life excuses". If he's too busy to even begin with, he wouldn't even be hosting the server. I go to college as well, I work during the week, I do a lot of other things, and I still find time to utilize patchers and all the shenanigans just to make things easier for newcomers. For you it may be easy to do it because you've been playing there for a long time, but you need to look at people who may or may not be as tech-savvy as you are.

If Skotlex isn't willing to make things easier, you can take it both ways. One, this will act as a buffer for filtering players that you don't want in the server (perhaps people who don't like customizations), two, this will also act as a reason as to why the population is constantly so low, even after so many years (I've heard about MouRO well over for a year now, or was it a year and a half?). It's really Skotlex's call on his behalf in this regard. He can spend an hour or three during the weekends learning how to setup Triads, creating more informative NPCs about the server (really, just make a giant handbook that functions as an etc item that will contain all the useful tips/hints, or he can continue fine-tuning the server.

Hmm. Yes, i doubt many people would be as fired up as i am. I do not like people who think that they are able to compose a constructive opinion from a couple hours of gameplay. I do not like people who try to act like oooh those famous and rough critics feared by all the writers/movie directors, whatever. First impression might be important, but basing opinions _merely_ on first impressions... is shallow. Would you pick a partner by the first impression? There are many things that are not that awesome at the beginning, and get way better in the process.

Heck, imagine i would write a review based on the first chapter of Lord of the Rings. The first chapter was riddiculously boring imho, but the rest of the books were cool. He only got to Fabres and Porings :-/ There were many people who didnt like MouRO right off the bat, people who just stayed for a couple hours, and they were totally like "duuuh, this is definetly not a server for me, everything sucks", and they left. But they were never as rude as this TC (topic creator) is.

There were also people who didnt like the server very much, but then they grew to love it, as i did.

Thing is, this board is for players to share their experiences on a server, and let other people comment on them, regardless of however long they have played on the server, or in this case, how far into the server they got.

Okay, but you cant be surprised when someone has objections then. I certainly do not think that everything about the review is okay. Do you?

The thing with MouRO is that it's customised to the point that next-to-nothing is the same as say, your average RO server.  Now lets take the average RO player at the moment, who has most likely played RO for about a year - two years.  They have to adjust to this server's mechanics, but rather than actually learning much about these customs ingame, they have to read walls of text on the forums.  The least you could do is make a Training Ground which gives a good explanation on part of the customs.  Not going through the whole list, but enough to give the player a general idea without having to read guides in order to play.

Yes, that is a good suggestion. Although we already have a newbie introduction NPC in the initial room, which offers most of the information you might need... you see, new people tend to rush into the game, ignoring any NPCs (except the merchants) along the road. I am pretty sure that even if the Valkyrie herself provided text, most of the people would merely read the chat options, find out they can pick a class, and totally disregard all the advice she had to offer.

Now i wonder how come when i came to MouRO two years ago, and there werent even any Forums yet, and there were like 2 players active very rarely... and i still managed to get used to the servers changes, and have a lot of good time there.

Anyway, those were some good two cents, both from Wolf and Omino. Now i wish the initial post would be written in this manner.

[Pandora]

I'm sure Skotlex, in his all mighty awesomeness (*praise praise*) could make an installer and a patcher for the convenience of his players and that it would increase the player-friendliness of mouRO, and if he can't due to time restraint I got one word for you : delegate!

For the longest time, players suggested that MouRO should have a website (also in the mindset of being convenient), as far as I heard, it was a player who did it in the end, so maybe find someone to make you an installer and patcher, when you update you make a patch instead of new full files to download, it's also less heavy on the download for the players.

[bulbasteve]

People seem to have very different definitions of "casual".

First of all I don't think we really talk about "casual RO players". Frankly the reason I am most in favor of an easy installer is to get more people outside the RO pserver community in. Since clearly as some of these posts show when you play a game for a good 6 or 7 years you really don't like learning new things.

And really how many of us actually learned through going through the training grounds? I just spent half a night reading through the ol' Weggy FAQs, but I think some people forget that we weren't born knowing how to play the game.

Aside from which I would probably argue that the way the game system in Mou is set up is actually far more logical an intuitive than standard RO, again I think people forget just how esoteric and strange some of the rules in regular RO is.

But then that is always the problem when some so called hardcore gamers talk about casual games. Casual gaming is more about the time you spent gaming (as in no grind) as opposed to how easy or hard the game is to learn.

[Guest]

locking this because its going out of hand

and guys, he is entitled to his opinion, you can't dispute that (YES thats what you were doing)