Ragnarok Online

"(Beta) Lighter and less overbearing than some of the crap MMORPGs out there."

This is my kind of MMORPG. There's a (fairly, as of right now, since it's beta the world isn't nearly full-size yet) large world, lots of items, stuff to fight, multiple classes, and social environment you don't -have- to participate in if you want to have fun. Other MMORPGs should take note.

Anyway, for those not sure as to exactly what the hell this game is, I'll state it simply: It's a more simplified Massive Multiplayer Online RPG with a semi-static world and and an equally simplistic graphical style.

As said in other reviews, the graphics are beautiful in their own way. The game's world is rendered in full 3d with a nice amount of detail and some of the most well-done texturing I've ever seen, while the PCs and NPCs are 2d sprites much akin in looks to the ones from FFT. The texturing simply has to be seen to be appreciated. Rather than going for flat-out digital realism or cartoonish pastels, the game maxes the two styles together to make the sprites and levels blend in with eachother so neither looks out of place. It's just well done, I'll leave it at that.

There is no real plot to speak of at the moment, since the game is still beta, but the premise is simple. You are a fledgling adventurer who wants to become powerful and rid the world of Rune-Midgard of evil. Thus, you beat stuff up for EXP and sell stuff for money and equipment.

You start off as a novice, a weak fighter with no real combat skills, and as you level up, your job level will increase and give you access to the basic abilities (like trading, sitting, opening chats, and expressing yourself with these neat little emoticons). When you reach the highest job level for the novice, you can become a Swordsman, Thief, Acolyte, Magician, or Merchant. For each class you'll have to find the proper guild, and do whatever tasks are required to become your class of choice.

Customizing your character is possible, but unfortunately very limited, so you will most likely be seeing a few hundred dopplegangers who look just like you running around. You can choose a hairstyle when you first create your character (hint: Don't pick spiky read hair), and then you have optional head equipment you can buy like eye patches and glasses, and finally you have your class that determines your overall look. Someone should be able to spot you in a crowd, but you'll have trouble looking like a real individual out in the wild.

Combat is handled Diablo-style, you simply click the enemy you want to attack, and hold the button down while your character trades blows with the monster. Of course, when you get actual skills it gets more involved, and then you have to use items as well. Fairly simple.

RO has a fair amount of options for social interaction, first off, you can obviously just 'talk' out loud, and everyone within a screen's range of you can read what you've typed. You can also have a whisper list so you can maintain contacts with friends or just people you happen to bump into. Parties are possible too, and when someone in your party is in the same area, you'll be able to see them on the map as a dot. You can also easily keep contact with your party members through your party list, unlike the whisper list, which clears every time you exit the game.

You can also open public and private chats that are very IRC-ish in feel. A window will pop up for the chat you've created or entered, and a list of users will be shown on the right, with the text on the left. The chat creator can kick and squelch anyone who enters. To outside viewers, the name of the chat and it's status (private, public, number of users/maximum users) will be displayed in a callout bubble over the player's head. Shops opened by merchants look the same way too, only they have their own little icon that represents a shop.

The gameplay is fun, and fairly addictive, despite being very simple due to most features not being implemented. The most you can do right now is go spelunking in dungeons to fight stuff, level up, collect rares, and go play with parties. PvP (or PK) has not been added as of right now (3-11-02), but an arena is going to be opened in the future for one-on-one matches, along with a normal PK option. Also, actual quests and true bosses will probably be implemented along with new classes later on (Gravity says there will be 30+ classes in retail. Wow).

A guild system is also in the works, where guild houses can be bought for members to congregate in. A karma system is in development as well, where your killstealing, looting, and people's response to you is measured and translated into a graph that other users can look at to see if you're trustworthy or a jerk, or a pervert, or whatever.

The sound is fantastic, with nice monster, weapon, and spell sounds, and a fairly nice soundtrack that you can change if you simply replace the MP3's in the BGM directory with MP3's of your choosing.

The only real problems with the game are with it's beta nature and it's community.

The English server is in Korea, meaning that trans-atlantic lag will indeed be a problem for anyone using dial-up. The sub-net around the server seems to be laggy as well, so in heavily populated areas, you will get minor to crippling lag if you're unlucky, even with the fastest net service.

Also, most of the community you'll probably run into are killstealers and looters, who will kill monsters that you fight to steal items or EXP, or simply just jerks who curse at people for no real reason. A lot of German and Thai people play as well, and since the majority of the users on the English beta speak...well, ENGLISH, you may find communication with the guy who looted your nice shiny rare a bit difficult.

The game is also very buggy at times, with all sorts of nasty stuff like character switch bugs, disappearing cart bugs (really bad for poor merchants, since they lose everything they put in their carts), crashes, etc. If you're looking for a 100% stable game or around there, wait for retail. Servers are also down on a regular basis for repairs or updating.

The final issue that most people will discover is that the patch server for the auto-patcher is a joke and painfully slow. Look for a good ragnarok fan site to download patches from (Pak0 is a decent one, but I shant provide the link, since it violates the rules for reviews) if you want to play, since you'll have to patch -quite- a bit to get the basic Ragnarok Installation up to date. There's already been 50+ patches, and you'll have to install them ALL in order.

Still, when it works, it's a fine game, and more than worthy of at least a couple hours of play each day. I just like the idea of an MMORPG that takes some of the rather stupid real-life element out that the big 3 (EQ, Ultima Online, and Asheron's Call) try to hard to add, like the house building and allegiences and the other pointless crap that makes playing a chore instead of just fun. It's more like a really massive game of Diablo II (only minus all the cheating since characters are stored server-side) in a larger world with up to 5000+ people playing at once, and that's fun.

Recommended for the patient person with a good connection. Register at the official website (you HAVE to register to play), download the client, download all the patches, and get cracking.

Graphics: 10/10
+ Beautiful mix of 3d and 2d. It's about as good looking as these kinds of graphics can get.
- Minor graphical glitches and framerate problems due to a buggy frameskipper (type /skip if you have a good graphics card).

Sound: 8/10
+ EXCELLENT sounds, and a decent soundtrack.
- Some of the tracks are pretty bleh and repetitive ''OMG WTF LOL'' Korean J-pop-ish style stuff. Eh.

Gameplay: 8/10
+ Insanely fun and addictive at best.
- An exercise in frustration that will make you hate all of mankind at worst. Being a bit buggy doesn't help matters.

Replay Value: 9/10
+ Don't like your character? Make a new one and focus on a different job or skills.
- There really isn't that much to do right now.

Overall: 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 03/11/02, Updated 03/11/02