Ragnarok Online

"International Ragnarok Online, from a 3 year players perspective."

My name is Ricky, and I own a well known International Ragnarok Online fansite called "RagnaMART", which I feel gives me enough experience with the game to submit a valid review. I have played iRO (International Ragnarok Online) for a good three years now, and I feel my review of the game will do some good to the community and help out new players looking to spend some time, and money on it. What I will not do is force my opinions on the game down peoples throats, because that's not what a review is for. I will lay the facts out for everyone based on my own experience as a 3 year player.

Gameplay 10/10 - Probably the strongest thing about RO is it's gameplay. It's fast paced and fun unlike other MMORPGs which seem to require lots and lots of farming in addition to boring EXP grind. You start off as a Novice which has no battle skills and weak stats, and progress on to your "First Class" of which you can pick six which gives some basic battle skills and increases your Hitpoints considerably. While there is some EXP grind, it isn't so bad because the pace of the game is so quick compared to other MMOs. Once you've attained your first class, you must gain an additional forty "job levels" which puts you at your second class. "Second Class" characters are much stronger than first and have a wide array of skill choices. I will not go into every aspect of how you progress in the game, but I will say it is incredibly fun and it will suck up your time if you aren't careful! I give Gameplay a 10/10 because it is the thing that attracts so many users to this game.

Story 1/10 - Yes, it is a very harsh score, but only because there is no story whatsoever in RO. RO is supposed to be a MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game, I emphasive ROLE PLAYING game here) but there is no story with which to give your character a role. Since there is no story, there are also no story related quests which are usually a lot of fun in MMORPGs. The quests are limited to "bring me an insane number of items for a useless headgear" such as the "Spore Hat" .. it requires a "Tounge" dropped off an "MVP" monster which is basically the big boss type monsters of the game. They spawn once per hour and you are extremely lucky if you can find them ever. In addition to this, you need 300 "Burnt Logs" which are dropped off of monsters which require either a high level well established guild to battle, or monsters which take an extremely high leveled and well suited up character to solo battle. Finally, you must also bring the NPC 800 "Poison Spores" which aren't that hard to obtain.. but 850 is a whole lot of one item to find. It gets very boring. In the end you are granted a useless hat which gives a 3 DEF bonus, you can buy better headgears from the NPC with up to twice the DEF bonus. I realize to players who havent yet played this doesn't hold much significance, but what I am saying is there is a lot of item farming to be done for the quests with very little reward, and the rewards aren't even story related as there is no story.

Graphics/Sound 8/10 - Another strong point of RO, it's got very cute and stylish art, and the music is amazing. It is some of my favorite music from any Video Game to date, and I have played an insane amount of video games. :)
You will spend a lot of time admiring the graphics and sound in this game, but it sadly is still not enough to justify paying $12-14 a month for this game.

Replayability 5/10 - There isn't much to keep you coming back to it. Yes, I know it's silly for me to say this as I have been playing it for three years .. but it's truth. The only replayability in this game is leveling up to try new builds for your characters, and to try all the classes. Since there is no story, there certainly isn't a story for each class as their might be in other MMOs out there, and there is no race choice, you're always the same little human. There isn't much to this game, but I will say leveling up and trying out the new skills for yourself can be a lot of fun, just don't expect it to last long. My three years have been spent managing my fansite for players all over the world and trying new classes.

Now, I will score certain other aspects of the game which players should know about ALL MMOs before they invest their time and money. This is all fact, and not my personal opinion.

Price 4/10 - I wouldn't give such a harsh review of it's price if it wasn't true. The $12-14 price tag per month on RO is not worth it at all, for the last two years I have only paid once every other month, or every two months when new content was added. I play FFXI for 9.68/mo and in fact it is vastly superior on all levels to Ragnarok Online.

Content Updates 2/10 - Recently, Gravity LCC has been better about adding new content to the game, but I don't see enough of an improvement to warrant the price they ask per month to play this game. Only every few months is content added, and about 85% of the time it is buggy and requires some server downtime to be added properly, even though there is a test server meant to iron out all these bugs BEFORE release on the real servers. There is no compensation for this sort of downtime. Ragnarok Online has services all over the world in places from all over Asia and there is also a new European server. iRO, the server Americans play, is basically last in line to get updates although they pay more per month to play.

Ingame/GM support 3/10 - I know these harsh reviews are making me seem like a bitter player, but I am not. I genuinely enjoy RO, I am only reviewing from experience. The GM team is never around when you need them, they have an ability to make them invisible which they aparently always use. Their character names are public but you can NEVER message them. In my three years I have interacted with a GM only one. The community is in uproar when someone has ingame contact with a GM because it is so rare. The Head GM speaks broken English and she is never anywhere to be seen either. There is no "Page a GM" function like other MMOs might have, and if you e-mail the GM support team it takes almost two weeks to get a reply at times, sometimes up to a full month. Players are hacked on a regular basis and have all their items removed from their accounts. If you visit any popular iRO fansite forum you will see many "I got hacked!!!" threads followed the by, the next week .. "Still no reply from Gravity.." threads. Which leads me into my next scored factor of the MMORPG type game.

Security 2/10 - There really is none. There are bot programs running rampant for iRO and player ran statistics have been taken showing that over 50% of the playerbase in iRO runs a bot. A bot is basically a giant macro program which plays the game for you, only in RO it does everything. It inputs your skills, stats, picks up only the items you want it to, kills 24/7 and can buy/sell/store items. It literally plays the game for you if so you choose to use one. And why not? The GM team has never "cracked down" on these botters. There is a "blocked user" list put out once in awhile on the iRO mainsite which lists banned users for the community to see. Sadly most of the users are blocked for "3rd party program" which means they used a bot, or a skill/stat modifying program. Also on the list are many players who were banned for voicing their opinions ingame on the poor support given by Gravity LLC. Yes, they ban you for having an opinion. It seems wrong to me, too.. but it happens.

Community 4/10 - This is the biggest turn off in RO to me.. it's known most players run the bot program to progress themselves, but the worst part is how these players are the ones who run the game. There is a Guild Wars event twice a week where Guilds can duke it out against each other to hold Guild Castles which give great rewards, such as spawned treasure boxes within the castle every day and really advanced "Guild Dungeons" which are a great reward for high level players as the EXP slows greatly at these levels. Unfortunately, the player who doesn't run a bot stands no chance of attaining such a great prize because, as bot programs aren't stopped often enough, these players level much faster and find many more rare type items to progress their characters to a level which makes the normal, casual gamer stand no chance. In addition to this, and again this is not personal opinion, the players of iRO are extremely rude. Lower level players are offered absolutely no help by higher level players and are shunned until they attain a level of "greatness" good enough. Yes, the same can be said about any MMO, but the big difference with RO is many.. too many of the players do not earn what they have as in other MMORPGs. Most iRO fansite forums are also chock full of cursing and childish name calling, which is sometimes encouraged by admins. Many popular iRO fansite have shut down in the past and given up on iRO because the poor state of the community and I have considered, and even tried to do it several times in the past.

Another thing about iRO which really hurts it from becoming a great game is the 15 day trial period offered to any user. At first it seems like an extremely generous offer but in truth it hurts more than it helps. Players openly admit to registering several, upwards of ten of these trial accounts and botting them for the entire trial period in order to make zeny (RO currency) for their "real accounts" .. As stated before, without botting its incredibly hard to compete with the players who do run the bot programs, and the ability to run as many as you like with no consequences.

Open botters such as these have been seen saying:
"They're trial accounts, what do I care if they get banned?" and gotten away with it. This is a tie in to the poor GM support, players like these who ruin the community and the fun factor of the game are not monitored closely enough by the GM team. The GM team spends more time banning users for slander against it's company than stopping users who use the bot program.

In closing, I'd like to sum all of this up by saying I see incredible potential, and it pains me to see this game in the state it is in. Other RO services such as kRO (Korean Ragnarok Online, the main service located in South Korea where the game was born) and jRO (Japanese RO) have many times greater service, for less cost. For a game with such potential to go downhill like this is a sad sight to see, and iRO will probably fade away with the release of other big name MMORPGs to come, but it is still a fun game to play, and if you can somehow look past ALL of these factors of the game.. you have a truly fun experience ahead of you.

Reviewer's Score: 4/10, Originally Posted: 08/31/04