After discussing MMORPGs with my girlfriend earlier today, I started thinking about Ragnarok Online again. I've tried many different MMOs in the past, but RO was the only one that ever held my attention for more than a few minutes.



My RO adventures started on a private server called AnimaRO. For those who don't know, a private server is a server run by regular folk like you or me, which means they're free to play. Normally, Ragnarok Online has a monthly fee, but you can very easily find many free servers that are just as good. They aren't always completely up to date when it comes to new features, but they often beat official RO by having better communities (in most cases).

Anyway, my first server, AnimaRO, was one of the more popular ones at one point in time. It was still fairly new when I joined, but the community was great. There weren't a ton of people yet (500 or so online at a time), so it wasn't overly crowded and full of douchebags. I played on this server with my friends for maybe a year or so. I have a lot of great memories of hanging outside of Payon Dungeon with my friends and having conversations with random people I've never met. Everyone was really friendly and it was pretty much exactly how I imagine an MMO should be. I liked the way the game played and I liked the people. It was a great experience.



Unfortunately, it didn't last. Usually, I just lose interest in things like this after a while, but that wasn't the reason why I stopped playing AnimaRO. There were a few factors that lessened my interest, like the fact that my assassin was level 75 and leveling was becoming more of a grind than usual. Also, the community was starting to go to shit as the server became more popular. I still hopped on every once in a while to see if anyone I knew was around, though.

The big reason why I left AnimaRO was because there was a ton of drama about the lead GM "Debbie" actually being a man (seriously? does that really surprise anyone?) and that he was keeping donation money for himself rather than spending it on the servers. Honestly, I thought the whole thing was pretty funny. I mean, yeah, it sucks for the people who actually donated money, but I didn't, so I thought the drama was kind of amusing. Like a soap opera or something. They even made a website with chat logs and lots of other incriminating evidence. XD

In protest of the whole thing, my friends and a bunch of other AnimaRO people moved to a new server, RoForever (ForeverRO sounds better, in my opinion, but the owner of the server seemed to get really pissed when people said that). I hated this server. The "girl" running the server seemed to have a bit of trouble with the English language, making her hard to understand and hard to take seriously. She also made a lot of changes to the server that didn't go over well with many of the people there at the time. I remember this girl I used to be friends with freaking out about the prices of grape juice (an item that restores MP) being jacked up on the server. Then again, she freaks out about everything. XD



That server soured me on the thought of RO for awhile, so I didn't really play anymore for a long while. Every once in a while, I'd try out a new server for a bit, but it never really stuck as much as Anima did. I do have a few good memories playing on TwilightRO (I believe that's what it was called) for a month or two. I made a few friends and we even took over a castle for a while during guild wars. I still have some screenshots from then (the ones I'm using in this post).

Getting back to the present, I'm thinking about looking around for another RO server. Most of the servers I've tried after Anima have been high rate servers (I max my character out in a matter of days or hours), so they didn't keep my attention for long. I'll probably go for something a little lower this time.

In my opinion, Ragnarok Online is pretty fun for an MMO. Private servers are easy to find and they don't cost you a dime, so if you hate the people on one, you can find another one without much trouble. The graphics are pretty simple, so you don't have to worry about high system requirements. The only real issue I see with RO is whether or not YOU like it. Personally, I find it to be pretty fun, but of course not everybody will like the 2D graphics and the gameplay.

If you're looking for an MMO to play, give Ragnarok Online a try. The setup files are a little on the large size (two files that are around 1 GB each), but after you have those, you're good to go. Just find a server and give it a shot.

Oh, and here are some pictures from when my clan on TwilightRO bought a bunch of Dead Branches (an item that spawns boss monsters) and spawned a shitload of monsters in Geffen. We died a lot. XD


Running from the Valkyries! (I'm the one with pink hair and headphones)


Jackie the mage saving us from our stupidity.....me and the rest of the guys are dead on the ground somewhere. XD


The Valkyrie herd floating over our corpses.


The GM scolding us for creating such chaos.

[EDIT] I'm currently in the process of downloading the required files for RO and I'm going to try out this server. It's a full PK server, so depending on how nice the people are, it may or may not suck. I'll be looking into a non-PK server while the files are downloading as a back-up plan. After I settle on one that doesn't completely suck, I'll make another blog post about it (that will also go into more detail about RO's gameplay) in case anybody is interested in playing.

Wherever I end up playing, it'd be awesome if I could get some Dtoiders to join me so we can start up a clan. If you're interested right now, you can go here to download the setup files you need for RO in general. Once you have those, you'll just need a small setup file for whatever server we end up playing on.