Ragnarok Online

Ragnarok Online is a Korean MMORPG, but it has some international servers and is available fully in English. The good news is that the client is free, and you can download it and play for free for 2 weeks. That was good enough for me to at least give it a try and play it for several hours this weekend.

The first thing that strikes you are the curious graphics in 2.5D. Not really 2D and not really 3D. The landscape is in a simple 3D, but the characters and monsters are 2D. You will see your character always as just a flat sprite, but 8 different views exist, and if you rotate the camera you can see your character from different sides. Looks very much like a Japanese Manga comic in pastel colors. The monsters also look comic style, including one bouncing pink blob with eyes.

You start as "novice", without a class, and start whacking monsters. Your character has 2 level indicators, a base level which determines stats and hitpoints, and a job level which determines skills. Once you hit job level 10 as novice, you can become one of 6 basic character classes. But that involves taking a test, a quest. I made a swordsman, and the test was rather simple, just walk through a mace without falling into a hole, but it seems other quests are more difficult.

Once you have a character class, you are back at job level 1, while your base level rests as it is. You continue whacking monsters, increase your base and job level, and now get job skills. For example the swordsman gets passive skills for faster hitpoint regeneration or better use of his sword, and active skills like Bash to do additional damage to the monsters. Unfortunately using active skills is a two-part process, activating the skill and clicking on the target, and it interrupts your auto-attack, so it is kind of annoying. Combat is a simple affair of clicking on the monster. You can either hold the CTRL key while clicking to auto-attack until the mob is dead, or use the /noctrl command at the start of each play session to make all attacks auto-attack.

Every monster gives a fixed amount of two sorts of xp, one that counts for your base level and one that counts for your job level. And that is a Bad Idea ®. Most other games have a point where monsters that are much lower than you give you no xp at all, but not so Ragnarok Online. Sure, the amount of xp you get from whacking a low level mob is low, but it is risk free. I've seen high-level mages in low-level dungeons, clearing a whole room full of monsters with a single fireball. Kill-stealing is rampant. Furthermore item-stealing is rampant, as dead monsters simply drop their loot on the floor, and everybody is free to pick it up. So your main activity in RO consists of searching for isolated hunting spots where nobody is interfering with your fights and loot.

Besides the job quests there are unfortunately no quests. And while there are groups, most people just solo, because finding mobs is more difficult than killing them, and groups don't help you much there. Loot is plentiful, but random, and most loot consists of things you can't use, like various monster body parts. Some loot drops are useful for other players for crafting, like empty bottles needed to make potions. But there is no bazaar, no automated trading. Merchants can stand somewhere afk and sell stuff, the main city is full of them, but for selling your loot you often don't bother to find a trading partner and just sell it to an NPC.

Ragnarok Online is a very simple game, it didn't hold my interest all that long. I won't even play the full free 2 weeks, after 2 days I have the impression to already know the game. The lack of quests and the way combat works makes this a game of randomly wandering around and whacking cute monsters, with no strategy or planning involved. I appreciated being able to test it for free, but this is not the game for the MMORPG veteran.
- posted by Tobold @ 7:58 AM Permanent Link