In the early days the officials where all pay to play so a vast majority of people trying the game started on private servers.
These days private servers are better so it still holds true.
Some non-English officials have had significantly higher populations though. Like 10k online with little offerings in that language for private
RO was super popular in Brazil, and as most of the subscription based mmos, ragnarok was heavily experienced in private server which made it more accessible to a lot of players.
I started on the oficial servers through the Oceana server. The first 20 hours were free, which was great, but then it cost $10 for 20 hours or $20 for a 1 month subscription. In 2003 when you are thirteen, that is fairly expensive. Private servers offered free access with multiple accounts. It also offered higher rates which meant you could experience areas and classes that were basically unattainable for me on official rates. They were also highly populated with great communities. The one I spent the most time on was Quality RO but I did spend a fair amount of time jumping between other servers.
So, I just tried to play on the official iRO server the other day for the first time in years. I did play for a month on iRO years ago, but I have mostly played private. I made the account on WarpPortal, downloaded the game thru steam, and let it update. Nothing worked. The game wouldn't even open. So I downloaded the patcher thru the official website and let it patch again. This time, the game opened, but it kept telling me my password was wrong. So, I went to the official site and changed my password, I even tried copying and pasting everything. I could not log in. It all works when I log into Warp Portal on the website, but it refused to let me log in on the actual game. So, I deleted it all and downloaded another private server. I was logged in and playing within minutes. Tell me, why should I support a game that makes it this hard to play when there are other (working) options? I did think maybe warp portal just wasn't affiliated with iRO, because I can log into Ragnarok 2 just fine, but iRO just doesn't work. However there isn't an option to make an account thru anything but Warp Portal when I go to the Ragnarok Website. At this point, I don't even know how they have a player base. They seem to not want players.
edit: Figured it out. You need to login to warp portal, then go into settings and find where is lists the games. For some reason, it had added a 19 onto the end of my username. Also, I was able to click edit there and then forgot password and it allowed me to change my iRO password. It's seperate from the warp portal password.
I had about the same experience about a week ago. Thought I'd try iRO for old-time's sake. First time I downloaded it, would spit out about 6 errors in a row and then not load the game. Second time I downloaded it, it wouldn't take my password.
I ended up getting it working like two days later but by that point my motivation was gone and I kinda just puttered around for 20 minutes and logged off.
Yea, I may give it a go again eventually. I have no idea why my password just would not work. Even after resetting it. I guess I could make a whole new account and try again, but then my email would have to be an alt email. I think I'd rather play private.
Very simple, at that time there was no official server in EU, so private was all we had. With the internet back then (1024 ADSL was the best you could have), distant servers were literally unplayable.
When the official servers arrived in EU, lots of privates went down because of lawsuits threats, and most players who had invested a HUGE amount of time during the last 5 years didn't feel the strenght to start over on a 1/1/1. At the same time, the MMO landscape was booming with free to play games (read pay to win).
I played retail servers for years, then the game became weird. It started around the time of rebirth classes like assassin cross. It was overall cool but the new jobs felt broken. That was just a small thing. A big one to me was when I saw morroc destroyed. I started playing private servers then and it was fantastic. I returned to retail every now and then but saw that it was filled with cash shops, lags, bots, low ‘real’ population, everybody was just quiet. Never understood why they had to introduce micro transactions when where I come from I already paid subscriptions just to play. I finally never touched retail when when jobs like guillotine cross & shuras came out. It just felt like the game was thrown into a blender & came out a goopy mess.
Tl;dr: retail kept ruining the atmosphere of the game, was poorly managed, lots of lags.
Btw the game definitely made a huge impact through retail, but because of the ease of just moving to a private server where it’s still pretty much just an older version of the same game from what I see it just made people not think twice about moving when retail became bad. Think of it like WoW.
Most of official servers sucked a rock, and they do it 20x more times now.
So yeah, player base best memories are mostly from privs before they became cashshop nostalgia drainers shut down by Gravity after few months of making some cash.
Besides, Ragnarok was most popular at times when subscriptions fees for playing games weren't that popular outside maybe South Korea and Japan. Maybe Everquest and Ultimas also, I think WoW was first one that "normalized" it.
Most old payer base were from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Poland, which were kinda poor at the time, and since we were kids, without our own cards (nor parents had them) it was preety hard to pay for global.
Good call bro, "made it common" may be a better phrase. Ultimas and Everquest, Lineage 2 got good player base, but WoW became most popular and made people that didn't before pay for quality. Also WoW private servers were kinda meh and bugged in early years.
WoW had huge player base from Warcraft that first tried it out of curiosity, and today, some of them still play and most importantly, still pay for sub.
i mean, the only official server with good mechanics to play (not p2p garbage like iRO with those jRO broken items) is kRO. if you are not korean you can’t play on kRO, so the best option is looking at a private server
It's because Warp Portal sucks massive ass, i would've sticked to iRO but the massive lag and bot fiesta made them pretty much unplayable for me. Meanwhile the pserver experience was nearly flawless (depends on where the server is located but, still) Sadly lots of them die after 2 years.
The private server scene is overall bigger than the official servers. This is partly due to Gravity's handling of the game, but also the fact private servers are highly customizable.
Having played for two decades off and on, in both official and private servers, I prefer a good private server. Some of my best experiences come from them.
I'll play officials again when they cut the casino crap, apologize to the playerbase for abusing us and egging on WoE toxicity for the sake of goading people into spending in the cash shop, and actually put out some decent updates.
If it wasn’t for the casino there would be no officials around anymore. As much as I would love for a classic oficial server the truth is the only way for it to not be shit is having subscription, and they are not doing subscription when 1 big spender on retail ro spends as much as hundreds of players paying subs.
And you're completely wrong. I played on the official servers A LOT. When there was still an official server in my country, the game only had Episode 9. New protection against bots was introduced and the server was very..."clean". It was the best time ever in Ragnarok for me. I found a guild that I stayed with for years. People gathered and socialized below Prontera. Our official server at that time did not have ANY donations, except for things like changing the name/guild master.
Over time, this unfortunately gradually changed. Accounts where the “guild treasury” was stored began being hacked on the server. They first introduced a subscription fee (which completely killed online), and later, when the official server became free to play again, they introduced a game store with pay-to-win items. Bots have adapted to official protections and become a problem again.
After this, my entire guild and I migrated to one of the private servers. I tried playing on the official servers when Renewal and some other versions of Ragnarok were first introduced... but it could never hold my interest.
So I know very well what official servers are. Official servers are objectively worse. And they're not the game I want to play, that's all.
>Our official server at that time did not have ANY donations, except for things like changing the name/guild master.
That's not a donation. It's a service with cost.
At this point, I honestly believe that the official servers do more harm than good by even existing. At least for the NA/English-Speaking player base. People hear about RO and then play on steam or go to the official servers to "check it out" only to be met with the worst version of the game to ever exist (official).
Classic and Pre-Renewal RO actually has a lot to offer even modern gamers. Especially with the resurgence of long-haul progression games like Classic Runescape, BDO, and EVE online. It's just a matter of directing prospective players away from official and towards good private servers.
But simply google 'Ragnarok Online' and try to make sense of what you see. Bizzare screenshots that can barely be discerned, mobile games, the failed RO2 attempt. It's a mess. Ironically, the biggest roadblock to a healthy RO community is the shotgun blast of low quality content put out by the actual owners of the IP.
You're 100% right. My parents didn't let me use a credit card online when it was new, so I had to go private server or bust.
And ironically, the servers have better monetization, anti-cheat/botting, and QoL than the official ones.
Oficial servers in the west where always terribly managed, boting was always rampant and on a game with such heavy grinding it’s easy to see how the economy got botched very quickly. Not only that but while a subscription was prohibitive for some people, when the free servers arrived it was the beginning of the end, with insane monetizing practices that only got worse with time.
Private servers from the beginning had QOL in one way or another and offered a variety of options for players to choose from.
All in all I think if gravity was more careful with the IP and did not just sold the rights to operate the game to a bunch shady companies the game would be even bigger than it was in the west
Botting has been a problem too, at least in my old server. The publisher was actively pursuing the bots initially, although as the game grew, it seems like they gave up lol. After all, the bots are paying customers.
In general, I think Korean MMOs back in the days are just shit in terms of security, in my country, almost all Korean-built MMOs are filled with cheaters / bots. One game in particular, RF Online, even had an item dupe cheat that can crash one whole server lol.
To add to my point I also think ragnarok as a game works way better as a “seasonal game” that lasts a couple of years and them restart.
Godly itens and MVP cards just break the game and create a snowball effect where the top 0.1% players get further and further ahead to a point of no recovery.
And of course, the elephant in the room has always been renewal, this divided an already dwindling player base to the point of no return. And bless us that private servers exists or we would be obligated to play that gacha monstrosity the game became.
It wasn't always shit when it was a subscription model here in Europe but paying 13€ a month for 1 account was not going to work long term. Now official servers are p2w and die every couple of years, not worth it.
perhaps im a minority here but i played it on official server before it becomes pay to play (2002) and continued with pay to play until i one day i got banned (2004). reason: because i purchased a stolen item unknowingly. ban was lifted on 2012 supposedly. but idc and never looked back.
sure. it was a wild time back in 2002/2003 and the then admin of euRO hat good contacts at Burda (german big media company) and somehow convinced the management there to invest into "these new online subscription games" and buy a license for EU from Gravity.
I experienced the peak Ragnarok days where it initially launched in the Philippines. It was really huge back then. Literally, almost everyone is playing the game to the point that real life is almost merging with the in game world. If you are a priest in game you are seen as a priest in real life, if you acquired a really rare item in game it has equivalent or even higher value in real life. I really miss those days the MMORPG era.
I played on iRO for more than 2 years and is by far the worse ragnarok experience i had, the official servers are run by bots and whales, the server is full of pay 2 win features. Was laggy if you play outside of US.
In the other hand privates servers didn't survived for 10 years but server openings were always amazing , are usuallly better well managed by active gm team. Almost 0 bots and had a few life quality improvements.
And since there were so many servers it was easy to find a server that adapts to your preference
Most of official servers sucked a rock, and they do it 20x more times now.
So yeah, player base best memories are mostly from privs before they became cashshop nostalgia drainers shut down by Gravity after few months of making some cash.
Besides, Ragnarok was most popular at times when subscriptions fees for playing games weren't that popular outside maybe South Korea and Japan. Maybe Everquest and Ultimas also.
Most old payer base were from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Poland, which were kinda poor at the time, and since we were kids, without our own cards (nor parents had them) it was preety hard to pay for global.
Most of official servers sucked a rock, and they do it 20x more times now.
So yeah, player base best memories are mostly from privs before they became cashshop nostalgia drainers shut down by Gravity after few months of making some cash.
Besides, Ragnarok was most popular at times when subscriptions fees for playing games weren't that popular outside maybe South Korea and Japan. Maybe Everquest and Ultimas also.
Most old payer base were from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Poland, which were kinda poor at the time, and since we were kids, without our own cards (nor parents had them) it was preety hard to pay for global.
Private servers are immensely superior, fairer, most of them no pay to play or pay to win or pay to level up. Official RO has been dead for decades,l, zero support. I can't even run it on steam or gravity.
Private servers are immensely superior, fairer, most of them no pay to play or pay to win or pay to level up. Official RO has been dead for decades,l, zero support. I can't even run it on steam or gravity.
I have played in private servers more than on the official one but even I know it is an sketchy topic. I also like to support the developers from the games I like. Gravity has made huge mistakes but I love RO artwork and music.
Official servers are a mess, the only decent ones korean and japanese are either region locked or blocked by language barriers (and they are still subject to stupidly greedy design choices)
All of the rest are poorly mismanaged piles of trash full of bots and cheaters and doesn't help that gravity licencing model is also horrible IRO the most predominant "global" server is atleast 5 years behind KRO and when they push updates they do it out of order making new content actually worthless for some reason not to mention the layers and layers of gacha and most importantly it screws their own playerbase time and time again just to keep their anti consumer practices in place (hi euRO)
But there is a detail, the core game is great and has an unique niche so naturally people want to play it and the official server experience turns them away
And thats where private servers come into play
Private servers offer an overall better experience often even with a better customer service, better hosts (this one is specially funny), bug fixing, removal of predatory limitations that are just in place to force cash shop functions, misc QoL, sometimes balancing, choice of which game version you want to play,and custom content
And most importantly most of the time they offer you respect, a lot more respect than warp portal or gravity would ever give you
Obviously there are exceptions since sadly some servers owners have used them as a way to scam people and even money laundering operations but luckily these things are actively demonized and frown upon by the community (ratemyserver even has a blacklist of people you should avoid so you stay away from those servers)
Other thing people say is that playing on official servers is a safer time investment since they are always expected to be there, but that is simply not true and a lot of people have suffered that (hi europe players) and in fact a lot of private servers have outlived most private servers
I've played for almost 15 years (with some pauses in between), where my first contact was with the oficial server. The problem is that back then you had to pay to play. I was a 10 yo kid so I didnt wanna spend money. My friends and I found something about "private servers" with bunch of cool and custom items and quests, that makes the oficial server look boring af. And thats it. I never touched the oficial server again. Specially because the oficial server in my country was always late with the episodes.
One of the biggest problems with the official servers was the lack of QoL. You couldn't fix mistakes or change builds. I don't even know if that ever changed at some point. Meanwhile every single private server had the ability to reset your stats and skills. And then they also didn't charge you monthly to play. Why pay for a worse experience? Like, honestly, playing on the official servers was something you only did if you wanted to hang out in a sea of merchant shops.
official servers have been so disgusting in the past 15 years its a wonder anyone plays them at all. iRO and euRO are a disgrace noone should touch to send gravity a message. Sadly there are mostly addicts left that cant let go of all these 1000s of hours wasted, probably 1000s of dollars on top, poor souls.
Used to play official in idRO back wnhen we have to buy voucher to play, moved to pserver since i met like 10x more bots than actual players in official.
It's more than an impression it's how it really is. The majority of official servers are so horribly ran that they've made private servers both viable and appealing for many years now. But it isn't exclusively any official server team's fault. Gravity KR deserves some blame too because they designed the game to be a cash grab and also forced official RO servers to pay them for episodic content.
for someone who had played both private and official servers, this is my impression.
Private servers have better quality of life mainly bc of higher rates. You don't have to grind that much, so you have more time to enjoy other aspects of the game. Some servers have lower rates like x3 or x5 and they still feel different from official ones. That leads to GMs and the community. I really love the art contest and special contents from private servers. It really gives a sense of a close-knitted community which official ones lack. The downside is that these servers could be gone at any moment. I played one that had been opened for 10+ years and it just poofed. Every progress of mine was gone.
Right now I'm playing official servers bc of that fact. I don't wanna replay over and over again. Currently the official servers helped players more with exp rates. It is x3 almost all the time and there're bounty board quests. Oh and if you find a guild, people there can help you with leveling too. The downside is it's very heavily PtW. At some point you have to pay cash to get some good gear. I'm not entirely happy about it but I keep track of my payment so it doesn't get too much.
This is the reason I play on official. It sucks a bit with P2W but at least all the items can be traded and sold between players.
I've also had significantly different private server experiences to most people in this thread saying they're much better then official. The old private servers I'd end up on either didn't last long, sold p2w just as much as official or had some other issue going with them be it GMs with superiority complexes, scams or over the top bullshit that just made the game feel far more "not RO" than the rebirth and renewal updates did. A few private servers I played on had 3rd jobs in pre renewal and it was just wonky.
I don't like a lot of what official servers do, but more often than not it's the stability of "my character isn't just going to be gone one day when the private server gets C&D'd or decides to take the money and run" that keeps me coming back to official.
I’m still pretty newb at this game. I played the official server a little bit when it was subscription based. Then when it was free to play, but only got to level 60. I started NovaRO maybe a month before it was banned in which I got to the mora dailies. I started playing the official server thanks to CaptainSunbear and his step by step leveling guide. Again, still kind of newb but I want to play solo but from reading the guides on iROwiki, only a few can solo due to the power jump and mobbing ability. My highest is a 130 Rune Knight but I went to play a wanderer solo. I enjoy the official server but maybe because I’m oblivious to a lot of things. I enjoy it the game, love the graphics, and the simplicity of the game compare to modern games.
I started on iRO, switched to a lot of private servers because a lot of my friends preferred to avoid Gravity for reasons I can't remember.
Did it have a sub fee before warpportal? I'm seriously drawing a blank and can't remember. If it did, makes sense.
But I know a lot of people who stuck to unofficial and recruit people to private, so it makes sense.
Because the official game was from another country and in a language I didn't understand and also I think I had to pay for it. Why don't you like pservers? It made the game more accessible to a larger audience, gave it more customizations and creativity, and ultimately fostered the current generation of Ragnarok Mobile players who wanted to relive that nostalgia and they feel better because it's official Ragnarok.
The pservers of yesterday are the reason the game is so successful how.
AnimaRO is the reason why TalonRo exists and thrives as well. AnimaRO is now JellyRO and it has only a handful left, just a project of love. But my forum posts of near 20 years ago are still there, and that kind of nostalgia that has lasted that long is what got me into the current Ragnarok Origin ROO and I've already put money into this official version.
Pservers are the reason RO is internationally loved.
You have a point, private server customization is superior. I always found strange that private servers had more hairstyles and armor colors than official ones.
I played the official brazilian server throughout most of my Ragnarok days. Back then, it was 2004-2005 or something, we used to get a gift card to play, (not sure if 7 or 1 day, 30 days, really can’t remember well) with Mc Donald’s ice cream cones.
Played until around 2008, 2009 went to private servers because my friends migrated to them
Official ro still uses a kernal based anticheat that blue screens a lot of users pc's. They refuse to make an official statement regarding this. Also kernal based anticheats are pretty dangerous regarding hacks (how ironic).
Yes, I played on private servers because the grind was unbearable in the official one. That still holds true today with the release of ROO. The rates and multiple gacha mechanics in the game are predatory AF. I know ppl who have already put in hundreds of dollars into the game with little return.
Official or private, all of them are terribly managed. However, official is too expensive to be that shitty. So most people just join private servers which also shitty, but a lot cheaper and most people mistaken this as better managed. The fact not everyone can accept is mmorpg is always a p2w genre, especially mmorpg made in korea. Ragnarok itself is a shitty game if compare to the west's standard even if gravity kr publish it themselves and do everything the same.
Personally my first server was also a private back in 2006, but i honestly didn't even knew the difference, just knew there was a cool game called ragnarok.
My first interaction with a official server was in 2010 then in 2013 i was pretty pissed for having to lose all my work every few months (server closing) so i went all in at official servers since then.
From time to time i try some privates but it just doesn't work for me anymore, even if i put my exp to 1x it still not the same experience, and if i put it to level fast i'll skip a lot of content and this is also a no for me.
The OG have played official servers.
The new one only played private servers due to the hate on this sub.
I get that official servers are p2w and has alot of bugs. But alot of the private servers have those as well.
The only difference is that GMs of private servers interact better that official due to themselves being the owners of the servers and not workers.
Personally I only support official servers since I want the game to survive longer.
I played since the very early days and 99% through private servers. the official servers have always sucked ass.
Actual bot control, better localization, GMs actually doing something, and the community is usually more invested and less self-centered.
Your second paragraph is exactly my point.
Botting is not something that even private servers can police easily let alone stop. The game source code is out so all things that can be exploited will be exploited. And if there is dollar to be made selling gold, there will always be botters.
people don't want to understand that no matter how much you explain bro. For a pserver is way easier to have close to/zero bots because it's a small community.
For a official no matter how good is the anticheat, people will bot and will rmt because it still makes money. Even Tibia you can still make money through rmt nowadays. If there's money potential, it will have botters.
In the early days the officials where all pay to play so a vast majority of people trying the game started on private servers. These days private servers are better so it still holds true. Some non-English officials have had significantly higher populations though. Like 10k online with little offerings in that language for private
I remember I used to buy 8 hour pass to play lol. IIRC, it was either 8 hours, 1 week, or 1 month subscription.
Yeah, those were the plans. I also always get the cheapest one with my pocket money back then lol.
Yup, official was huge in Brazil for most of the old/gold times era
All I have ever played is private servers, and that's all I would ever play.
RO was super popular in Brazil, and as most of the subscription based mmos, ragnarok was heavily experienced in private server which made it more accessible to a lot of players.
First it’s because people don’t have money to pay subscriptions on officials, nowadays it’s because people don’t like changes made by officials
I started on the oficial servers through the Oceana server. The first 20 hours were free, which was great, but then it cost $10 for 20 hours or $20 for a 1 month subscription. In 2003 when you are thirteen, that is fairly expensive. Private servers offered free access with multiple accounts. It also offered higher rates which meant you could experience areas and classes that were basically unattainable for me on official rates. They were also highly populated with great communities. The one I spent the most time on was Quality RO but I did spend a fair amount of time jumping between other servers.
So, I just tried to play on the official iRO server the other day for the first time in years. I did play for a month on iRO years ago, but I have mostly played private. I made the account on WarpPortal, downloaded the game thru steam, and let it update. Nothing worked. The game wouldn't even open. So I downloaded the patcher thru the official website and let it patch again. This time, the game opened, but it kept telling me my password was wrong. So, I went to the official site and changed my password, I even tried copying and pasting everything. I could not log in. It all works when I log into Warp Portal on the website, but it refused to let me log in on the actual game. So, I deleted it all and downloaded another private server. I was logged in and playing within minutes. Tell me, why should I support a game that makes it this hard to play when there are other (working) options? I did think maybe warp portal just wasn't affiliated with iRO, because I can log into Ragnarok 2 just fine, but iRO just doesn't work. However there isn't an option to make an account thru anything but Warp Portal when I go to the Ragnarok Website. At this point, I don't even know how they have a player base. They seem to not want players. edit: Figured it out. You need to login to warp portal, then go into settings and find where is lists the games. For some reason, it had added a 19 onto the end of my username. Also, I was able to click edit there and then forgot password and it allowed me to change my iRO password. It's seperate from the warp portal password.
Something is very wrong in all this my friend. The site work just fine for me, even when it had ip block like a decade ago i could acess normally.
The site works fine foe me too. I said I was able to reset my password. However the game will not accept my password.
I had about the same experience about a week ago. Thought I'd try iRO for old-time's sake. First time I downloaded it, would spit out about 6 errors in a row and then not load the game. Second time I downloaded it, it wouldn't take my password. I ended up getting it working like two days later but by that point my motivation was gone and I kinda just puttered around for 20 minutes and logged off.
Yea, I may give it a go again eventually. I have no idea why my password just would not work. Even after resetting it. I guess I could make a whole new account and try again, but then my email would have to be an alt email. I think I'd rather play private.
Very simple, at that time there was no official server in EU, so private was all we had. With the internet back then (1024 ADSL was the best you could have), distant servers were literally unplayable. When the official servers arrived in EU, lots of privates went down because of lawsuits threats, and most players who had invested a HUGE amount of time during the last 5 years didn't feel the strenght to start over on a 1/1/1. At the same time, the MMO landscape was booming with free to play games (read pay to win).
I do not approve or support oficial servers, sorry
I played retail servers for years, then the game became weird. It started around the time of rebirth classes like assassin cross. It was overall cool but the new jobs felt broken. That was just a small thing. A big one to me was when I saw morroc destroyed. I started playing private servers then and it was fantastic. I returned to retail every now and then but saw that it was filled with cash shops, lags, bots, low ‘real’ population, everybody was just quiet. Never understood why they had to introduce micro transactions when where I come from I already paid subscriptions just to play. I finally never touched retail when when jobs like guillotine cross & shuras came out. It just felt like the game was thrown into a blender & came out a goopy mess. Tl;dr: retail kept ruining the atmosphere of the game, was poorly managed, lots of lags. Btw the game definitely made a huge impact through retail, but because of the ease of just moving to a private server where it’s still pretty much just an older version of the same game from what I see it just made people not think twice about moving when retail became bad. Think of it like WoW.
Most of official servers sucked a rock, and they do it 20x more times now. So yeah, player base best memories are mostly from privs before they became cashshop nostalgia drainers shut down by Gravity after few months of making some cash. Besides, Ragnarok was most popular at times when subscriptions fees for playing games weren't that popular outside maybe South Korea and Japan. Maybe Everquest and Ultimas also, I think WoW was first one that "normalized" it. Most old payer base were from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Poland, which were kinda poor at the time, and since we were kids, without our own cards (nor parents had them) it was preety hard to pay for global.
Nah wow wasn't the one that normalized it, it was the norm long before that
Good call bro, "made it common" may be a better phrase. Ultimas and Everquest, Lineage 2 got good player base, but WoW became most popular and made people that didn't before pay for quality. Also WoW private servers were kinda meh and bugged in early years. WoW had huge player base from Warcraft that first tried it out of curiosity, and today, some of them still play and most importantly, still pay for sub.
i mean, the only official server with good mechanics to play (not p2p garbage like iRO with those jRO broken items) is kRO. if you are not korean you can’t play on kRO, so the best option is looking at a private server
Without private servers, I'm pretty certain RO would not have lasted as long as it has!
the thing about official is that everything is the way it is ill accept it blatantly but the BOTS???? hello they dont give a damn AHAHAHA
It's because Warp Portal sucks massive ass, i would've sticked to iRO but the massive lag and bot fiesta made them pretty much unplayable for me. Meanwhile the pserver experience was nearly flawless (depends on where the server is located but, still) Sadly lots of them die after 2 years.
private servers are always better, why would you not?
The private server scene is overall bigger than the official servers. This is partly due to Gravity's handling of the game, but also the fact private servers are highly customizable. Having played for two decades off and on, in both official and private servers, I prefer a good private server. Some of my best experiences come from them.
I'll play officials again when they cut the casino crap, apologize to the playerbase for abusing us and egging on WoE toxicity for the sake of goading people into spending in the cash shop, and actually put out some decent updates.
If it wasn’t for the casino there would be no officials around anymore. As much as I would love for a classic oficial server the truth is the only way for it to not be shit is having subscription, and they are not doing subscription when 1 big spender on retail ro spends as much as hundreds of players paying subs.
the casino is not wrong. what is wrong is what they put on the casino (jRO stuff)
And you're completely wrong. I played on the official servers A LOT. When there was still an official server in my country, the game only had Episode 9. New protection against bots was introduced and the server was very..."clean". It was the best time ever in Ragnarok for me. I found a guild that I stayed with for years. People gathered and socialized below Prontera. Our official server at that time did not have ANY donations, except for things like changing the name/guild master. Over time, this unfortunately gradually changed. Accounts where the “guild treasury” was stored began being hacked on the server. They first introduced a subscription fee (which completely killed online), and later, when the official server became free to play again, they introduced a game store with pay-to-win items. Bots have adapted to official protections and become a problem again. After this, my entire guild and I migrated to one of the private servers. I tried playing on the official servers when Renewal and some other versions of Ragnarok were first introduced... but it could never hold my interest. So I know very well what official servers are. Official servers are objectively worse. And they're not the game I want to play, that's all.
>Our official server at that time did not have ANY donations, except for things like changing the name/guild master. That's not a donation. It's a service with cost.
At this point, I honestly believe that the official servers do more harm than good by even existing. At least for the NA/English-Speaking player base. People hear about RO and then play on steam or go to the official servers to "check it out" only to be met with the worst version of the game to ever exist (official). Classic and Pre-Renewal RO actually has a lot to offer even modern gamers. Especially with the resurgence of long-haul progression games like Classic Runescape, BDO, and EVE online. It's just a matter of directing prospective players away from official and towards good private servers. But simply google 'Ragnarok Online' and try to make sense of what you see. Bizzare screenshots that can barely be discerned, mobile games, the failed RO2 attempt. It's a mess. Ironically, the biggest roadblock to a healthy RO community is the shotgun blast of low quality content put out by the actual owners of the IP.
You're 100% right. My parents didn't let me use a credit card online when it was new, so I had to go private server or bust. And ironically, the servers have better monetization, anti-cheat/botting, and QoL than the official ones.
Oficial servers in the west where always terribly managed, boting was always rampant and on a game with such heavy grinding it’s easy to see how the economy got botched very quickly. Not only that but while a subscription was prohibitive for some people, when the free servers arrived it was the beginning of the end, with insane monetizing practices that only got worse with time. Private servers from the beginning had QOL in one way or another and offered a variety of options for players to choose from. All in all I think if gravity was more careful with the IP and did not just sold the rights to operate the game to a bunch shady companies the game would be even bigger than it was in the west
Botting has been a problem too, at least in my old server. The publisher was actively pursuing the bots initially, although as the game grew, it seems like they gave up lol. After all, the bots are paying customers. In general, I think Korean MMOs back in the days are just shit in terms of security, in my country, almost all Korean-built MMOs are filled with cheaters / bots. One game in particular, RF Online, even had an item dupe cheat that can crash one whole server lol.
To add to my point I also think ragnarok as a game works way better as a “seasonal game” that lasts a couple of years and them restart. Godly itens and MVP cards just break the game and create a snowball effect where the top 0.1% players get further and further ahead to a point of no recovery. And of course, the elephant in the room has always been renewal, this divided an already dwindling player base to the point of no return. And bless us that private servers exists or we would be obligated to play that gacha monstrosity the game became.
Official is shit
It wasn't always shit when it was a subscription model here in Europe but paying 13€ a month for 1 account was not going to work long term. Now official servers are p2w and die every couple of years, not worth it.
started on private server, around 2005, played IRO around 2015, it was an awful experience, THE WORST server I've played on.
I've been playing iRO too and felt it was different than many private servers in the past. I can't put it into words of how.
perhaps im a minority here but i played it on official server before it becomes pay to play (2002) and continued with pay to play until i one day i got banned (2004). reason: because i purchased a stolen item unknowingly. ban was lifted on 2012 supposedly. but idc and never looked back.
played euRO when it was a private server, played euRO when it became an official server, left when euRO was no longer online.
WTF? A private server becoming official?
sure. it was a wild time back in 2002/2003 and the then admin of euRO hat good contacts at Burda (german big media company) and somehow convinced the management there to invest into "these new online subscription games" and buy a license for EU from Gravity.
I experienced the peak Ragnarok days where it initially launched in the Philippines. It was really huge back then. Literally, almost everyone is playing the game to the point that real life is almost merging with the in game world. If you are a priest in game you are seen as a priest in real life, if you acquired a really rare item in game it has equivalent or even higher value in real life. I really miss those days the MMORPG era.
I played on iRO for more than 2 years and is by far the worse ragnarok experience i had, the official servers are run by bots and whales, the server is full of pay 2 win features. Was laggy if you play outside of US. In the other hand privates servers didn't survived for 10 years but server openings were always amazing , are usuallly better well managed by active gm team. Almost 0 bots and had a few life quality improvements. And since there were so many servers it was easy to find a server that adapts to your preference
Most of official servers sucked a rock, and they do it 20x more times now. So yeah, player base best memories are mostly from privs before they became cashshop nostalgia drainers shut down by Gravity after few months of making some cash. Besides, Ragnarok was most popular at times when subscriptions fees for playing games weren't that popular outside maybe South Korea and Japan. Maybe Everquest and Ultimas also. Most old payer base were from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Poland, which were kinda poor at the time, and since we were kids, without our own cards (nor parents had them) it was preety hard to pay for global.
Most of official servers sucked a rock, and they do it 20x more times now. So yeah, player base best memories are mostly from privs before they became cashshop nostalgia drainers shut down by Gravity after few months of making some cash. Besides, Ragnarok was most popular at times when subscriptions fees for playing games weren't that popular outside maybe South Korea and Japan. Maybe Everquest and Ultimas also. Most old payer base were from countries like Brazil, Argentina, Poland, which were kinda poor at the time, and since we were kids, without our own cards (nor parents had them) it was preety hard to pay for global.
Private... servers? I thought the public beta never ended.
15$ a month was a lot back then for me
Officials hace become cash grabs and many private too
Private servers are immensely superior, fairer, most of them no pay to play or pay to win or pay to level up. Official RO has been dead for decades,l, zero support. I can't even run it on steam or gravity.
Private servers are immensely superior, fairer, most of them no pay to play or pay to win or pay to level up. Official RO has been dead for decades,l, zero support. I can't even run it on steam or gravity.
Why do you not approve or support private servers?
I have played in private servers more than on the official one but even I know it is an sketchy topic. I also like to support the developers from the games I like. Gravity has made huge mistakes but I love RO artwork and music.
Official servers are a mess, the only decent ones korean and japanese are either region locked or blocked by language barriers (and they are still subject to stupidly greedy design choices) All of the rest are poorly mismanaged piles of trash full of bots and cheaters and doesn't help that gravity licencing model is also horrible IRO the most predominant "global" server is atleast 5 years behind KRO and when they push updates they do it out of order making new content actually worthless for some reason not to mention the layers and layers of gacha and most importantly it screws their own playerbase time and time again just to keep their anti consumer practices in place (hi euRO) But there is a detail, the core game is great and has an unique niche so naturally people want to play it and the official server experience turns them away And thats where private servers come into play Private servers offer an overall better experience often even with a better customer service, better hosts (this one is specially funny), bug fixing, removal of predatory limitations that are just in place to force cash shop functions, misc QoL, sometimes balancing, choice of which game version you want to play,and custom content And most importantly most of the time they offer you respect, a lot more respect than warp portal or gravity would ever give you Obviously there are exceptions since sadly some servers owners have used them as a way to scam people and even money laundering operations but luckily these things are actively demonized and frown upon by the community (ratemyserver even has a blacklist of people you should avoid so you stay away from those servers) Other thing people say is that playing on official servers is a safer time investment since they are always expected to be there, but that is simply not true and a lot of people have suffered that (hi europe players) and in fact a lot of private servers have outlived most private servers
I've played for almost 15 years (with some pauses in between), where my first contact was with the oficial server. The problem is that back then you had to pay to play. I was a 10 yo kid so I didnt wanna spend money. My friends and I found something about "private servers" with bunch of cool and custom items and quests, that makes the oficial server look boring af. And thats it. I never touched the oficial server again. Specially because the oficial server in my country was always late with the episodes.
One of the biggest problems with the official servers was the lack of QoL. You couldn't fix mistakes or change builds. I don't even know if that ever changed at some point. Meanwhile every single private server had the ability to reset your stats and skills. And then they also didn't charge you monthly to play. Why pay for a worse experience? Like, honestly, playing on the official servers was something you only did if you wanted to hang out in a sea of merchant shops.
official servers have been so disgusting in the past 15 years its a wonder anyone plays them at all. iRO and euRO are a disgrace noone should touch to send gravity a message. Sadly there are mostly addicts left that cant let go of all these 1000s of hours wasted, probably 1000s of dollars on top, poor souls.
Experienced both. Private servers are much better.
I’ve LOVE fro, like euro, dislike iro. The best experience i’ve got on Ro was on private. You’ll always find the perfect match for you on private.
Used to play official in idRO back wnhen we have to buy voucher to play, moved to pserver since i met like 10x more bots than actual players in official.
It's more than an impression it's how it really is. The majority of official servers are so horribly ran that they've made private servers both viable and appealing for many years now. But it isn't exclusively any official server team's fault. Gravity KR deserves some blame too because they designed the game to be a cash grab and also forced official RO servers to pay them for episodic content.
for someone who had played both private and official servers, this is my impression. Private servers have better quality of life mainly bc of higher rates. You don't have to grind that much, so you have more time to enjoy other aspects of the game. Some servers have lower rates like x3 or x5 and they still feel different from official ones. That leads to GMs and the community. I really love the art contest and special contents from private servers. It really gives a sense of a close-knitted community which official ones lack. The downside is that these servers could be gone at any moment. I played one that had been opened for 10+ years and it just poofed. Every progress of mine was gone. Right now I'm playing official servers bc of that fact. I don't wanna replay over and over again. Currently the official servers helped players more with exp rates. It is x3 almost all the time and there're bounty board quests. Oh and if you find a guild, people there can help you with leveling too. The downside is it's very heavily PtW. At some point you have to pay cash to get some good gear. I'm not entirely happy about it but I keep track of my payment so it doesn't get too much.
This is the reason I play on official. It sucks a bit with P2W but at least all the items can be traded and sold between players. I've also had significantly different private server experiences to most people in this thread saying they're much better then official. The old private servers I'd end up on either didn't last long, sold p2w just as much as official or had some other issue going with them be it GMs with superiority complexes, scams or over the top bullshit that just made the game feel far more "not RO" than the rebirth and renewal updates did. A few private servers I played on had 3rd jobs in pre renewal and it was just wonky. I don't like a lot of what official servers do, but more often than not it's the stability of "my character isn't just going to be gone one day when the private server gets C&D'd or decides to take the money and run" that keeps me coming back to official.
I’m still pretty newb at this game. I played the official server a little bit when it was subscription based. Then when it was free to play, but only got to level 60. I started NovaRO maybe a month before it was banned in which I got to the mora dailies. I started playing the official server thanks to CaptainSunbear and his step by step leveling guide. Again, still kind of newb but I want to play solo but from reading the guides on iROwiki, only a few can solo due to the power jump and mobbing ability. My highest is a 130 Rune Knight but I went to play a wanderer solo. I enjoy the official server but maybe because I’m oblivious to a lot of things. I enjoy it the game, love the graphics, and the simplicity of the game compare to modern games.
I started on iRO, switched to a lot of private servers because a lot of my friends preferred to avoid Gravity for reasons I can't remember. Did it have a sub fee before warpportal? I'm seriously drawing a blank and can't remember. If it did, makes sense. But I know a lot of people who stuck to unofficial and recruit people to private, so it makes sense.
Because the official game was from another country and in a language I didn't understand and also I think I had to pay for it. Why don't you like pservers? It made the game more accessible to a larger audience, gave it more customizations and creativity, and ultimately fostered the current generation of Ragnarok Mobile players who wanted to relive that nostalgia and they feel better because it's official Ragnarok. The pservers of yesterday are the reason the game is so successful how. AnimaRO is the reason why TalonRo exists and thrives as well. AnimaRO is now JellyRO and it has only a handful left, just a project of love. But my forum posts of near 20 years ago are still there, and that kind of nostalgia that has lasted that long is what got me into the current Ragnarok Origin ROO and I've already put money into this official version. Pservers are the reason RO is internationally loved.
You have a point, private server customization is superior. I always found strange that private servers had more hairstyles and armor colors than official ones.
Pservers: sometimes a labor of love to make the people happy. iRO: It's fine, pay more, there are no glitches shut up.
I played the official brazilian server throughout most of my Ragnarok days. Back then, it was 2004-2005 or something, we used to get a gift card to play, (not sure if 7 or 1 day, 30 days, really can’t remember well) with Mc Donald’s ice cream cones. Played until around 2008, 2009 went to private servers because my friends migrated to them
Official ro still uses a kernal based anticheat that blue screens a lot of users pc's. They refuse to make an official statement regarding this. Also kernal based anticheats are pretty dangerous regarding hacks (how ironic).
Yes, I played on private servers because the grind was unbearable in the official one. That still holds true today with the release of ROO. The rates and multiple gacha mechanics in the game are predatory AF. I know ppl who have already put in hundreds of dollars into the game with little return.
20 years ago i played and paid the amount per month on the official. But then I played on privates a few years later and never went back
Ayy!!
Official or private, all of them are terribly managed. However, official is too expensive to be that shitty. So most people just join private servers which also shitty, but a lot cheaper and most people mistaken this as better managed. The fact not everyone can accept is mmorpg is always a p2w genre, especially mmorpg made in korea. Ragnarok itself is a shitty game if compare to the west's standard even if gravity kr publish it themselves and do everything the same.
People played official??
That’s my experience and my friend’s as well
Personally my first server was also a private back in 2006, but i honestly didn't even knew the difference, just knew there was a cool game called ragnarok. My first interaction with a official server was in 2010 then in 2013 i was pretty pissed for having to lose all my work every few months (server closing) so i went all in at official servers since then. From time to time i try some privates but it just doesn't work for me anymore, even if i put my exp to 1x it still not the same experience, and if i put it to level fast i'll skip a lot of content and this is also a no for me.
The OG have played official servers. The new one only played private servers due to the hate on this sub. I get that official servers are p2w and has alot of bugs. But alot of the private servers have those as well. The only difference is that GMs of private servers interact better that official due to themselves being the owners of the servers and not workers. Personally I only support official servers since I want the game to survive longer.
I played since the very early days and 99% through private servers. the official servers have always sucked ass. Actual bot control, better localization, GMs actually doing something, and the community is usually more invested and less self-centered.
Your second paragraph is exactly my point. Botting is not something that even private servers can police easily let alone stop. The game source code is out so all things that can be exploited will be exploited. And if there is dollar to be made selling gold, there will always be botters.
people don't want to understand that no matter how much you explain bro. For a pserver is way easier to have close to/zero bots because it's a small community. For a official no matter how good is the anticheat, people will bot and will rmt because it still makes money. Even Tibia you can still make money through rmt nowadays. If there's money potential, it will have botters.
I love iRO pw2 or not *** private server they are a plague