After the Alpha...

When Ragnarok Online first came out, it showed great promise, even for only two towns and a small area of land to call home.  The original also consisted only of two classes, the novice and the swordsman.  Gravity has pushed the game much, much farther, and today we've entered one of just several beta stages of the game.

RO now has a variety of classes to choose from, as well as new hairstyles and hair colors (though once again your characters are stuck with whatever gender you signed up as).  Starting out as a novice in a special tutorial area that shows the player the way things work, the proper way to behave (which people are obviously not reading carefully enough, but more detail later), a hunting area (which if you play, don't spend too much time there), and you get some items to push you on your way.  You also get a series of questions to determine which class would suit you best, though the results may not be to your liking, but you can always opt to be something else with no pressure or consequence.

So you start off as a novice, what next?  There are now several different cities, including the original Prontera and Morroc, home to acolytes and thieves respectively.  Now there is also a port town for merchants, a magic city for mages, one for knights, and one for archers.  Besides the novice, that's six classes for a player to choose from.  At job level 40, you may also change your class into an advanced one (swordsman to knight, acolyte to priest, etc.)  Unfortunately, there is no turning back once you pick a class as you might recall that Gravity was planning, but you have 3 seperate character slots to suit your needs (as I recall, they also had three in the alpha version).

Stats do matter in the beta version of RO.  If you're not sure what you should be raising, try a site like GameFAQs or the Library of Prontera forums for information on classes.  Of course, don't stress too much on stats, since it is beta after all.  There are still regular levels and job levels in the game, and in fact besides the new job classes (and hence new abilities), nothing else has changed much in terms of characters.

Zeny, the currency of RO, is pretty easy come and easy go, depending mostly on your class.  If you have an acolyte that can use warp magic, you can make quite a lot of money in a pretty short period of time.  Leveling up as a thief, you come across better selling items.  If you're a mage, the need for any items is relatively low, so cash won't even be a concern.  Speaking of money, yes, the beta for RO as I mentioned is FREE.  There are several sites to download it from, including Gravity's American site, but you'll have to try them all to see which works best for you, as the servers can be crowded or busy, and the file is a whopping 500 MB.

So the game is free, great, huh?  Yes... and no.  It's nice to be able to test run the game, but at the same time, there are a lot of downers, and they all include people.  Too many people.  Too many stupid and rude people playing the game.  We're not talking about two-year-olds who scream LOLOL or 1337 all over the place, but people who will start attacking stuff when you're already killing it, or just steal the loot after you've killed something.  There is a very very small window in which only you can pick up an item after you get the kill, but there are item-stealing monsters (porings) around, and if you lag, you're out of luck.  There is also a problem with magic, wizards and mages in particular, who summon monsters in the middle of crowded town areas that kill players, and also mages that cast ice walls that prevent players from moving through an area until they break it down.  You can just imagine how annoying that is to have to wait for a wall to be broken or to walk all the way around because of a jerk.  Acolytes also get a warp spell and can sometimes teleport you (and involuntarily I might add) to a high level zone where you have to suicide to get back, or if you take random warps like me sometimes, they can also leave you stranded in a places where you have no escape.  Hopefully when the game goes retail, this'll clear up, but you never know...

As the servers are Korean hosted, there are no American GMs to talk to if you have a problem.  They occasionally pop up in the game with a server-wide message for big things (server coming down, warnings for scams and bugs, etc.), however contacting one directly is as far as I know nearly impossible.  You can always fill out the Help forms at Gravity, which I did once after my character got stuck in a 'dead zone' back when the beta began and some of the zones weren't working correctly, and shortly the whole server went down to fix the problem.  Whether it was my complaint or dozens of others (since many were caught in dead zones and most likely also complained), it worked out very well.

Group interaction in RO... there is none.  If you're 5 levels below or above someone, you can't share experience with them and it is awarded based on individual work.  There are a lot of people in the game, but most of them will pass you by quickly or vice versa, and it becomes especially frustrating if you have friends from real life, because the same thing will happen and the game quickly gets boring.  Guilds, which cost anywhere from 200,000 zeny to 1 million as you need to buy a rare stone from players or hunt for it yourself, can also only hold 16 people at a time.  As my buddies from Real Life Radio found out, there's just not enough slots.

RO still has no story and besides job quests which only happen twice (once to become your class, the second to getting job promoted), there is no purpose to playing RO as of now.  You might say the same about other games, but EverQuest and such are very different.  EverQuest has quests, and at the very least you can level up so you can go raiding for great loot or to go to Planar zones.  In RO, raiding is very hard since most likely your group will get screwed by the level differences and have to do individual experience, and there are not enough monsters with great loot to make it worth while.  Chances are, anything you want is already taken.

The music of RO has grown into over 50 tracks of music that are included in a music directory when you install the game.  I love the music to RO and it all varies greatly from fast to slow with wonderful beats and uplifting rhythms.  It's almost too good.  Unfortunately, as you spend hours beating on Porings and other creatures, you'll notice that the music is always the same for the map you're on, so the hours you spend in one place will also be spent with hours of the same music repeating over and over and over... and after a while you'll probably lose interest or just get angry.  I guess this teaches players to only play for a small amount of time before needing a break. ^_^

The last thing I have to say about RO is overcrowded.  Now I mentioned this before, but there are only two available American servers right now, and these are both overcrowded with anywhere from 4000-6000 players late at night to 10000+ players during peak hours (and those are numbers for each server, not total - right now at 12:37 PM EST on a Saturday there are 23000 players total, over 11500 on each server).  There is simply no way to please that many people with the limited number of areas and monsters to kill.  Prontera, Morroc, and Payon (the archer city) are almost overwhelmed with town-squares that people find suitable for doing business... you can come across at least 100 people on your screen at once if you go to the right places.  In Prontera alone there are probably almost always 500+ people between the center of the town and the south gate.  Good if you're looking for a variety of items to buy at a variety of prices, but really bad if you're just passing through and the lag eats you.

Final thoughts about the Beta... (Conclusion)

If you've never played RO before, this is your chance to do so, and I highly encourage that if you have the right connection and access to the download.  If you've already played the game, and you liked it the first time, then by all means play it again if you have the extra time to download it.  If you're pressed for time or you thought the original was only okay (or worse), then I can't really recommend the game.  Depending on whether or not the game ever goes retail, if it became something you have to pay $10 a month for, it is currently not worth the money.  While the anime-style of the game is wonderful, you'd be better off getting True Fantasy Online or Final Fantasy XI since they'll almost certainly be out or coming soon by the time it does go retail.

I love RO, but at the moment the interaction is too small and the world is too limiting.  As it is also beta, my efforts will someday be lost anyway when everything is reset.  While I was engrossed with the Beta when it first came out, I've since lost my interest in it rather quickly - there are so many other MMORPGs that are more appealing, but this is the only free one available right now, it's anime-style, and I love the music... but that may be all it has going for it.

Overall Rating: 7.5

Yes, this score is worse than the Alpha's.  The Alpha was very promising and had a lot of mystery about it which is why I think Chibi-Acer gave it the 9, and yes, it was a lot of fun.  However, while I love RO, I think the replay value of the new beta is low and as it appears to me the game, while as amazing as it is right now, I don't think it can advance much farther for a while, and I honestly can't say I'm looking forward to the retail (unless it's cheap) compared to other MMORPGs that I already own.  Chibi-Acer has also lost interest and didn't even bother downloading the beta.  It's worth playing right now since it's free though.

Will Porings rule the world?

Chibi-Andric hanging around in Prontera