The very first official Massive Multiplayer Online Game published in the Philippines that I know of is Ragnarok online of Level Up Games. It actually started the whole industry of publishing MMOs in the country.
It is also the very first MMO that I played and It has gone through a lot of changes from here to now.
I remembered, playing it when it just released there were only the 5 starting job class available.
Look at it now with the release of the long awaited 3rd job class
This game has gone through quite a bit of change through the passage of time, from being a exclusive pay to play game where the only means of leveling up is to grind without stop to what it is now integrating the quest system that is very common nowadays in the MMORPG world as well as introducing free to play servers. This game is still alive and kicking with big updates still being made.
Enough of the history lesson and let’s get into the game!
Ragnarok online is published in the Philippines by Level Up Philippines, and is currently in Chapter XXII which introduces the 3rd class. It has 4 servers to date, New Chaos which retains the old pay to play system which also allows botting, Valkyrie and New Loki are the free to play servers with active world PvP in key areas and there is also Valhalla which is also free to play but has no world PvP. The free servers have a "no bot" policy in them which is punishable by being banned in the game. There are also several differences between the pay version and free version mostly concerning drops of monster and the existence of the armory of the gods in the free servers that allows players to buy ingame items for real money.
What RO can really boast about is the wide array of job class available in game. You start off as a Novice which could choose one of the 6 basic classes, Swordsman, Mage, Thief, Archer, Merchant and Acolyte, that could be upgraded their respective 2nd jobs or their alternate which both could either undergo Transcendence then 3rd job or skip through the Transcendence and proceed straight to 3rd job. The Novice has also several deviation from the starting classes which are called Expanded job classes. They could opt to become a Taekwon which could turn to a Soul Linker or Star Gladiator or they could choose to become a Ninja or a Gunslinger both of which does not possess a job upgrade or they could remain a Novice til level 40 to become a Super Novice which allows them access to all the skills of the 6 basic classes.
Character customization does that stop there, even though 2 characters share the same class, they could be as different as day and night. This is due to the fully customizable stats and skill system which makes that player decide on how to spend their skill and stat points in whatever way they want. This allows a lot of variety overall but also adds risks to player that they might “mess up” their characters permanently if they allocated the points in the wrong skill or stat. Thankfully they recently added resetters for both skill and stat but requires real cash.
The environment of RO uses 2D sprites in a 3D world. It might pale compared to the realistic full 3D games today but it still holds its appeal well. This is together with its amazing soundtrack that really brings the world to life
Partying is the best sources of experience in the game due to the bonuses involved as well as having someone to chat with while doing all that grind. There are also guilds which functions as a means of people to get together. Guilds can also participate in guild wars to take control of one of the several castles throughout the world but since competition is hard for there are only a few of these castles available and thus alliances are made between these guilds to help each other conquer or defend these guild castles.
Overall, Ragnarok Online is a game not for everyone, those looking for eye candy should look elsewhere but to those who could appreciate the art style and the grind should feel right at home here
No comments:
Post a Comment