|
| What are we about? Read our mission statement |
Register for School Register Online |
Class Schedules Check next semester's schedule! |
|
|
Ragnarok Online (PC) MMORPG games are a dime a dozen these game. Whether it's new releases like World of Warcraft and City of Heroes, or one of the older MMO games like Anarchy Online, the common thread seems to be highly detailed character models in a visually stunning world. Especially newer games tend to push older computers to their limit. Enter Ragnarok Online. RO is a relatively old massively-multiplayer game by current standards. Unlike most modern games, the gameplay of Ragnarok consists of 2d sprites for players and monsters on a 3d world. While this may seem to be a limiting factor, the simplistic gameplay serves to make for a solid gaming experience. The sprites are detailed, and there are hundreds of items available to find, or to forge.
In the game, there are a number of player classes you can choose to play as. You start as a novice, and after levelling up, you can choose one of six new "job" classes. After sufficient levelling up as your first job, you can then progress to one of two new second job classes (12 in total). The offical updates are frequent, and add numerous new content such as new monsters, cities, maps, and items.
In addition to the standard beat-up-things-to-level play which is present in all mmorpg games, there are many other features including PvP, a party and guild system, and guild vs guild "Capture the Castle" type of gameplay. Players can team up to form parties to take some of the more powerful monsters. When a group of players finds a certain items, they can make a guild of players to capture castles and compete with other players. The admins who are always on the server help to cut down on hacking, and other unsavory behavior, and also throw events occaionally. The in-game events vary anywhere from scavenger hunts to hide-and-seek.
In case paying $12 a month for an mmorpg game isn't for you, you can try one of countless private, unofficial servers. These are servers which are hosted by groups of individuals who are dedicated to creating quality gaming servers without charging money for them. One such server program is called eAthena. This is a legal server emulator which was constructed from scratch. Setup is not for the faint of heart, but with some time and patients, you can setup and run your own Ragnarok Online server.
Some gamers might be turned off by the graphical style, however it is particularly well suited to an massively-multiplayer game. The music is quite well done, but does get grating after hours of listening. I usually listen to mp3s playing in the background which make it that much better. The game is stable, and can be played on a 56k connection, however the game would lag quite a bit in populated areas on anything other than broadband. Final Thoughts - The simple yet addictive gameplay of Ragnarok Online (coupled with the ability to play for free on public servers) makes RO one of the best massively-multiplayer games I have played. I regularly play on the PSIBlade Online private server, and am toying around with creating my own server to experiment on. I would definitely recommend playing this game. Playing on official servers will provide more stable gameplay, however there are some private servers which can rival the official servers in quality, and stability. |
| |||||||
