Whoa, its sounds so familiar. RO1 was my first and main mmorpg, spent over 6 years there. Despite having none of fancy true-sandbox features, this game had great feeling of freedom. You could go anywhere and do anything and most of the time it had sense. Killing low-level mobs, creating weird builds, teaming up with seems-to-be-gimped classes - it all could be followed by some kind of breakthrough, creating new strategy or unique playstyle. Trying new profession, you really felt like you doing something new, each class had its own flavour. Lurning curve was closest to "easy to learn, hard to master" principle i've seen. 

Economics was pretty realistic - no binds, multiple money drains, no auction, constant demand for equip and consumables.

No grades for items, knife which you obtaned at level 5 could be usefull forever, still there were not one set of equipment for all time, good player had huge arsenal and switching equip was necessary for real pro. 

And Wars... Wars as pinacle of game. Every action could make difference and change outcome. Are you meek socializer and fail in mass-pvp? You still can use you pro-chatting skill to bring more people in guild. Are you rich munchkin with bottomless treasury? You can provide you guildmates with better items and help them live through hard fight. Are you underleveled and undergeared noob? Use your secondary skills and options to support your team: spy, open warps, catch invisible attackers, slow down enemies with statuses and casts interruption, carry heavy supplies for teammate with low weight limit, etc.

Too bad devs started to cater for low-skilled people too much, last episodes made game predictable and boring. Fortunately, RO community is very active and, unlike SWG and ShadowBane fans, created server emulator before game became crap. Thousands private shards hatched and many of them tried hard to bring back all good things or create new interesting features.

After spending lotsa time playing, reading forums and experimenting in calculators i got too much knowledge about RO, its hard to find something new and exciting there, so now i'm looking for another such game: complex, deep, creative and easy-minded at same time. No luck so far.

Originally posted by Salio69

Originally posted by Dakirn

Originally posted by Salio69

Interesting calling Ragnarok an Indie game.... Gravity is one of the oldest and well known mmo companies of all time. I wouldn't consider them Indie at all. Their games like RO predate more well known games like World of Warcraft. In the eastern hemisphere, Ragnarok online is extremely well known and considered to be one of the most successful MMOs ever. Theres plenty of offline spin-offs on many platforms inclulding their lastest one which is on the Playstation Vita. To consider this game "Indie" seems like a gross insult to a game which has been widely respected across the globe since the early part of the last decade.

Theres nothing wrong with Indie games but this game is from a professional company, not an indie one.

I think it's a failed assumption that an indie can't also be a "professional" company.

 

The amount of hate I see for Indie companies is astonishing when you consider they have REAL skin in the game (their own money, not some big publisher's money) and seem to be the ONLY ones willing to give players what they WANT instead of what a publisher THINKS they want.

 

If there was more support for indies and less for the big publishers that keep pushing out crap maybe the industry would actually change.

Theres no hate here for Indie companies. I support indie companies.  What I dont like is people writing articiles and don't seem to know what they are talking about. I've pointed this article out to other vets(since the 90s) like myself on MSN and they started laughing at it.

RO is NOT an indie game. You can consider RO somewhat of a "base" for asian grinding games just as much you can consider "WoW" as a base for all of its clones(even though WoW is a clone of EQ).

Theres no such thing as an "indie game" being made by a professional company. The whole "indie" term comes from the company itself. Example Indie X Gaming Studios made Indie X game. I remember playing RO back in 2001 and reading up a lot on Gravity since I liked the game so much. Gravity is a PROFESSIONAL  company not an indie company.

 

Of course there's such a thing. What is a "professional company" anyway? Gravity did publish the game themselves (according to wiki, at least), which pretty much makes it independent (indie).

Definitely SWG Pre-CU for me.  It's all about the pursuit of your own glory in video games. SWG tapped into that, to where glory was meaningful. This might only apply to me, but what attracted me most was difficulty. Not difficulty in and of itself (I hate that), but what it led to (love that).  A writer once said "discipline without direction is drudgery." SWG provided a direction, a destination, which made the difficulty worth it.  For example, it was really difficult to become a Jedi when I played. I was stuck in the village as a padawan and never made it out, because I continually failed at some really ridiculous quest (Captain's quest?). Point is, it at least seemed really hard to become a Jedi (i never did), which added a meaningful thread to the narrative of the game. When you saw a Jedi, it was kinda cool. When you saw Jedi fighting each other, it was even cooler. When you saw a BH fighting a Jedi, it was great!  That led you to care about being one of them, which in turn led you to caring about a host of other systems tied to becoming a Jedi, as well as tied to living in the world itself.

In a similar vein, becoming a master architect was not driven by a passion for houses (for me), but the credits I figured a guy was making when I went to buy my own house from his vendor. I wanted money. I wanted a sweet business. I wanted virtual profit!  So I thought, "ok what's it going to take me to get there?" And so I grinded, got into harvesting, crafted harvesters, sold and used those, or bought what I needed from others, etc etc.  Again, the desire to be a Master Architect got me into much more than just building crap. Everything was tied together, because everything mattered to success in the game in one way or another. (By the way, I know hindsight is 20/20, and that SWG was probably more crappy than we all remember. There were certainly things that were broken or out of balance and didn't matter enough or mattered too much, etc). 

All of this is to say that visible success and benchmarks opened up the entire game to me. The difficulty and challenge provided an interesting narrative to the rest of the game that brought meaning to how the world felt. In short, SWG created a worldview that defined ingame existence. And that worldview resonates deep within the (my) human soul.  :)

Like I said, I might be the only one who thinks in this ego centric way, but it's what hooked me.  It wasn't cool graphics. I had mine turned down all the way.  It wasn't the combat. I enjoyed it but it wasn't the greatest.  It wasn't the social aspect, although I had friends in the game. 

So that is what I look for in a game. I want a grand narrative that is bigger than me, and SWG provided that for a while, and continued to compel me to play until the great disaster (serious 1st world pain).

I recently began to play Ragnarok online again and i was inmediatly reminded of why i love games as simple and player driven as this.

Within the first 5 hours i had :

-Made two leveling partners-to-be-friends to ADVENTURE with.

-Made quite a bit of Zeny by selling low level materials to high level merchants.

-Excited myself about buying a statless yet cute cat headgear with the mat money O:

-TRULY enjoyed tinkering with my character´s build.

Yeah, some will say that "Essentially you can do this in any game" but the point is that in RO its almost mandatory because to succeed and progress in any decent manner you need to cooperate, trade and make yourself known within the community, especially if your class or build is squishy at the early levels.

Now, after a week or so, i am a young assassin,  recently job changed, who struggles with other even leveled players to conquer some of the early dungeons, hopeful for a drop that would allow me to buy some decent card or slotted weapon :3

The only two games that ever gave me this feeling are  RO and Phantasy Star Online

My first MMORPG was Runescape. I remember logging in and my first experience, after spending who knows how long in the tutorial island, spawning inside the walls of Lumridge. Fallador was all the talk of the pcs around me, the way these accomodated players reffered to it was Fally. I wasn't use to the way that RS players shorten everything and add "lly" to the end of everything, so I found someone whom looked of considerable importance and asked him if he could take me out to "Fally" so I could understand what was so grand about this city. Looking back Fallador was that city that I always seemed to gravitate towards when I wasn't doing much. The wizards south of the walls granted a many runes to a mostly muscle headed warrior whom was looking to dabble in the arts. The goblin encampment to the north provided plenty hours of fun as I grinded ever so deeper inside of the encampment trying to raise my levels. Back then raising a level wasn't about stepping up one more stair to raiding, it was about being able to grow as a character in a field you chose from all of the plethora of others. I can only look back on all the fun I had back in those days of adventure inside of a grand world that most of us look down upon.

Now if I were to craft my own MMORPG it would be something that most would probably scoff at before trying. My idea is not to encorporate any form of  quests. Instead I would craft a massive world, a couple of continents all with their own cultures kind of like WoW. But no zones. I would do what Minecraft does with it's biomes and have a sort of smooth transitions between areas. Each area whether it be a forest, a mountain range, etc would have one or two big bosses that would be the target of any great hunter. But they would be tough and you would have to group up that way not just one person could ever camp their spawn. There would be no instancing, always would you be connected to the world and it's inhabitants. I would try to reimplement Lord British's ecosystem he had installed inside of UO before the beta testing. Player housing would be within the lands of the world, not just some simple pocket universe tagged by the player's ID. Lore, and legends would fuel player intrigue when they weren't targeting any of the big area bosses. They would talk about legendary weapons and armor that most players would have to take months just to gather through long tasks much like becoming a jedi in SWG. When you walked through out a city you wouldn't see all the characters dressed the same, instead you would see people dressed how they wanted to for the jobs they desired. Skills would be the only means of actual progression instead of classes. (I could honestly rant all day about this but I should probably stop myself before I write a longer post than the article itself)