so gravity being the company full of geniuses that they are, Ragnarok Online 2 uses a variation of the same server software that the original does…which is to say, the software that was stolen three years ago and has been fully cracked by now. so lucky me (and you) there are already english private servers for RO2, a game that isn’t even out of beta in korea! i’ve been playing for a bit, so im going to write about it because i have nothing better to do, and i know that (at one point) RPGCers cared about RO.
the graphics are awesome. full 3D, and better than WoW. MUCH better (though WoW is technically from 2003 so i guess this isn’t much of a feat). trees blow in the breeze, characters have a surprisingly high polygon count, cities have lighting effects, and the anime style translated quite well to the third dimension. character creation has a surprising amount of options. the GUI has been redone, thankfully, and looks great. its alot less confusing now too. there is one bar, at the top of the screen, that gives you all your options. much better than having to hit ALT+[key] for each individual menu like RO. your hotkey bar is alot easier to use, the minimap shows partymember position, there is a mail system (just like wow), and chat has been split into Channel and Area. Channel is the entire region, Area is just those near you. oh jesus, and one awesome new thing is that you can download your updates one file at a time (old style), or in a one compressed file that takes one tenth as long and the game autoinstalls for you.
the weapon system is entirely new. i’m trying to think of a game that does something similar to use as an example, but i can’t. when you roll your character, you name him, and you name his weapon. that weapon gains experience with you as you play. it has a level, and you have a level. you can’t change your weapon. when your weapon levels up, it gives you new stat bonuses, new skill bonuses, and other stuff (it changes its look too). the skills you have depend on your weapon. you might have learned a skill for your job, but if your weapon isn’t a high enough level, you can’t use it. also, you need to run back to town every time your weapon has leveled up, and get a blacksmith to bang his hammer on it for it to actually level up. it sits at 100% until you do this :\
there is also a sort of card system. your weapon has slots for two types of items: auges and alters. auges change what your weapon looks like, alters change stuff like atk, hit, and aspd. you have four slots, one auge and three alter. i dont know where you get these items, if they’re bought, dropped, are rare, whatever, because the pserver im on hasn’t implemented auges yet, and i haven’t seen alter stones.
quests…yes, its like WoW, you get exp from doing quests 
i hate questing for exp, i’d rather grind. in prontera there is a signboard, you click on it, pick a mission, do the mission (KILL FIFTY FISH/BRING ME FIFTY FISH/FIND MY [item]), come back, and get your exp. certain NPCs also give you missions, you can tell which ones they are because they have an exclamation mark over their head! revolutionary.
classes:
> novice
> swordsman
> enchanter (mage from RO, but you can wield a sword too for some reason)
> recruit (gunslinger from RO)
> thief (can open locked items apparently, except i cant find any)
> clown (bard, aco, and monk, rolled into one)
i think the idea they’re going for is that the “classes” are really very very broad, and you specialize by buying skills and changing your weapon. you specialize through your weapon rather than your class. also, i have no idea if they’re going to put in secondary/tertiary classes like they did in RO (like thief > sin > sinx)
one cool thing is you can switch jobs on the fly. say i’m playing a novice. i hit job10, and change to swordsman. i play to job5 on the swordsman, get bored, and want to change back to novice. when i do, my novice is job10 still. i can then maybe play a thief for awhile, hit job5 again, switch back to swordsman, and he’ll still be waiting for me at job5. also, stat reset is free! it happens when you switch jobs. yes you get your points back (though this might be a pserver thing)
skills are weird. if you’ve every played FlyFF, its sort of like that. there are four types of skills. active, passive, specialty, and bar. active skills you learn by buying skillbooks. passive skills your learn by just leveling (use your sword enough and you learn sword mastery). specialty, i have no fucking clue. you can transfer them between classes or something. i really don’t know what these are. i only have one, and its the novice abilities. bar skills i don’t know much about either. there is a bar below your health, like a special gauge. when it fills up, you can can use skills that depend on it. the more bar you have, the more damage the skill does.
the soundtrack…uh…its there? if this is really Yoko Kanno, she did absolutely nothing to make this soundtrack stand out. admittedly, its alot better than hearing prt_fild.mp3 for the millionth time, but when your last project was Cowboy Bebop, you’d expect the RO OST to blow you away or something. she was probably written a check and then just phoned in some generic fantasy music.
anyway thats it. this is long, sorry, i didnt mean to write so much. overall i like this game. its fun, and im sure when the american beta starts, everyone will jump on it like they did for the original beta. whether or not people keep playing past beta (or in RPGC terms, more than the standard two weeks :P), i really doubt it, but it’ll be fun for awhile. i personally can’t wait for the highrate servers though :3
im going to like the pserver here, because its not ripping anyone off at this point. the game is still in free beta.
http://files.filefront.com/RO2rar/;8984184;/fileinfo.html grab the client from here (no patching needed)
http://www.euphro2.com/other/Register.html register here
edit: you need to update the client when you’re done. i forgot to say this. go to C:\Program Files\Gravity\EuphRO\ and run Ragnarok2.exe
if you get some error about files missing or in use, you need to click “FullFileDownload” at the bottom of the updater and update the old fashioned (read: slow) way…which is what i am currently doing
