Ragnarok 2: The Ragnaroking with a revengeance

[Bells]

So... Ragnarok 2 has just hitted Steam!

Free to play, completely revamped and updated version of the Classic MMO i'm sure a lot of you know and kinda love or totally hate at this point...

At first the game was not avaliable on my region in the steam store... but out of curiosity i learned a neat trick... one of my steam friends started playing the game! I clicked his name... chose "launch game". Since i don't have the game... steams identify this and gives me the option to DOWNLOAD the game.

Lo'and behold, 4GB later, i have Ragnarok 2.

Barely scrapped the surface of this game... will get more into it later, but i wanted to share just a couple of things...

It does look and feel like classic ragnarok with a 3D, current Gen MMO feel.

Now you pick a class and a profession.

5 minutes in, in the noob region of the map, the chat was being spammed with requests of Healers for parties. So i guess the gameplay hasn't changed much.

You now also pick a profession alongside your class. I Made an Cook Archer! But you can make an Acolyte blacksmith if you want...

The first area has a pool of Baby poorings that constatly spawn so you can practice combat and clear the first few quests... it's.... kinda weird seeing a bunch of player literally curb stomp these pink bubbles that are literally called "Baby Poorings" as soon as they are born into the field.... it's a massacre!

Also, my PC is no powerhouse by any stretch of imagination... but it is also far from being a shitty PC. However, i do feel this game going a bit sluggish, even though it's not much far from what we see in every cartoony MMO out there... maybe it was because it's in beta, or because it was a player-heavy area... but buyer beware!

You auto-attack with the mouse right click. But if you are not looking AT your target, you stop attacking. Try to attack and move......

Also, Mouse with left button to turn camera, W to walk forward, Q and E to strafe side to side.

Emoticons are back, and Animations are there for roleplayers... there is a Hadouken and a Shoryuken animation, plus Rock-Paper-Scissors.

And this is my 10 minute report on Ragnarok 2. Anybody willing to give it a try?

[Kyanbu The Legend]

I saw a pretty rad Ad for it on youtube.

It looks pretty interesting, so I might give it a try one of these days if it supports Gamepads. If not I'll find a way around it (I love joy2key).

[phil_]

You auto-attack with the mouse right click. Also, Mouse with left button to turn cameraWhy would they switch that? Is it because you don't click to move anymore? Is moving the camera with a left-click some new standard I've missed from not playing videos on my computer for ten years, like iron sights and pay-to-win?

And are there still pet Munaks?

[Bells]

You move like in any regular MMO now, but instead of binding the camera to mouse movement, you have to hold the button to move the camera and you move with QWES. No "click to go" anymore

And yes. You do have pets... also mounts. Cause... modern.

[Arcanum]

You auto-attack with the mouse right click. Also, Mouse with left button to turn camera

What? This is pretty standard stuff, left click to interact, right click for camera. What is wrong with them?

move with QWES.

Okay, no, seriously, WHAT IS WRONG WITH THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THE CONTROLS FOR THIS GAME?

[McTahr]

The click interface is standard MMO.

It's the standard QWEASD with strafing and turns.

The game is vanilla MMO with extra vanilla.

[akaSM]

I like vanilla; would I like this?

[Revising Ocelot]

Please note that since the death of that silly first game some of you played, I have copyright on the usage of the acronym "RO". Therefore, if you want to play this and start calling it "RO", bugger off.

[Seil]

no u

[Krylo]

The Clickening 2: Click Harder


I wonder how many years it will take to farm a smiley face mask off goblins in THIS version.

[Flarecobra]

Eh, I'm not that impressed to be honest. I've played a couple of RO servers in the past, and one of the main draws was how one could customize things without TOO much issues...

RO2 looks like it might be good down the road, but right now I'll pass.

[Revising Ocelot]

RO servers

...

RO2

You'll be hearing from my lawyer!

[RobinStarwing]

You'll be hearing from my lawyer!

And you'll be hearing from mine! :smug:

[Kyanbu The Legend]

Please note that since the death of that silly first game some of you played, I have copyright on the usage of the acronym "RO". Therefore, if you want to play this and start calling it "RO", bugger off.

Except for Sonic The Hedgehog. No copy right law in the universe can stop him.

[Bells]

On the notion of this not being as fun as the original...

... Vanilla Ragnarok was never anything to write home about.

i mean, this is pretty much why we all played on Custom Servers

[Krylo]

Custom servers weren't that good either.

As they still had to work with the base game. Which was a pretty horrid grind fest with minimal story and nothing to do but click on things until they die.

[McTahr]

Which was a pretty horrid grind fest with minimal story and nothing to do but click on things until they die.

Welcome to RO2. And yet I'm playing. Fuck.

[Revising Ocelot]

RO2

Microtransactions, right? You won't be able to afford them. Because legal fees.


This is a major issue for me and I'm not going to drop it.
because i'm duuuuuuuumb

[Flarecobra]

Is there anything that really stands out about RO2 that can make one choose it over, say, a custom server like HeRO?

[Tev]

I might give this a spin since it's free, but yeah, I'm not seeing too much that screams "better" than the private servers I occasionally visit other than maybe the graphics.

[shiney]

A resounding "meh" was heard all across the living room.

[Seil]

Let us not forget the Roliana spectacle of '07. We're a terrible thing once we mobilize.

[MasterOfMagic]

Ehhhnnn, the feel of it is totally different. Meh.

[Hatake Kakashi]

I've decided to give it a whirl. One of the chief differences from old RO was the card system. Cards are no longer slotted into eq, they're slotted directly onto the character. Essentially, it means that (unless someone cracks out private servers, which I'm not sure are feasible) card slots can't be increased and tweaked for some of the more ridiculous un-hittable builds I've used on various private servers. But it also means that I don't have to choose between two nifty cards that occupy the same slot. It's been simplified. You just pick the five you want.

There's also a card merchant, who you can use to combine cards into other cards, I guess? I haven't farmed enough to give it a shot.

[RobinStarwing]

A resounding "meh" was heard all across the living room.

And so we all turn our attentions to LoR...sorry RO2. :(

[shiney]

Let us not forget the Roliana spectacle of '07. We're a terrible thing once we mobilize.

Yeah this whole debacle really insulted and pissed off Rai unnecessarily and is probably best left alone. It's not a funny thing to be like "NPF lol" about.

[Darkblade]

I actually started playing this the other day. Reminds me of the old Ragnarok with the sea of people in the starting areas.

[captcrash]

Started playing from nostalgia of this forums private RO server. Not sure I'll stick with it.

On the plus side, I have yet to see a "farm 5000 of XXXX for this quest"

[Seil]

Who is the butt monkey that took the name "Seil?"

Was it you?

I bet it was you.

You butt monkey.

[Tev]

I've been giving RO2 a try for the last few weeks and, while it's not amazing, it does deliver an acceptable amount of enjoyment.

I really have only three complaints about the game right now:

-The UI and control scheme are nauseating. Luckily, you can custom this up a little bit to make things better, but it still takes some getting used to and clicking on monsters to fight or NPCs to approach may still leave you running well past them and into some tree or wall that you keep running into while your former prey has a taste of your vulnerable rear as you flail around trying to fight the camera and turn around.

-Freemium Item Storage. Or really, any of the freemium content in general, but having to pay real money to have a non-pitiful storage capacity in my Kafra Storage, and weekly cash dumps for easy card storage is lame. I refuse.

-Lack of soloing options. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if there were lots of people on who were willing to party and do things, but right now, RO2 feels like it's peeking private server population levels and getting a group of people together to do much of anything outside of the Newbie Zone is generally a task of making your friends play the game so you have people there. I also don't like that dungeons auto-assume a difficulty rating of a party of 4-5 players even when it is clear that you are the only person entering the dungeon and all dungeons are instance events. If it's just me, all of the monsters shouldn't need five times the HP. I don't mind the monster head-count, just the bloated HP totals that ensure my failure on attrition alone.

[McTahr]

-Lack of soloing options. This wouldn't be as much of a problem if there were lots of people on who were willing to party and do things, but right now, RO2 feels like it's peeking private server population levels and getting a group of people together to do much of anything outside of the Newbie Zone is generally a task of making your friends play the game so you have people there. I also don't like that dungeons auto-assume a difficulty rating of a party of 4-5 players even when it is clear that you are the only person entering the dungeon and all dungeons are instance events. If it's just me, all of the monsters shouldn't need five times the HP. I don't mind the monster head-count, just the bloated HP totals that ensure my failure on attrition alone.

That's fairly standard MMO fare, honestly. Finding groups for dungeons wasn't terribly hard, it took upwards of half an hour for more obscure dungeons if you didn't have at least one primary role filled / weren't on at prime time, though. My friend and I were running sorc / rogue and able to nab groups all the way to the 40s dungeons, clearing out each dungeon's Khara and quests as we leveled. (Then we quit.) Since there's a dungeon teleport you don't need to actively sit and wait at the entrance that entire time, either. You can still be questing and/or productive-ifying that entire time.

When running tank and healer, you basically run into instant dungeon queues where you pick and choose your DPS and go. When you have just one or the other, your wait time is roughly halved, except tanks are slightly more rare from my experience.

Piece of advice: If you do get a group, and notice a primary role character who's competent, chat them up, friend them, and maybe they're leveling at the same rate as you and will need a group next dungeon.

Edit: Oh! And at the end of dungeon runs it never hurts to say "[Insert Area Boss Name Here]??" and see who in the group's up to knock off the Khara quest for that.