A long time ago (early-mid 2002) Damien, Trav, Stephan and I participated in an open beta of manga-themed Ragnarok Online. The game is (very basically) a Diablo-style MMORPG where you clickity-click and bash evil monsters to death with whatever weapon or spell you happen to prefer.

For some reason, the game was a great time waster and rather enjoyable. We sunk a reasonable amount of time into the game; after a while, the game’s popularity increased rather a lot, and things such as cheating, rude players etc. made the game a little less enjoyable. None of this mattered, since shortly after, the open beta closed down as the company prepared for the Korean release of the game.

Fast forward to now and the International server has been in play for quite a while (probably more than a year or so). The International server is basically a catch-all server which is not tailored for Korean or Japanese players. Among the issues the company running the game are facing is that is apparently quite easy to “hack” into the servers and modify characters to your liking, or posing as GMs.

Anyway, this all leads up to what this post is actually about. Me playing more Ragnarok. I recently learned that somehow, people have gotten hold of the server software (or perhaps built their own, but I doubt it) and created their own servers! As a result, there are a number of free servers floating around for people too cheap to pay for the game (i.e. me). One such server is called the “Mob Ragnarok Online” server, and is the one I decided to try out.

After downloading about 700MB worth of files, and another 100-200MB worth of patches, I created a character and gave the game another whirl. Things were (almost) exactly as I remembered, though there was much, much more than there had been when we played. Interestingly, the largest number of people I have ever seen playing on this server is 300. I seem to remember numbers of 2000+ on the official servers. This means that the game is a lot less crowded, which equals less annoyances and more fun!

Justine and I played for a couple of hours last night, and quite enjoyed ourselves. The server we’re playing on also has set the XP level to 5 times the official server’s level. This means that it’s a lot faster to level up which makes the game more gratifying (at least in the short term).