You may or may not know that I have played RO (Ragnarok Online) off and on for several years. I've found the game much more fun than WoW, but not nearly as sustainable (easy to lose interest). The game is much more fast paced than WoW, and much more open ended. You aren't stuck doing one thing or another no matter what, which makes PvE a lot more fun, and also makes PvP imbalances much less noticeable. There are definitely imbalances, though. The two games are, imo, very very similar, as far as PvE and PvP is concerned. They're very different too, but the actual feel of the game is pretty similar. Playing a Champion on RO has always felt like playing a Rogue in WoW. It's kind of hard to explain. Oh also, the game is isometric view, the environments are 3d, and your character is 2d. It's also click to move. Might sound bad, but it's not really. Just a heads up.
But anyway, the game is kind of hard to step into if you're new, since essentially every server is a private server, and I guess the game just isn't self explanatory. There's lots to know about the game, and I'm not really trying to make a post about RO in general, other than to explain it to people who have no clue.
Rapture RO is a RO server lead by my friend, Etchel (someone I actually met due to making a different post about RO a while ago, on this site; he's been a reader for a while). He's run servers successfully in the past, definitely knows what he's doing, and has a strong dedicated team (scripters, host, GMs, etc) for the server. Point is, this server doesn't suck, and is going to get better over time. There are vague plans to implement an arena type system for small scale PvP, 2v2 and 3v3 or 4v4 in the future. Ironically, I hate arena in WoW, but imo arena in RO would be the best thing ever. I guess it's just how class mechanics are set up.
The rates are currently 10/10/10. The party bonus exp is substantial, and the player base/community is rather strong. Also, there are no stupid custom gay donor items, like faggy wings and bullshit.
Point being: If you feel like playing RO, join this server and you can play with me, Cloudsong, and Etchel on his legit character. Though his legit is kind of a secret so SHHHH DON'T TELL ANYONE WHO HE IS IN GAME!! D:
If you want to play but are new to the game, read on:
I'll try to make a brief guide here on getting started:
Download
The Renewal Client, which is the new client version for RO, replacing the older sakray. It's kind of big, but it's the entire game you're downloading there. Besides, it's only as big as my final video or Eviscerate 10, lol.
After you've downloaded and unzipped that, don't run any of the patchers or .exes inside there. Instead, download and run
the Rapture RO patcher, which will install all of the server specific stuff. Once that is installed, you should have a new exe to run the server, or you could hit "start server" through the patcher.
Pretty straight forward stuff there, hopefully nothing bugged.
Now, you can just download a Full Installer from the website, which includes both pieces mentioned above. Get it here.
Once you've installed the game, you'll need an account with Rapture RO to log in, so go here, and create an account. Note that choosing male or female will affect your ingame character, so if you're a guy pretending to be a girl, make sure you choose female! I know that's like 60% of readers... 95% even.
Okay, now some people (including myself) have gotten a problem where, after installing Renewal, all of the option buttons are in Korean. Personally, I have made no effort to fix the problem, because I know which button is which anyway, so it doesn't even affect me. For a new player, however, I'm sure that'll be annoying.
Here's a fix I haven't yet tried:1.Go to RagnarokRenewal/data and open the textures folder
2.Copy the folder that has a Korean name(folder size is 10.5mb)
3.Paste folder into RagnarokRenewal/skins and rename
4.Open RO and log in
5.Press esc and select second option
6.Change your skin into the new one that you just added and your client should 95% be in english
Hope this works for everyone
Credit goes to Hyde
Edit: I tried it, and it works perfectly. The folder was 11.4mb for me though.
You shouldn't need to do that though, it'll probably be in English anyway.
So anyway, once you've logged in, create a character, hair style and color doesn't matter since you can change it later. Pick a name that doesn't suck. If you don't know what you're doing, you can leave your stats where it is, completely balanced. Enter the game, and talk to all the NPCs (don't tell them to send you to town or anything like that), they'll tell you some mildly important things.
After this point, it's game information, so I'll be brief. If you talk to all of the NPCs in the starting area, they'll bring you up to base level 11 and job level 9. You'll need to kill a few mobs to get to job level 10, at which point you can bring your Novice, Basic skill up to level 9. At that point, you can change to your first real class.
On the original RO, you would need to do some gay quests to change class. On this (and almost every server), there is a job change NPC to skip the bullshit. There are also warper NPCs to send you from town to town, and to most dungeons (some dungeons require quests to enter).
To pick your first class, you'll need to go to Prontera, so where ever you are once you leave the beginning area, find a warper. I'd recommend, on the very last NPC of the starter area, the one who gives you some personality quizz, to just spam the enter key, until he tells you he thinks you should be a swordsman. Regardless of what class you really want to be, accept, and he'll warp you to Izlude. Head to the center of town, and you'll find a warper. Warp from there to Prontera.
Right near you, south west from where you arrived, will be the class changer. Pick the class you want, and if you've used all of your skill points (alt+s) in basic skill, you can change. I recommend archer or mage or acolyte to start with, they'll be very easy to level all the way. However, any class is really fine to level with, as long as you don't pick Ninja, Gunslinger, Super Novice, or Taekwon. All of these classes are rather worthless in themselves, and are typically made as alts. Technically, Taekwon is extremely useful depending on what you do with it, but that requires a decent understanding of the game first.
So anyway, choose your class, and then talk to the warper, and select dungeons, then Payon Dungeon. Kill some nigs, and spam your novice/red pots as necessary, you might want to bind it to something. Skeletons give the least xp, then bats, then zombies, and poporings give the most. I mention that, because this game is all about time efficiency, so knowing what gives what will be a huge help.
Oh also, type @autoloot, and @showexp, and all loot that drops will be automatically put in your bags, and all exp you gain will be shown. You can modify @autoloot by putting a number after. @autoloot 10 will put everything that has a 10% chance to drop or less into my bags. You may want to do this later to save weight in your bags when you're hunting for specific items, like cards and what not. At first though, just leave it at default.
For your stats, it depends on your class and what you're doing with it. If you're a swordsman, you'll pretty much want all str. As an acolyte or mage, you want all int. As an archer, you want all agi and dex, and as a thief you want a mix of str and agi.
Dex increases your chance to hit as melee, cast speed with magic (very important later), and damage to a lesser extent as melee. Agi increases chance to dodge and attack speed. Int increases max SP (mana), and magic damage. Str is damage and max carry weight. Luk increases crit chance and chance for perfect dodge, but is mostly worthless unless you know what you're doing, so put no points in it. Vit is straight HP, which is only good in PvE for classes who are going to take hits at higher levels.
You can job change again at job level 40, but usually you'll want to wait until you are job level 50, because you'll get the extra 10 job levels to spend on your first job skills. This isn't the case for some classes, like thief, who have mostly worthless first job skills.
At this point, you'll probably need to just do some research to learn more, since there's a lot to know. Here's a good resource for that: http://irowiki.org
GL HF.
Oh yeah, the characters I'm playing on the server are "Lord Buddhist", "Master Buddhist", "Etchels girlfriend", "Speaker of the House", and "Ron Paul". Cloudsong is "Cloudsong", "Cloudicus", "Cloudette", and he has some other characters whose names I don't recall. I'm not going to say Etchel's character name because he really does want to keep it a secret.
We're in the guild, Neutral, so if you are actually going to play reliably, you can get an invite at some point. We're currently the dominant guild on the serer.
If you're new, you can whisper by pressing enter to type, then putting the name of the person you want to whisper in the first box there.
kk GL HF.
Good job on the starter info and etc. That's all the kind of stuff I want to know when starting a new mmo.