Contents Graphics – Isometric View with 2D sprites / 3D Backgrounds ................................................................................................... 2

The UI ..................................................................................................................................................................................... 4

The Artstyle ............................................................................................................................................................................ 4

Classes .................................................................................................................................................................................... 5

Gameplay ................................................................................................................................................................................... 6

Fixed drop rate and XP rate ................................................................................................................................................... 6

Market .................................................................................................................................................................................... 8

Skill and Stat System .............................................................................................................................................................. 9

Stats .................................................................................................................................................................................. 11

Skills .................................................................................................................................................................................. 13

COSMETICS – HATS HATS HATS ....................................................................................................................................... 16

Emotions .......................................................................................................................................................................... 17

OVER THE YEARS OF PLAYING MANY MMOS AND MANY OTHER TYPES OF ONLINE GAMES I'VE ALWAYS YEARLY COME BACK TO

RAGNAROK ONLINE, ONE DAY I STARTED WONDERING WHY? WHY IS IT THAT I'M DRAWN TO THIS 10+ YEAR OLD GAME EVEN

WITH NEW GAMES OUT TODAY SUCH AS WILDSTAR, TERA, ELDER SCROLLS ONLINE, GUILD WARS 2 AND SO ON... NOW A LOT OF

THIS MIGHT BE ME USING NOSTALGIA TO EXPLAIN WHY THINGS ARE GOOD OR BAD BUT I DID ASK AROUND OF FORUMS AND

PEOPLE DO SEEM TO SHARE MY SENTIMENT OF WHAT MADE RAGNAROK ONLINE WHAT IT IS. I'M ACTUALLY WRITING THIS

BECAUSE THERES A SPIRITUAL SEQUEL COMING OUT CALLED TREE OF SAVIOR, AND PEOPLE TOLD ME „HEY YOU SEEM TO GET IT

WHY NOT EXPLAIN IT A BIT MORE INDEPTH“ SO I'M GOING TO TRY AND DO JUST THAT. EXCUSE MY WRITING, SPELLING AND

OTHER ERRORS I'M NOT A NATIVE ENGLISH SPEAKER.

NOTE: MOST OF THIS IS PRE-RENEWAL BECAUSE THAT’S THE RO EVERYONE LIKED AND LOVED AND IT MADE RO WHAT RO WAS.

Graphics – Isometric View with 2D sprites / 3D Backgrounds

The first thing you see when entering the game obviously. It's what made Ragnarok online the game it is. It has 2D

sprites for most of the interactive objects in the game such as players and monsters. Some trigger objects in the

background were 3D. "Less is more" is the name of the game here.

The 2D sprites and 3D backgrounds enabled a very curious thing.

The game was grid based and one square could be occupied by

any number of objects so you could make a train of monsters and

in the end they would at most when you stopped occupy 1-3

squares when attacking you if done correctly. This in

combination with AoE skills enabled you to kill massive amounts

of monsters at a time. Going for 40 or 50 monsters if you had a

tank that could pull them was not uncommon.

Also another advantage of the 2D/3D system was the fact that you could make visually impressive monsters and

graphics that stand the test of time with minimal effort. Just have a look at a monster sprite. As you can see with few

animations you got a fluid looking and moving monster. This was done cheaply and very probably quickly. That

meant that in almost every area you would find new and unique looking monsters. The only constant in RO was

porings. They were obviously a fan favorite and so the poring is pretty much the only monster sprite that got used

for a quite a number of monsters, there was a few others but basically from one part of the world no another there

was always new monsters to be encountered. This also naturally meant that players and their headgear could be

designed quickly and cheaply so Ragnarok for its scale had a ton of headgears for customization. It also meant that

the anime artstyle that we all love was kept there and to this day, Ragnarok Online while looking dated looks

nowhere near as dated as Dungeon Siege that also came out in 2002.

The 2D/3D hybridization also enabled interesting cosmetics but I will cover that later.

The UI Minimalistic and offered a clear view of the battlefield, you and your friends' sprites, and the monsters. Only the necessary information was there, unlike modern MMOs which flood you with useless information. Part of this is because Ragnarok Online had no real quest system but it still today looks sleeker compared to more modern ones.

The Artstyle Ragnarok Online is what many in the west would refer to as an Anime MMO it has

this cutesy Japanese looking art style, everything is made out of sprites and the

only way to customize your character was to color the sprite or get a headgear but

more on that later. What made Ragnarok attractive to a lot of people was exactly

that art style. Anime fans flocked to it. It was their first online anime game. People

looked the same (classes), while some would argue it was a lack of customization.

I would say it simplified things and I'm glad Tree of Savior is sticking to that.

Naturally we need to talk about the monsters and the humble poring. Really it's

just a cuter version of a slime from Dragon Quest but boy did it become iconic. It

was cute, it was easy to kill and it was found everywhere. And they simply

changed to color or added cute wing and they had a new monster or boss. I don't

know who came up wit the idea but it was awesome. And the idea was

consistent. Low level mobs were cute little fuzzy things. You could usually tell

by the look of a monster how strong it was. There was no "Monster levels"

above their heads or even HP bars. People in the old days had to use Monster

Property/Sense to get the monsters stat. And that skill was limited to the

Wizard but the party could see it. This made the game a lot more mysterious

and encouraged exploration, but also punished it because well you could die

and lose XP if you wandered too far or made a wrong corner in a dungeon.

Anyways on track. The fact that you could tell monsters strength by their looks

also made a twist late game were a cute monster would destroy you in 2

seconds. I always remember going down into Payon Dungeon and seeing a

cute pantiless catgirl only to get destroyed by it and it's horde of summoned

ninetails. The point is the art style knew a great balance. How to make things

scary, how to make things cute and how to make things deceptively cute

before you're destroyed.

Classes While this could be considered art style too I wanted to touch on it some more. Every class had a unique sprite. That

made a long leap in recognizability of players and what function they served. When I first started playing I went into

town and saw all these people. It was clear who was a knight, who was a priest and who was a mage just by one

glance. When I was in a dungeon and I saw an acolyte I could ask for a buff. The point is unlike 3D MMOs you knew

who was what, look at this WOW picture of armors and you'll instantly know what I mean plus the armors changes

every few levels and they all mostly have the same looks. The fact that the when you're playing you're zomed all the

way out in any MMO. Also what made things worse for 3D MMOs is that recognizability falls off with distance

drastically. Also while you were a novice you could have something to look forward to. These was a lot of class

mobility and back tracking but later on that. It really enabled a lot of communication between people and made

cosmetics stand out even more!

Gameplay

Fixed drop rate and XP rate Now this is by far the biggest difference in my opinion except for the graphics between Ragnarok online and every

other MMO out there ever. Now I'm going to have to touch on a lot of points here so please bare with me.

While this might seem to some to be insignificant to some, it's actually one of the biggest gameplay features in

Ragnarok online. While other similar games like let's say Diablo had totally randomized loot tables with randomized

items, other MMOs like WoW had drop tables randomized so you couldn't hunt anything specific in general. You had

a change that something uncommon or common would drop depening on your level there was no control. They also

had these silly limitations placed on them because of that system where you wouldn't get any drops or XP if you

were above a certain monsters level. For all intents and purposes all the gray monsters 5 levels below you were

basically irrelevant removed gameplay elements and so were the areas you visited. Once somethings was done and

you were above it's level it was useless and that in my eyes that was a big mistake because it leads to a huge

decrease in "class mobility" . To this day a lot of MMOs continue this trend and I fear Tree of Savior might go in this

direciton but no info has shown up yet. Basically in a modern MMO you start at point A and go to point B. The

designers designed areas and monsters for you to fight. Like a map in Ragnarok Online where it says from level 1 - 10

after that it's useless. Anyways on to the main point to make you understand while fixed XP and Loot a great force in

the "class mobility".

So whats this "class mobility" I keep talking about. Well it's the interactions of low level players with high level

players and replayability of content in low level areas. In Ragnarok Online as you know monsters have a fixed drop

rate. If you kill this thing a certain number of times this will drop. Now what this system enabled was making content

relevant to everyone at all levels.

A Pupa would drop a Guard [1] or a Pupa card. While being low drop numbers these two

items were used by medium/high tier players. Same with a lot of starting area monsters.

Fabre cards, Peco Egg Cards, Picky cards and so on, they were cheap alternatives or

actually required equipment for some high tier classes. This would lead to high level

characters farming in low level areas for items and cards. Low level players would get to

see the higher classes, they would see high level spells and could if wanted interact with

high level players and that would lead new players to this feeling of "I want be that one

day" or „I want play that class next“ plus it enabled an economy for new players if they

were smart, naturally this also lead to a lot of stealing and unfair prices but that was to m

also one of the charms of it... If you just started the game and found a Pupa card. You

could sell it depending on what server you were on for at least 100k or more. That was very valuable starting money

that enabled you to buy items, consumables, travel or simply having the security of money. This made interaction

between players a lot more exciting in the lower levels and it made content of low level areas replayable to higher

levels. If you farmed low level monsters you would still get the XP and the loot. You were still doing something

relevant. Even if your XP meter was moving along 0.01% per Pupa.

And let's not forget the fact that a fixed drop rate basically gave you a meaningful grocery list. You knew what items

you needed, you knew where to get them. You went out there and you knew what you had to do. It was a really

good time waster and the game knew how to make grind seem fun.

The combination of this fixed drop rate, fixed Base XP and fixed JobXP gave rise to content replayability and farming

different areas. Like I mentioned before Modern MMOs are all about hand holding while RO was an exploreative

sandbox type of game. So you had basically 4 types of farming spots. And then these was a mix of these depending

on the area.

*Good Base XP, Okay JobXP, No loot, No money making

*Good JobXP, Okay BaseXP, No loot, No money making

*Really good low drop change loot, no money making, okayish JobXP and BaseXP

*Tons of good money making items, okay JobXP and BaseXP but no good low drop chance loot.

This system also forced you to think. How fast am I killing these monsters whats my hourly XP average, what is my

gold average, how efficient is this area. The game had depth and a lot of things needed to be considered, if you were

in a high level area and you were a VIT character there was always the question of how much am I spending and how

much am I earning to level in this high level area compared to a more safer place. In modern MMOs this never comes

up because healing items are always highly limited to prevent "spam" and most monster combat is at most 5-10 vs 1

while in RO by draging creeps around you could easily end up in a 40 vs 1 situation if you weren't careful.

In a modern MMO the designers design 2~3 areas for your level range and later maybe just one. They hand hold you

with quests give you gear to progress while you kill monsters for irrelevant quest aka "Bring me 5 Wolf Hairs and you

get these boots" and then the funny thing is only every 3rd wolf drops "wolf hair". But what this system does it is it

eliminates the class mobility seen in RO. Content becomes irrelevant and obsolete as you complete it because even if

you haven't completed that one boots quest you know that in the next area you will find another one just like that.

This leads to a lack of replayability at high levels and makes high level characters never want go to the starting areas

ever again.

What RO did was tell you: "Hey NPCs sell basic gear, want better gear HUNT FOR IT. Where? Heres the map and what

drops what." You were encouraged to go out to the wilderness and hunt and survive. And after your adventure was

complete your gear while not visible would show were you have been. Kind of like Monster Hunter really. Now

naturally this system is more grind prone and it also user unfriendly if these is no interface in game to tell you what

drops what. Ro solved this by having websites and you could easily alt+tab to them to see things. So this area

became at first was a huge mountain to climb but after a while the community developed to fix things and then later

an actual map ingame was made.

So basically the combination of NPCs selling okayish items but no where near the droped ones, the fact that fixed

loot and XP gave you things to hunt and the fact that even if you came home with nothing you still maybe got money

and you could buy the thing you wanted on the market. All this lead to more communication betwen players, more

replayability and more incentive to make grind actually fun. Honestly to this day RO is the only game where I can just

go into the wild and grind. I don't care about quests or anything and it's still damn fun!

Market

Now this is a low point for

Ragnarok online and it's

mostly because the game was

made such a long time ago. As you probably know Ragnarok Online had a dedicated class just for well marketing.

They had a great idea together with it and thats the DC/OC system where you could sell loot for more and buy NPC

items for less. If you wanted to play and make money effectively a merchant at least with OC/DC maxed was a

mandatory thing. While a very interesting class to consider and it's advanced classes the blacksmith and alchemist

are fun and I'm nostalgic we're losing them in Tree of Savior I'm also kind of glad because this system was in place for

the sole reason of technical limitations of the time. Now on the real market. Anyone that played Ragnarok online

knows what a horrible market system it had. First at in the beginning you had to basically leave your PC on with the

merchant to sell things while you weren't there. Then the fact that each shop can only contain a certain number of

items. Then the fact that items had weights so you actually had to have that too to sell them. Then the fact that

there was no search system. Then the fact that there was multiple markets around the server. Then the fact that you

had to click and visit each one individually and that could take around like from 2~20 minutes to do. Basically RO had

a horrible outdated market system and I know we'll get a normal auction house in Tree of Savior. Thank god for that

too. I mean look at that picture.

But still this was one of the charms of RO and it's probably nostalgia speaking here. It's interesting to note that a lot

of korean MMOs suffered from this too. Maple story as an example but there was a lot more.

Skill and Stat System

In order to explain about the skill and stat system I need to explain a bit for about the classes.

Skill system in Ragnarok online was based on Classes and JobXP. What made it unique compared to a lot of other

MMOs out there is you started as blank slate. A novice that had limitless potential. You could grow into whatever

you wanted. As a novice you couldn't even sit down before you had leveled a few job levels. You were literally new

to the game. The game told you : "Hey! Look at the skills you get when you level up and you'll see what things you

can do ingame". Sit to regenerate more SP/HP, use emotions to communicate, make chat rooms, party up with

people and use storage.

It's a very nice non hand-holding way of introducing people to the basic functions of the game. People aren't stupid

but most new games think that people are indeed stupid and they tell you hey USE WASD to move or left click to

move. I as a 13 year old kid sat down and right away I got it click on the ground to move, click on monsters to attack,

right click to rotate the camera. Like I said people aren't stupid and Ragnarok respected that.

As you know there were 6 starting classes in Ragnarok :

Swordsman, Mage, Archer, Merchant, Thief, Acolyte

Each of then in turn could turn into 2 more classes and then they continued to evolve and specialize. The first classes

were basically extensions of the first basic class. Mage turns into a Wizard gets more awesome spells. Easy to

understand right? Now what made RO so unique was the second set of classes that changed your play style basically

flipping it a 180°. Things like The Sage, a class thats based on a mage that purely supports his team mates with really

interesting game changing spells( a class that evolves from a purely magic DPS starting class). Making your allies

weapons change element, making certain elements in an AOE stronger, making a field of water where special Water

Only spells could be cast such as the highly damaging Water Ball. Basically all the 2nd classes somewhat deviated

from the first obvious class they were made from. Acolyte->Priest make sense bigger heals and such but when you

turn into a Monk you suddenly become the class that deals the most single target damage in the game, and thats a

class made from a poor supporting Acolyte! The classes were really inventive and creative and offered tons of

customization.

Stats

Now that I explained the class system, time to speak about the stats. Stats in Ragnarok Online where one of the

biggest customization options available to you. While your class defined who you where and what you basically did

the stats expanded upon that and enabled you to build different kinds of builds in conjunction to your skills. Todays

modern day MMOs usually auto-stat you hand-holding you so you can’t make any mistakes but you also don’t have

any customization. In Ragnarok Online this was different. The game did tell you as a mage you needed Intelligence

and Dexterity and some Vitality based on your gear and hints in the flavor text but you were free to do whatever you

wanted. There was a freedom not seen in todays modern MMOs. Want to build a Wizard that goes out there and

attacks people with his staff fast? No problem level strength and agility and you’re on your way to becoming a pretty

unique wizard! The same was the case for most classes. In fact some of the second classes gave you just that option.

You could build a battle sage and go around smacking people with your books if you so desire.

The stats were what made RO one of the things it was. The freedom of a sandbox where you could at first ruin your

character if you had no idea what you were doing or you could change it to play totally differently. Almost every class

in the game had at least 2-3 reliable builds some more useful then others but they were there. Priest could opt to go

DEX instead of VIT to become fast casting buff machines but at the expense of HP and Armor.

There was some really nice things to go with the stats in terms of bonuses you got. Agility characters had high

evasion but low HP and they played this game of is my agility high enough for this area to level in effectively. While

Vitality characters had bonus pure damage reduction that enabled them to get hit by lower level monsters for only 1

HP. It was these difference in play style that made ragnarok online feel different then your run of the mill MMO.

Where there usually was no high evasion characters, there was no very high crit rate characters, there was no glass

canons that could cast incredibly powerful spells in the blink of an eye. Stats are one of the major things I liked

about RO and I think most people too. Simply the freedom of a sandbox where you could explore and play in. Not

everyone wants to make the min/maxed ultimate killing machine. Some people wanted to experiment with different

play styles.

Now that I did mention min/max-ing it was both a positive and negative thing with RO. As I mentioned before classes

usually had about 2-3 builds you could build. But you had to stick to what was the best. You knew Apple of Archer

gave you +3 DEX and you had to build you stats around that. The fixed drop rate meant that you had a grocery list of

things to get. Things that will fit into your build and make you do as much damage as you possibly could deal. This

system was prone to quite some change with patches because in the early days of Rangarok there was no stats or

skill resetting so if some new headgear with +5 DEX came out that was 2 points that could have been put else where

and when this happens over a span of multiple items it could become a problem.

So while the stat system was not perfect it enabled people to build things like Battle Priests, Battle Sages, Luck based

Crit Assassins and Two Handed Knights or VIT based Spear Knights and so on just listing all the possibilities would

take half a page.

Like I mentioned before modern MMOs don’t simply do this. They auto stat you giving you stats based on what class

you were. Others give you technically the option to change your stats with gear but it never really gives you the

freedom and the focus RO stats do. In the next paragraph I’ll also speak about Skills and why they ‘re both a limiting

force and a very strong customization option. But do know this. Modern games really hate stat systems. From Tera,

Wildstar, Diablo 3, WoW and everyone else in between these stats became numbers that don’t really matter. In the

case of WoW they snowballed to massive plus +300 STR numbers that don’t really mean anything. Ragnarok at first

for years kept things simple. MAX stats with levels was 99 you could go above that with gear and some crazy things

would happen after you went above 100 such as instant casting as mages and such things. What I’m trying to say

here is RO kept adding classes and content yet it didn’t scale up the levels like WOW does. Every expansion literally

eliminating all the previous content and saying THIS IS THE NEW CONTENT YOU NEED TO PLAY NOW THE OLD

CONTENT IS OBSOLETE. This stands in stark contrast with Ragnarok onlines system where new updates and

expansion had new items changed the game but the changed didn’t make you obsolete and that one item you

grinded for for 5 days didn’t suddenly become useless it simply became a little less effective. This system was pretty

much fixed with stat and skill resets that enabled people to changed their builds after new items came out. Now

things did change for RO renewal came out but let’s look at how Ragnarok introduce a whole new breed of classes

improving on the old ones without changing the game in any significant way to make content obsolete.

Transcendent Second Classes came and introduced tons of new content, new areas, new bosess it was a full blown

expansion to the game. Yet one thing didn’t change. The max level was 99. These new classes had new skills had new

gear. It enabled a whole different play style that enabled the game to be tons more challenging yet it didn’t raise the

level cap to do so. The new monsters and areas needed the new skills and the new gear to be combated and so after

a good 5 or 6 years the good old Poring was still there was the starting monsters. And the Fabre with it’s card was

still there as relevant as ever with the only +1 VIT card that went into your weapon and the only was for any class to

get a weapon that had +4 VIT on it. Content didn’t become obsolete like on WoW it expanded on itself.

Skills

Now as you know skills point in Ragnarok Online were

limited. You had a certain number of skill points and you

got them by leveling your JobXP. Some monsters have

better XP then others and that meant you had to decide

what you wanted to do first. Get money, get base XP or

get job XP. A lot of people wanted to get out of their poor

and limited first classes when they saw all the big high tier

people running around so they jumped on the JobXP ship.

So after you were a level 9 job novice you could advance

to one of the basic 6 classes. But then after you were one

of the basic six classes and you got to know your class and

explored a bit you naturally wanted to jump ship to your

2-1 and 2-2 classes. Now that’s were some interesting

decision making came in. In Ragnarok online you have an

option. Do you want to go right away and become a 2nd

class at job level 40 or do you want to wait till job level 50

and potentially bring a whole 9 skill points so basically one

maxed skill into the second class. For some classes such as

an acolyte 50 was basically mandatory. But for some

classes it was okay to go with 40. It really depended on

how you wanted to play. Can you take the grind for

another good 10-15 base levels while you go from level 40

to level 50 job level? Some classes had it easy such as

acolytes that were always in demand and did the same

jobs as priest but in a more slowly because of the mana

restrains. Other classes had to go out and hunt monsters

and stand up to the challenge with the limited skills of a

first class.

Now as I said there was decision making involved. Each class had a big skill tree such as the one a few pages above

the Mage/Sage skill tree. There was no way your skill points could cover all the skills. So you had to decide what to

level up and what to leave alone. There was numerous builds depending on the play style of the character. And as

such it stands in contrast again to the new MMOs found today. WoW and it’s countless clones have you buying skills

and basically at the end of it when you have all your skills you get ways to improve the said skills with some form of

improvement item or with equipment. Or you have a scenario like Diablo 3 where you basically get all the skills but

only a limited amount can be used at any time. To me all these new iterations on the classic skill tree system

promote causality and less replayability. Now at the beginning in RO to make a new build you have to make a new

character, this was a long process because the grind was heavy. A lot of people gave up. Later came resets and they

made things easier. But still they needed to be at least expensive late game or something to promote traditional

building. I liked that fact that a lot of effort needed to be expended to change builds. It made you unique you stood

out as that guy you used that spell. It became you signature spell it dictated where you farmed and what you did. If a

mage went for lightning spells he could go farm in Izlude dungeon if you went some other element you did

something else. Naturally a Vitality Spear Knight won’t farm the same spots as a Agility Two Handed sword knight.

Same with a luck based Crit Assassins. It promoted diversity in my opinion and made the game seem more

interesting and personal. As a teenage I always imagined myself as that cool Fire/Soul mage running around

throwing down Firewalls, Fireblots, Soul Stirkes and later Meteor Storms.

Now there are a few skills I’d like to mention because of how they were designed and how they impacted the game

both from a gameplay stand point but much more importantly from a social stand point. As I’ve already said the

game had an isometric view and was very clear on the graphical side. You could tell who was what. Targeting for the

most part was easy.

The Buffing /Healing Skills

Unlike most of todays MMOs Ragnarok Online had this HP/SP system

where HP and SP regenerated pretty slowly, this means if you’re broke

and have no friends be ready for a lot of down time. This meant for most

classes they had 3 options.

One was the money option – Buy potions, consumables

One was the build option – Go for FLEE builds or Kill things before they

get close

One was the social option – Party up with a support class.

Now no one likes downtime right? Well for all it’s bad sides it did promote one thing Social interaction. When you

were sitting there with no HP/SP what did you do? You tried to talk to the people around you because honestly there

was nothing else to do. And in RO this meant that low level characters would usually party by necessity and then

after the relationship was over maybe they’d remember each other’s names. They would make contact again and

they would party again. This synergy between classes meant that down time introduced social features into the

game. It forced you to party up with people because with them you’d progress faster but you’d also communicate.

Now the buffing healing spells all provided something for nothing. You could regenerate HP based on a few SP points

with the Heal Skill. You could buff your allies by literally the equivalent of 10-20 base levels of stat points for like 150

SP! This really kicked the party gear into action.

Now compare that to most modern thay buffs that so called buff classes provide. They heal they dispel they maybe

slow the enemy. The give you a 10% mana reduction but in most modern MMOs I never found these MAJOR buffs

like we have them in Ragnarok Online.

Bless, Agi Up provided you with a stunning +10 STR, DEX & INT and +12 AGI now taking into account that

STR/INT/DEX are damage skills that scale and get bonuses to damage every 10 levels this was a HUGE BUFF it

literally meant you could go on take on monsters that you would usually go farm 10 levels from your current level.

There was no penalty in Ragnarok Online for going for monsters stronger or weaker then you. They all gave static XP

and loot. Not to mention that AGI UP have you an incredible increases movement speed by 25% basically the

equivalent of a mount in game! (Max leveled stats was 99 so that’s a huge buff overall a buff that thanks to the

scaling with every 10 levels stays relevant from level 1 to level 99!)

The support classes in Ragnarok online were something to behold. The sage/priest could double your weapon

damage against a certain array of opponent by changing it’s element, the sage could buff you even more with a field

that gave you more damage if you had an elemental weapon or an elemental armor card this literally gave you up to

250% damage increase in some cases against certain enemies. Who wouldn’t want to party up with that kind of

improvement? Basically form the Bard that gave you more 180%XP, + 25% Maximum HP, 30% Faster Cast & 50%

Less Delay, +20% ASPD to the Priest that buffed and healed you and enabled you to survive monsters many levels

above your standard. The buffers in this game were crazy good and unlike other games there we just that. They

were poor at combat but in a party they became crazy good! The buffs were also very short lasting so it have the

buffing classes something to do while your “carry” went around and killed monsters

WARP - Now another skill that was exclusive to the acolyte class that had a huge social impact and a small

economic benefit for the support class. Before all the new MMOs had instanced dungeons that the party would

enter instantly together, before raids , before instance matchmaking there was the humble warp skill.

As a Acolyte you could level up the warp skill and you had the freedom to set up basically 1-3 Memo points where

you could instantly travel almost wherever in the world with the use of a blue gemstone. This enabled everyone to

travel there before the portal closed after you entered it last. It was a huge thing. You could from town get instantly

to your favorite farming or leveling spot. You could get your guild to a dungeon fast. You saved everyone time and

money. And it was done by players not by NPC it have power to the players. It gave the acolyte class the monopolies

on fast travel anywhere in the world where they have been. This promoted social interactions, this promoted

partying and it promoted class mobility because the higher tier people could mingle in towns with low tier people

and still get to their farming spots fast. It was an ingenious idea that allowed mobility and some moneymaking for

the priests that are usually pretty poor because of their limited farming abilities.

Now naturally there is a lot more skills I probably skipped that could have had an impact but this one skill I

considered a big thing in the overall social interaction and gameplay elements.

COSMETICS – HATS HATS HATS

Since Ragnarok Online was sprite based game it was really hard to change the outfit based on the armor you have.

There was quite a great number of classes too, so editing the sprites would have been very costly and probably not

very productive endeavor. So what did the developers do? They used headgear as a major cosmetics point. Ragnarok

online was unique in the fact that it had so many cosmetics that looked so unique and at the same time didn’t

obscure your class. It was still clear who you were. But it was also clear what cosmetic you had on.

They also became status symbols. If you saw someone wearing a Bao Bao you knew this guy had 50 heroic emblems.

Something that was only dropped by 2 bosses in the game! So that means he killed them at least quite a few times

but not only did he kill them so many times he also convinced the people to give him the emblems so perhaps he

was really rich? The point is there was a ton of cosmetics in Ragnarok and they served a great purpose and were

popular among everyone.

My biggest suggestion and probably the only thing I can really suggest to the Tree of Savior developers is this. Follow

the VALVE example. Look at what they did to TF2 and Dota 2. You could make your game available to everyone with

a free to play model yet still get tons of money from only cosmetic items. Dota 2 has a whole 0% of gameplay

changing elements for sale. Crowd source your headgears, perhaps let them also design the weapons and shields.

I’m sure people would pay money to insert a gem or something into a Shield or Weapon to make it look different.

You have one of the two most creative and artistic nations in the world at your disposal. Korea and Japan. Just look

at the thing people do on Pixiv or the incredibly detailed and colorful Naver webmanhwa. Imagine if these great

artist were to design something in your game for a % share of the cosmetics sales? People on private servers

designed cosmetics by themselves. Imagine what could have been done by professional artists!

Emotions

Now another choice made by the developers because the game was sprite based. How to you express and

communicate quickly? By using emotions, but typing them in chat was kind of hard to do fast and the chat emotions

can sometimes fail at conveying the feeling they should express. So the developers opted for a great design choice

the Ragnarok style emotions. A simple little speech bubble above your character that displayed a face of some text

to convey what you really wanted to say.

Now in todays new MMOs they always use these 3D animated

emotions. These are not meant for combat, they’re not meant to

actually be useful in my opinion. They are there for fun and

supposed social interaction. But what they really fail at it and so

far I’ve been disappointed with every 3D emotions system made.

If you’re in combat things are too messy with tons of effects and

general stuff going on you will never see someone use emotions

in these 3D MMOs in combat. Like I said earlier these kind of

emotions are intended for a close look at your character where

you can see a clear face. These kind of emotions work in games

like The Sims or if you’re making some movie about your game

where you can zoom in on the face. But in general use they FAIL

MISERABLY. This is where RO emotions were really awesome.

They conveyed your feeling, your needs and emotions with cute

emoticons. All that at the press of two buttons together. This

could be done while farming, leveling in PVP or in WoE.

They hands down beat every other MMO communication system. And I’m really happy to see them back in ToS! Not

only back by improved and an amazingly improved chat system! Where you see the other persons avatar with gear!

The World Map, Towns and Dungeons