Hello PEAKD and HIVE community, how's everyone doing? After a few months of figuring out things and finishing some important projects, i'm finally back! And now I plan to stay 😅
My friend @polessins encouraged me to do this contest and talk about my first online gaming experience, so here I am!
I've had a lot of amazing experiences with online games growing up, going through Diablo II, Warcraft III, runescape, Counter Strike and even some Tibia back in the days, but no game was more present and more meaningful in my life than Ragnarok Online, my first ever experience in a MMORPG genre and online game overall.
So what is Ragnarok Online?
For those out there who didn't get the chance to play it, Ragnarok Online is a MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game) created by Gravity Games that was first based on the work of Lee Myung-Jin, who designed the manga "Ragnarök" in 1998. The game was first released on Korea in 2002, however since I'm from Brazil, I only got to play in 2004. Back then, Ragnarok was the first MMORPG that got fully translated to portuguese and had it's own dedicated servers brought by the company Level Up Games, so everyone that liked the genre was playing it. We used to have A LOT of events in lan houses called "Ragna Parties" where the game staff would come and play with users, do some events, etc... And back then, Lan houses were the best thing ever! You could play all afternoon while socializing with your friends and whoever was there at the time. Needless to say that their strategy paid off and Ragnarok Online was the most played game in Brazil FOR A WHILE.
In Ragnarok Online, you could do basically everything that you wanted to, from the endless farming in dungeons looking for a specific item to finalize your build, to getting married to your friend and adopting a baby. You could do it all, atleast that was the feeling back then, inumerous possiblities and countless friends to play with. I remember that after school and the soccer practice, there was no other thing i'd rather do than play. every single day. For me, the social aspect of the game just blew my mind.
CLASSES
When you start playing the game, you begin as a Novice and your goal is to learn more about the game from the tutorial zone. After you're done with the tutorials, that's it: You're thrown into the game, without a warning or a clear path to follow, your only goal is to get stronger and change into a more powerful class.
After you graduate from Novice Class, you get to choose from 5 different classes: Swordsman, Merchant, Acolyte, Archer and Magician. This is the first big decision that you have to make, and the outcome will greatly affect the way you play the game. My first character was a Mage, as I often liked to roleplay as a Wizard of some sorts 😁. The best thing about him is that i didn't know a single thing to do, so I started leveling the strength attribute, thinking it would help, not knowing that the class actually needed me to level my intellligence atribute 😅 Needless to say, he didn't go very far (Still remember his name though, "Endow" you will never be forgotten).
After a fair share of grinding, you can then choose and advanced class to further specialize into. In the beginning of the game there were only 6 classes to choose from: Knight, Wizard, Hunter, Blacksmith, Assassin and Priest. After a while, the developers felt the need to further increase the number of specialized classes, so they added Crusader, Sage, Bard and Dancer (Male and Female), Alchemist, Rogue and Monk. Nowadays, there's even 3-1 and 3-2 classes! Not to mention the expanded classes, super novices and the rumours of 4-1 and 4-2. The game has trully evolved since then.
LEVELING
In Ragnarok Online there are 2 distinct exp bars, called the BASE EXP and the JOB EXP. The BASE EXP determines the overall level of your character and number of attribute points you can spend, while the JOB EXP determines the level of the profficiency of the class you're currently using, giving out 1 skill point each level. Whenever you max out the JOB EXP, usually at level 50, you can especialize into a different class.
WORLD
Ragnarok Online is trully a beautiful game, or atleast it was for the standards back then, with areas that differ a lot from eachother, making it a unique experience wherever you went. You could hunt Zombies in Payon Dungeon, or go to it's forest and bash some Spores in the head. You could go anywhere you wanted, but surviving there was another story.
FINAL THOUGHTS
Although it's considered an old game, Ragnarok Online still has a lot o players around the world, specially here in Brazil and in the Philippines, countries where the game really took off. Despite the official servers, there's A LOT of pirate servers, and although you can argue that it hurts the overall health of the game, it also gives them the option to customize Ragnarok to an entirely different experience, raising max levels, creating new monsters and items, events, etc... Every Ragnarok Server is unique in its own design and should be treated as a whole new experience.
Thank you for reading through all of that and reaching the end, hope i could bring something new to the community or atleast, some nostalgia 😄
See you guys soon!