Remember those plans to post twice on Tuesday, yeah, how about zero and Wednesday too, all plans totally went exactly how I wanted. Well at least I have some time today, so here we go, guess for the rest of the month I’ll need to post twice a day to catch up, especially since next week Wednesday and Thursday might be no posting. Now it’s time to talk about the topic that I’ve been asked multiple times last few days – Ragnarok Zero Global and why am I skipping it.
First of all what is ROZ – it’s a bit different from the usual slop that Ragnarok Online publisher tries to feed gamers to milk them with insane microtransactions. This time it’s not slop, it’s actual Ragnarok Online, good old MMORPG, PC version at that, even with subscription, premium product, not some mobile f2p “game”. Mix of different mechanics, bringing classic together with some of the new skills, similar model already exists on some Asian markets, even though there are different approaches in different regions. Not gonna repeat all the features and differences with classic that are mentioned on their website, just gonna mention that some mechanics I tried before on another server and it was nice.
Sounds good then, no? Well with some companies there’s always a catch or multiple and RO publisher Gravity is the one of those companies. You can find about them more in my rant post, but let’s say their monetization of both OG game and all the countless spinoffs is notoriously aggressive and involves p2w most of the time. So would they be satisfied with just subscription? Nope, at some point they were, but those are ancient times now, so there is a microtransaction shop in the game. Surely it’s just skins? Nope, there are items affecting gameplay, gear, consumables available. They did marketing push for this server back in a day using “Zero p2w” as the main punchline, but later they went back and removed all those advertisements. Guess they are trying to remove potential risks of someone suing them for false advertisement since server is for EU players too. Speaking of EU players – you won’t find Netherlands in the list of supported countries, maybe there are some serious reasons, but my guess is that they are being avoided due to their laws limiting predatory monetization. I think Belgium is also quite strict? Also not on the list.
Honestly, and I know that sounds bad, I would be fine with their regular greed, just to enjoy the hype of the new server with lots of people, but they did change the OG game too. Some good QoL stuff, some new content, sure, but also auto-hunt! Heard it’s not that bad and you won’t be able to automate some high level farm, but still I rather grind it myself, especially if rates aren’t too brutal. But then people won’t sub for long if rates aren’t brutal and you don’t need to hunt for bots, because everyone is a bot now!
Subreddit was and still is occupied with some bots or shills constantly trying to bring up the server and having no upvotes with lots of comments trying to downplay auto-hunt and microtransactions present. Same names constantly defending publisher and their decisions while there is minimal organic hype going even compared to one region server launch, while it’s global. Going to Twitch there are mostly people streaming other servers including private instead. I did get a couple of people asking me about playing, but none of them are actually playing themselves for different reasons, just were curious if I will stream it.
Regional limitations also create difficulties, because regions that have official server still up can’t play on Zero Global (mine included) and VPN for some reason doesn’t work compared to beta test. Well maybe you need to mess around some, but after trying a couple of different regions I just gave up, because I wasn’t interested enough to bother. Global btw.
Another big reason is that I have my Ragnarok Online itch being scratched intensively with SpiritVale recently and I’m not that excited to play RO in any format really currently.
Despite everything I mentioned if there would be no issues with regions I probably would still try it, even just to get more ammo for critique, but issues are there, so that’s a skip for me. Would I recommend trying it? Sadly since I haven’t played myself I can’t really give proper advice here, but look into negatives that I brought up, do some extra research and decide for yourself. I probably would if regions weren’t a problem and SpiritVale wasn’t a thing.