I felt I needed to get this off my chest and I know by responding to this topic, it is highly likely that because I am one of the more well known banned EU players this alternative warp portal account along with the forum account will be banned now as well. While I don't frequent these forums anymore and has actually been two years since I last played I felt that issues that were starting to occur two years ago are finally starting to come to a head and that iRO is starting to actually fall apart now. I would say from Decemeber 2017/January 2018 is when things really started going downhill.
But what I have to say has to be said, all of these population issues and iRO dying was going to occur sooner than later anyways but the speed at which it has happened is 100% to blame on the management of iRO from Gravity HQ. I am sure that the staff working at Warp portal were aware when they banned EU Players that in both Classic/Restart/Renewal many guilds were actually lead/funded by EU players, because for as meme as Warp portals judgements can be sometimes, I don't take them as fools. The segmentation of the player base was handled in in such a poor way that all European players just left the company which is a shame because other private/illegal whatever you want to call them servers have capitalised on this to take in players that were in the nicest of terms told to pack up and go away leaving years upon years of memories, progression and community behind.
A lot of the arguments here are also that WoE or lack of competition and cheaters in WoE is to blame for the server population, the lack of competition is actually an issue that goes back all the way back before renewal was a thing. But as time changed so did guilds and with a steady number of players the slow decline of WoE was going to happen sooner or later but through the purging of half a player base and then the excessive micro transactions where one week you can be bis(Best in slot) and the next if you don't buy X Crate and Refine item Y times WoE will not be even playable for yourself. The power creep from these items in the OCP was slow at first with an item here an item there but around December of 2017 is where the power creep really started to rear its ugly face in the fact that items started appearing in every OCP that if you did not have then WoE would be basically unplayable for you and would have little to no chance competing in PVM. There is a reason that a lot of people hold WoE to such a high standard and that is because in the earlier days of Ragnarok Online and even renewal there was a level of skill required of a good player. Yes there were MVP Cards and gods galore but while these were a bit power creepy you had a way to gear against it. Thinking back to the Thanatos Carded Xbows that would wipe guilds at first, until people started bringing elemental immunity to the arrows which was a cheap and effective method that both the most hardcore and casual player could enjoy in their own way. The current way that iRO is that it is either a one shot skill or not useful at all.
kRO has somewhat started to address these issues with the re balancing of level 185, however they do not have these OCP which a lot of them were designed based on jRO's System which couldn't be called Renewal as the system is different in numerous ways. I can understand from a company perspective that selling the OCP were keeping the lights on as subscriptions numbers dwindled and the player base slowly started moving on. But there are many ways to do this that doesn't alienate the community and playerbase as a whole. To continue this the communication between iRO and kRO and speed at which the content that iRO receives is quite abysmal, and with often limited access to tools to fix bugs/problems it often leads to items and abilities being broken for years with a vague hope that it will be fixed someday soon.
The idea of increasing advertisement would be a waste of time and money until the problems that iRO has currently are addressed and fixed any players that the advertisement may lure to the game would really quickly leave because what iRO has to offer to sadly in a lot of cases just sub optimal compared to other private/illegal servers and even some official servers with jRO being a lot more stable and actually sporting a decently sized English speaking population now. As much as the talk of these other servers is seen illegal here it has to be said that a player looking in from the outside does not have the same moral compass that iRO does. When a new or returning player is thinking of playing Ragnarok again, most will look towards iRO due to the stability of official servers and the feeling that your time is worth more than on illegals. But when a new/returning player looks towards iRO now all they often see are threads questioning why the game is dying and about all the mismanagement from Gravity. The game would die natrually on its own which is like with all titles but the decrease in profitability of iRO over the last two years is abnormal and stems from culling half a community, alienating the other half all while introducing basically mandatory micro transactions in order to play the game in a fun manner.
Similarly the original euRO met a similar fate which probably affected the amount of push back that Warp Portal had towards Gravity and the way that they were attempting to change the fundamentals of how iRO was and the splitting of a community. For those that aren't aware euRO used to be a pay to play model like how iRO used to be and around the time iRO changed to free to play, euRO was told to do the same. However, the staff behind euRO and the European publisher of the game decided to reject the f2p model as they believed it would hurt their players who didn't want f2p and sadly as a result Gravity instead of actually listening to the response of euRO at the time and coming to a compromise, decided to not renew the contract and shut them down for disagreeing and trying to come to agreement. So from this past event and the way that Gravity often treats/acts towards Warp Portal I understand that there must of been a lot of thought behind the culling of players and that by apposing this strongly they could possibly lose their license to publish the game in the Americas as well as losing jobs. However, what was seen during that time by most of the community was the passive rolling over of Warp Portal even though, it was very obvious it would cause the scales to completely tip and that it would lead to the slow and painful death of iRO.
Going forward, if Warp Portal wishes to survive comfortably for the next for years then there really needs to be some restructuring of the way that the two companies communicate as how it currently is is just painful to watch and for those that are still playing I am sure it is just as painful to experience. Fixing WoE isn't as easy as ban X or Change Y. The problem really comes from a lack of population and too many forts, gone are the days that you could have a guild or two per castle and this needs to be addressed. While it is unlikely that the players which have been removed forcibly from iRO will return when their trust has broken and have been made to feel because of the location of birth they are not worth the time to change the structure of data management within the company, changes should still be made in an attempt to bridge the divide that has been caused as the divide not only forced a large player base to leave but those that associated with them to as well. Actual new content, content outside of just here is a new OCP with a piece of game which was designed for another variation of renewal so it doesn't actually work/function as intended and will break the game for X amount of time until the next item is introduced which will power creep it even more. I do hope that Warp Portal changes as someone who enjoyed Ragnarok during their youth and as an explayer.
Kind Regards
Kieri
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