Ragnarok II Killed and Reborn in Development

[vansau]

Ragnarok II Killed and Reborn in Development

After three years of beta testing, Ragnarok Online II is being rebuilt from the ground up.

Gamers are used to hearing about games being delayed so that developers can put an extra layer of polish on things, but you don't often hear about such a hold up because the polish is actually a complete revamping of the entire title. Word's come in that Gravity Interactive, the group behind hit MMOG Ragnarok Online, is scrapping the current version of Ragnarok Online II and is radically changing the project's direction.

Originally titled Ragnarok Online II: The Gate of the World, the game now bears the new subtitle Legend of the Second. This new version of the game will not only feature 3D graphics, but grown-up character designs, new races and a different leveling system than was used in the original MMOG.

Ragnarok Online II has been in development for quite some time, over three years at this point. The game's actually <a href=http://seekingalpha.com/article/196602-patience-is-key-for-gravity-investors>been in beta testing since May 2007, so it's especially surprising to hear about a development like this so late in the game. The new version is expected to launch in a closed beta in Asia towards the end of August. At the same time, it's also a bit encouraging to see a company do something so drastic in order to provide a better game experience.

There's a certain amount of irony to a game called Ragnarok being destroyed and then resurrected. Perhaps it should be renamed Höðr or Baldrfor following this development.

Source: Massively

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[Korten12]

hm.... I cant wait for this to come to the us.

 

[Rigs83]

Valve did this too with Half-Life.

 

[Jared]

Guess it seems nothing was as they wanted. Im glad to see they are wiling to go to the elength though to make a good experience!

 

[TsunamiWombat]

This is also exceptionally more unusual when you consider RO is one of those Korean RPG's that are made on the cheap to suck delicious money fluid out of people with Microtransactions.

Unless you play on a pirated server like 90% of westerners, tee hee.

Honestly though, what makes RO so unique is that it's...well, so unique. It's a Diablo style ACTION MMORPG, with little to no story or narrative, but swarms of brightly colored cute monsters from every sort of mythology, and steampunk underpinnings.

...[/youtube]
For those who've never seen it.

 

[Hurr Durr Derp]

The only good thing about the original Ragnarok Online was that it's free. I've had some fun playing it with a group of friends a long time ago, but that had nothing to do with the game itself and everything with the fact that I was playing with friends.

Hopefully the sequel will at least be more enjoyable.

 

[itsDario]

holy shit :O im a huge fan of Ragnarök ive given up on ro2 after not hearing about it forever

 

[Fensfield]

This is also exceptionally more unusual when you consider RO is one of those Korean RPG's that are made on the cheap to suck delicious money fluid out of people with Microtransactions.

Unless you play on a pirated server like 90% of westerners, tee hee.

The hell..? Ragnarok pre-dates micro-transactions by years, for goodness sake, and only took to using them in tentative measure, while remaining primarily subscription based, comparatively recently.. and defined half of the conventions 'those Korean RPG's are built upon. 90% of the games you're laying into (iffy though they often are) are in many ways copies of everything bad about what RO refined from the young genre with none of the good.

Anyway, self-admitted Ragnarok fanboy ranting aside, I'm glad to hear this. There was a lot of poor reaction to the things shown in Ragnarok II's closed beta. That said, Ragnarok Online was always possessed of a subtle undercurrent of being.. disturbing, almost like someone had been playing a lot of Silent Hill while designing a premise that was supposed to be cute. That's the only element of the franchise I'd get nasty over losing.

And I hope haters can remember other people have differing opinions to their own after reading this post, too, because I can just see it being mocked to all hell by those members members of the MMO-player crowd of the 'new-guard', Korean-hating, point-missing variety >.>

That's right, I loved Ragnarok Online, S4 League, Mabinogi and Talesweaver (Note: all Korean games that actually /tried/) and I'm damn-well proud of it.

 

[TsunamiWombat]

This is also exceptionally more unusual when you consider RO is one of those Korean RPG's that are made on the cheap to suck delicious money fluid out of people with Microtransactions.

Unless you play on a pirated server like 90% of westerners, tee hee.

The hell..? Ragnarok pre-dates micro-transactions for goodness sake, and only took to using them in tentative measure comparatively recently.. and defined half of the conventions 'those Korean RPG's are built upon. 90% of the games you're laying into are in many ways copies of everything bad about what RO refined from the young genre with none of the good.

Anyway, self-admitted Ragnarok fanboy ranting aside, I'm glad to hear this. There was a lot of poor reaction to Ragnarok II. That said, Ragnarok Online was always possessed of a subtle undercurrent of being.. disturbing, almost like someone had been playing a lot of Silent Hill while designing a premise that was supposed to be cute. I hope RO2 doesn't lose that.

And I hope haters can remember other people having differing opinions to their own after reading this post, too, because I can just see it being mocked to all hell by those members members of the MMO-player crowd of the 'new-guard', Korean-hating, point-missing variety >.>

That's right, I loved Ragnarok Online, S4 League, Mabinogi and Talesweaver and I'm damn-well proud of it.

Relax I liked RO too and still like it's non-turnbased uniqueness. My only problem with it was how boring it got after a while - the game is pure undistilled dungeon crawler. Anything outside the dungeon's is alot less refined.

It also has alot of different classes with flashy abilities, and, has some great music and nice level design.

Dear lord don't try looking for a narrative or a story to explain your actions though. All of that is Kolean to the max.

 

[Fensfield]

Relax I liked RO too and still like it's non-turnbased uniqueness. My only problem with it was how boring it got after a while - the game is pure undistilled dungeon crawler. Anything outside the dungeon's is alot less refined.

It also has alot of different classes with flashy abilities, and, has some great music and nice level design.

Dear lord don't try looking for a narrative or a story to explain your actions though. All of that is Kolean to the max.

Hm... okay you win this round XD

Still, I guess you're right on that latter point; but for me, that was a lucky coincidence - Ragnarok provides a remarkably nice canvas for roleplaying (it was where I really got into RP, in-fact), with it's vaguely defined setting and player roles, and intimidating enemies and locales. At least, it always seemed to for me.. and I got some really compelling roleplays out of it between dungeon crawls.

 

[Abedeus]

Hmm. Just finished playing RO (private server, obviously, because of 3rd class awesomeness). I'm glad to hear this, because RO 2's graphics themselves sucked hugely.

I hope they won't do it again...

 

[Johnnyallstar]

And I was hoping for a sequel to the old DOS game Ragnarok. Shows what I know.

 

[Vaccine]

Relax I liked RO too and still like it's non-turnbased uniqueness. My only problem with it was how boring it got after a while - the game is pure undistilled dungeon crawler. Anything outside the dungeon's is alot less refined.

It also has alot of different classes with flashy abilities, and, has some great music and nice level design.

Dear lord don't try looking for a narrative or a story to explain your actions though. All of that is Kolean to the max.

Eh, the 2.0 WoE scene is still highly competitive.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnWdCji3LIA

 

[Weaver]

I really love RO! I actually played the Korean beta for RO2 ... it was awful. I'm glad they're rebuilding it straight up.

 

[Guy32]

Here's the site if anyone wants. The site seemed kinda glitchy to me and tried to download some files :/ ... but regardless:

http://www.ragnarok2.co.kr

 

[Birdmad]

The korean beta had so many bugs... but I liked the characters a lot! *-* Everything was soooo girly! I was so excited about buying cute-girly armor!
Gameplay was messy and I disliked not having the possibility of being a cleric, but the game was cheerful and I liked that!
I wonder how this grown-up characters will look like! o.o
And I wonder if they'll release it in Brazil, 'cause there's no way I'm paying them dollars!

 

[phohouse]

I got hit by a ridiculous amount of nostalgia when I saw the words Ragnarok online.

 

[Rednog]

I'm curious as to how much they can/will actually change about RO2, I honestly think they should've just gone with a graphics update and tweaked the gameplay of the first RO and they would've been fine. RO2 was a completely different game and it was just shameful. I'm still amazed that it was in beta that long and was so bad. But in the end it really isn't that surprising considering gravity/whoever else has their hands in RO takes ages to bring anything new to the table.

 

[xyrafhoan]

I'm glad they threw out the old RO2. It was so generic, the graphics were bland, the gameplay was slow, and there was nothing to do even before you reached the endgame. The only thing good about the game was the music by Yoko Kanno... and Yoko Kanno returns to do the music for the new iteration of RO2, so I'm excited about that too. Now if only the Escapist would highligh that the original Ragnarok Online is getting a total system retooling for its 3rd classes this summer in international markets (Japan on July 5th, Brazil sometime this summer, US/international sometime this year). God knows Korea's only been fiddling with the damn thing for over a year and still hasn't been able to balance their own game.

Oh well, the best part about RO is how speedy the combat is. When I tried to play WoW, it was like crawling through mollases. I hope this RO reboot captures that feeling of speed and power that the first game represents.

PS: Still can't believe how many people can still play private servers in this day and age, even when iRO has a free server of its own, and doesn't nerf game mechanics out the wazoo without using the cash shop. Plus, the p2p server is bot-free. If the industry based all its piracy numbers off of RO exclusively, I can't even imagine how many alarm bells would be going off.

 

[HontooNoNeko]

Wow this makes me ecstatic I loved the original Ragnarok online it was my third MMO and by far my favorite. I've played WoW for five years but even so it never lived up to the joy I had with RO. I hope they can translate the cute unique style into 3d modeling its pretty much the only thing that put it above the rest in my opinion.