First announced back in November 2004, Ragnarok Online 2 aimed to capitalize on the success of its acclaimed predecessor. Over 4 years, 3 Closed Beta's, 1 Open beta and a formidable marketing drive later, the game has instead performed a vanishing act, plunging into the depths of development hell.Is this the final curtain call - or can Korean based Developers 'Gravity' pull the rabbit out of the hat, yet?
Western gamers following RO2's progress would be forgiven for wondering whether the game has finished before it even got started. With the Open Beta caught in a seemingly perpetual time loop, and a wall of PR silence acting as Gravity's bulwark against the dubious times, things are looking bleak for the motionless MMO, the MMMO if you will.
One has to wonder just what is happening at Gravity HQ? I remember playing the Korean Open Beta in '08, and while it is an unwritten rule that MMO's are never finished - especially when first launched, the game world was a myriad of troubled landscapes, displaying all the hallmarks of an early closed beta.
Falling through the world, skills that did nothing, two playable races missing and classes that were literally useless, it was all pretty troubling stuff. All this, and yet Gravity's launch HQ was pushing forward, planning grand opening events, featuring music from the games soundtrack and acclaimed composer Yoko Kanno. Thankfully the soundtrack was a little more polished than the game was at this stage, so we werent treated to sympony de'la ear-gouge as we /noclip'd through the worlds (admittedly quite pretty) floor.
So what happened? Days turned to weeks, and it became increasingly apparent that a timely release was little more than a pipe dream.
That was then, no doubt the development has progressed, but by how much, lets look at what we have now.
Though sizeable chunks of the promised launch content is still awol (I hear a screenshot of one of the missing playable races - the Dimago - would make you quite a wealthy man), signs of life have been reported at Gravity HQ.
March 26th (2008) saw a large-scale update, complete with new dungeons, quests and a revamped User-Interface among other things. The last status update was put out back in January 2008 claiming that Gravity were aiming for a '08 release in the Philippines. Another missed deadline for a game with so much promise. (especially considering the success of its predecessor) It seems that RO2's execution up to this point has brought nothing but dissappointment and false hope, its a crying shame.
Despite its shortcomings, RO2 (beta) does have some great features welling up beneath its dusty surface. The animations and textures are superb - if you're into the anime style - and no MMO to date can compete with the incredibly detailed and varied emotes available - there's even a co-op emote that lets male characters have their head stroked by female characters while laying in their lap. A little creepy to some? maybe, but it is this finite attention to customisation and detail that wins people over. As it stands, the game - to me - is like a hollow malteser, aesthetically pleasing on the outside, but lacking in the honeycombed euphoria (content) on the inside.
The fact is - Gravity have already made a great game in RO1, and if they could bring RO2 up to that same standard, they would be poised to fill a gap in the Western market which is currently saturated with wannabe WoW's, there are many western gamers, myself included, who vastly prefer the eastern approach to gaming. This is a void RO2 might just be able to fill, if it could exploit the hooks that made RO1 one of the most succesful MMO's in the Eastern block.
Unfortunately, with no release date on the horizon for the East, let alone the rest of the world, the question is 'if?' rather than 'when?'
-Ari
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