I'm back from the grave!

And I mean it, this time! Sort of? Kind of. In a different way.

I've been thinking about the blog and how much I love it. But it's hard to keep reviewing MMOs in the way I had been. Do I try old ones or ones that no one really plays or has heard of? Do I try out the pay to play ones? I've also been playing a lot of games that aren't MMOs; do those count?

And then I started feeling nostalgic. I wanted to play something that I enjoyed and something that I hadn't played in a long while. And no, it wasn't Fiesta. God help me, I will never play Fiesta again. Although I did look into it not terribly long ago and it still looked just as bland as when I first played it. I poked around my games lists and then I realized what I wanted to play: Ragnarok Online.

I tried to play iRO ("international Ragnarok Online") again, after many years of having not played it. I decided on Renewal mostly because it seemed like the system I wanted to play. (For those of you who may be scratching your head and asking "what the hell is Renewal?"-- Gravity, in an attempt to revamp the game, so to speak, and draw in more players, overhauled nearly everything, from drop rates to EXP mechanics, etc. It was met with... mixed results.)

Let me tell you. I really dislike iRO. The server is, first of all, overloaded with spam bots. I swear I tried to disable my chat window log because of the near constant "HEY CHECK OUT THIS SITE FOR RO CURRENCY" spam messages in towns. And speaking of towns, oh my god the population of vendors.

So for those who aren't familiar with the game, Ragnarok Online has -many- classes to choose from. And unlike other MMOs, you can actually sell items to other players as a sort of shop market stall with a skill called Vend. Mind you, only certain classes can do this-- the Merchant (and its higher classes) and the Super Novice. It's really neat because your character basically has this little bar that has a store message you can put in that pops up over your character's head, and you can set up a "vending" store to sell items or a "buying" store to buy items from other players. And that's all well and good until you get things like this.

And then suddenly, moving in the cities becomes nearly impossible, because you have to click to get where you want to go. I swear, trying to walk through the main city (or even the Eden Group headquarters) without clicking on someone's store was a nightmare. And then you get the spam bot spam on top of that.

Between that and an absurdly frustrating time with leveling, I gave up. Playing the game became irritating and frustrating and I swear I ragequit more  in this game trying to level up than I had in any other game. I barely had hit transcendent levels as a character.

But I still wanted to play Ragnarok Online. I loved the concepts and I loved the game itself, but I just could not go back to iRO. And then it hit me: private servers. They exist. Tons of them do. So I began researching. I tried out a few of the larger private servers. I investigated close to 20 of them. Eventually I decided to try out LeikaRO.

It was, at the time, one of the most updated, having content from Episode 15.1 (Fantasmagoria), as opposed to many private servers which were still in Episode 13 or 14. Even the official servers were on 14.3. (The Japanese and Korean servers are vastly more up-to-date than other servers. Last I heard, the updates were like, 2-3 years behind on iRO.) Leika also hybridized between Classic and Renewal server content and had made a lot of updates outside of just bringing in items, monsters, and maps from jRO and kRO. The staff claimed to have made a lot of "quality of life" updates, fixed many bugs that had been released on the official servers and left as is--something which I hadn't been aware of-- and had fixed a lot of grammar and general Engrish. It seemed to be worth a shot.

And I think I fell in love.

The rates seemed a little high for me at first, at 15x for Base and Job EXP. When I started playing, I thought I was leveling far too quickly-- I had barely completed the novice training area and was Job level 10 and I think Base level 15. But then I realized that the EXP leveling system used the system from the Classic servers, which meant that EXP requirements to get to the next level sort of increase exponentially, instead of linearly like you find in other MMOs. I was still leveling faster than in iRO but not so fast that it just felt like everything was too fast. I was still hunting monsters, still grinding a little, still doing quests and such.

What honestly sold me on this server was the quality of life changes. If you've read anything else on this blog, you know I play a full-support healer role. It's what I do. I tried that on iRO and leveling was painful at best. I found myself in dire need of other people in order to be able to level successfully, and even then  it was still painful. In retrospect, I should have leveled up with a more offensive role, but the game shouldn't force players to level up with a build they don't like in order to actually, y'know, play the game. But on Leika, I was easily able to play as a full-support Priest. It was glorious. Sure, I had moments where it was frustrating, maybe dying unexpectedly or something, but I didn't actually ragequit like I had so many times before in iRO.

The updates the staff made are smart. From what I've heard from other players, the updates made on LeikaRO make builds that were normally obsolete or wholly unusable on iRO actually playable. Skills are behaving as they were intended. Bugs were fixed. New content, on top of that, is being released steadily. Two megapatches, in fact, have been released recently, with the newest one coming out yesterday. And the list of fixes is impressive. And to top it off, this server is only roughly 8 months old. It blew my mind to think about the amount of work that has gone into this server in such a short amount of time.

If you liked Ragnarok Online and want to get back into the game, I urge you to play on this server. Even if you haven't played Ragnarok Online, but wanted to, I would really suggest you check out this server. You can check out the server's information and get more details here: http://leika-ro.net. I've become sort of addicted to it. It's everything, honestly, that the original game should have been. And don't even talk to me about Ragnarok Online 2. I'm trying to forget that that game even happened.

Review: Granado Espada (aka, Sword of the New World)

Well, I finally have decent internet! This is something I've been itching to do and, to be honest, was also something I was afraid to do, mostly because of expenses on my end. But I have better internet and such so my reviews are officially commencing! I imagine y'all are excited about this. I know I am, at any rate!

Some quick things before I actually get the review started. I've decided to work on some new artwork for the blog. I'm not sure if I want to redo my logo but I do plan to do some art for smilies and the like, so keep an eye out for that! I'm also trying out some "spoiler" style tags, so that the content of the reviews is short for those who want shortness, and if others want more detail, they can read as they please. I'm also trying out anchor tags, so you can click the headers of each section to jump to them automatically on the page, to make it easier for you guys. Let me know if you guys like these features or if there's anything else you'd like me to try out!

Without further ado, ON WITH THE REVIEW!

Review: Ragnarok Online 2

Hey all, Little Miss Squish here! Well, I finally have been able to play an MMO with relatively little headache from my internet, which seems to do what it wants to do, in terms of lag spikes. Some days I have great connection, other times I get small spikes of lag, conveniently in the middle of a dungeon boss fight, but that's beside the point! Right? Right. Steam recently launched Ragnarok Online 2 into its massive tome of games list and, naturally, I had to jump in.

borrowed from anjelsyndicate.org

I have a lot to say about this game, so let's get on with the review, then, shall we?

Review: Dungeon Rampage

Good god, it's been, like, forever since I've posted. I've actually been quite busy lately with life so my gaming and consequent reviewing hasn't been a top priority of mine.

I got, approximately a month ago, turtles! Three of them, actually, all super teeny. One map turtle, one yellow belly slider, and one painted turtle. I don't know how old they are, but I can assure you, they're all smaller than the palm of my hand. I named them Soldier, Spy, and Scout (from left to right in the picture) after the TF2 characters. They are all really adorable and tons of fun to watch!

 

Unfortunately, Soldier died last night due illness. He fought for two weeks but he wasn't eating and he was too small for the vet to give any medicines to (Yes, I did bring him in. He weighed a whopping 10 grams.) so we basically played a waiting game. We did all that we could for the little guy but, unfortunately, it just wasn't enough. I had really hoped he was starting to turn around since he had gained a lot of energy the past few days but sadly, he didn't. We buried him in the front yard. I'll eventually get a third turtle but I'm waiting out of respect for the little guy.

I've also been playing a lot of L4D2 and TF2 (it's actually consumed most of my evenings...) on top of some other work I've taken on the side. So I haven't been doing much in the way of MMOs. But I have been able to play some here and there. I played a little of Dungeon Rampage at the request of a reader (Thank you for the suggestion, by the way!) and I've been playing Ragnarok Online 2 since it became available on Steam. But I do have some thoughts on Dungeon Rampage so I decided that I probably should post a review on it at some point, because I'd been neglecting to do so for quite a while, now.

So, ON WITH THE REVIEW! :D

Review: Game of Thrones Ascent

Hey there, LMS here. I'll say this up front: this review doesn't follow my normal requirements for a review. It supposedly is an MMO (much like how Wartune or Call of Roma are) but I've yet to come across multiplayer elements. There are no healing classes or options to my knowledge. And I generally can't stand this game. I tried getting into it, I can assure you. Game of Thrones was something I'd been told I'd enjoy. I had every intention of getting into the series when it first came out but my brain decided to go off into outer space and next thing I know, I've forgotten about it and it's gained some sort of cult-following.

So watching me try to make decisions in this game, like which house to swear my fealty to, would probably be vastly entertaining for those that actually follow the damn thing. But for me, I kinda stared blankly at the screen and tried to make the best objective decisions I could. It was really, really hard because I had no idea what I was actually getting myself into. Which house should I swear to? Is there one that's generally good or evil? Are they all just sort of... there? Who the hell are these people, anyway? How does this or doesn't this affect my game? What the fuck am I actually doing?

I don't think I ever got the answers to those questions.

Review: Wartune

Hey guys, LMS here. First of all, I'm sooooooooo sorry for not posting in... what, friggin' four months? Good god. It's been sucky at home, my internet has been crapping out on me so much that I haven't been able to play much of MMOs except for when I visit my boyfriend, which is once every two weeks, for the weekend. Basically, I haven't been able to play MMOs much. I know, I know, it's not much of an excuse.

Also, I know I had said I was going to review Lineage 2 but, honestly.... It makes me cry. For some reason the NCSoft download client just kinda wants to repeatedly kick me in the face because downloading and installing the game hardly ever works for me. And, of course, when I was going to originally sit back and write the review for it, the friggin' game decided it wanted to throw out a download patch. I swear I nearly tore out my hair. Forget the game itself. That's bad in its own right. But trying to be able to PLAY the game was just as bad, if not worse. So, I kinda gave up on reviewing it because it literally gave me headaches when I thought about it.

BUT! There IS an MMO that I had been able to play, because it was browser-based and therefore lighter on my internet. I played it for several weeks, actually. I liked it at first, mostly because it was something new and shiny for browser games, at least in my experience. I then fell out of it because, frankly, I was getting bored. But I recently received an email from them, which was basically "come baaaaaaaaaaaack please! I have shiny things that you'll love! -dangles keys-" so I decided to give it a shot as I have been itching for something new to play that I could, in fact, play in my spare time.

That game? Wartune. Haven't heard of it? If you poke around on Facebook's games, I'm sure you've at least seen advertisements for it. It has gone under several different names but the "official" (I think?) name is Wartune. It's supposedly the, like, "up and coming" browser MMO. My quick summary: It's shiny and new on the outside, but it sucks on the inside. It has great potential, sure, but it falls flat on its face. Hard. Really hard. And here's why.

logo found on Google, with a URL that makes my eyes bleed when I look at it.

Free to Play versus Pay to Play

Also known as "Why I dislike most MMOs' gameplay"

(and the return of the meme faces)

Hey all, Little Miss Squish here. Now, before y'all freak out and such that I'd be posting two reviews within one week... I'm not. For those that have poked around old posts and such, every now and then I put aside the reviews to discuss MMOs in general, particularly relating to the healing classes ("uh, durrrr, LMS. That's obvious, you retard."), and all that good stuff. I'd been thinking about what to review next, whether I wanted to replay something I'd played before or play something new entirely. I'd poked around www.mmorpg.com (which you should totally also check out!) and found an article on free-to-play versus pay-to-play gaming, specifically, RIFT versus WoW. While the article itself isn't exactly about free-to-play games versus pay-to-play ones, it did make me think about why exactly I play free-to-play ones specifically and question why I tend to review those more than the pay-to-play ones.

Well, there are a few answers, most of them fairly straight-forward, honestly.

Review: Team Fortress 2

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here! Sorry for my lack of posting for.... god knows how long. The internet where I'm living right now has been ridiculously horrible and incredibly unstable so my actual MMO playing has been.... well, non-existent. That and my life has been taken up by a lot of other things lately. BUT, I was thinking about what to review next. I knew I hadn't posted in a while and I felt really badly for not doing so but I was like "I haven't been able to really -play- anything, let alone enough to review a new game on the blog!"

And then it hit me. There was one game that I'd played a lot, loved the healing class for it (enough to start to put together a costume of it!) and went back to it over and over again. It always plastered a huge grin to my face whenever I played it or even thought about it. And when my boyfriend suggested I reviewed it, I knew I had to.

Review: Age of Conan

First off, I apologize for not posting as often as I had been in the past or when I say that I will. I'm still kinda adjusting to new things in my life and I'm also working on making rather large changes in my life. Things like settling in with my new job, being in a long-distance relationship, working on buying a house and moving closer to my job... Things like that. It's taking up quite a bit of time out of my day and energy from me, so by the time I can sit down and hammer out reviews, I'm ready to fall asleep, most often. But, I've decided to sit down and write a review, since I owe you guys at least that much.

Also, on a side-note, I'm working on making and implementing a more standardized review layout/template, so don't be surprised if you see some things changing a bit over my next few reviews. I'm trying to find what looks best and what would work for y'all and myself. If you guys have any suggestions/comments/opinions, I'm glad to listen to them. 

Anyway... On with the review!

Review: Blade & Soul

Hey all, Little Miss here again. Well, it's official: I've graduated college! It's surreal to say the least. I don't honestly feel like I've graduated. But I digress; I'm sure that's not why you came here, is it? You're probably demanding me to get on with the review.

(Sorry, I couldn't help it. As soon as I said "get on with," this is the first thing my brain thought of. You can attempt to throw a brick at me if you like but... I wouldn't recommend it.)

Anyway, yes! The Blade & Soul Review. Without further ado...

Review: Call of Roma

Hi again guys, LMS here. I got a request to review Call of Roma, based on an advertisement that kept floating around a WoW RP server that I'm on. Specifically, it was this image:

Now, I know what you're probably thinking. "Holy crap, a Roman orgy! That sounds fantasti-- Wait what does this have to do with an MMO?" And then you're probably going to look at the screen slightly creepily and sketched out. And yes, I would have, too, if I were you. To be honest, I believe the review request was more for jokes but I figured, "Hey! Why not actually review it? Maaaaaybe it'll be interesting?" On a side note, I know I said I was going to review Fallen Earth, but the game refused to cooperate so I kinda had to give up. The environment wasn't rendering no matter what I did. So I kinda had to give up, sorry guys. Without further ado, here's my review of Call of Roma!

Somehow I Ended Up Playing WoW: Cataclysm

This is the story of how I lost my soul, otherwise known as "Somehow I Ended Up Playing WoW: Cataclysm." To make a long backstory short, I was waiting for TERA Online to come out for CBT and needed to play something in between that was new and entertaining as I was getting bored of the same old thing day after day. Since the server I play WotLK on just released Cata realms not too long ago, I decided to sell my soul and try my hand at Cataclysm. I had heard horror stories from enraged fans about how Blizzard destroyed X and Y classes, the talent system was completely changed, and this that and the other. But.. Surely it couldn't be that bad, could it? I mean, when I heard of Cataclysm's changes to Priests (my default class in most games), I looked into them and was rather excited. Not to mention I was curious about what environmental changes Blizzard had done to different zones now that Deathwing was prowling about. And, to be honest, I was really frickin' excited to see those underwater mounts and zones. That sounded really friggin' cool. (And shut up, I know I'm easily amused sometimes.)

Glimpse into TERA Online

Hey guys, LMS here. I FINALLY got into the Closed Beta Testing of TERA Online this past weekend. I was very happy to have the opportunity to play the game as I was really looking forward to the combat system the most. I only got to play for a few hours due to a tight work schedule this weekend, but my overall opinion is very positive of this game so far.

Review: ARGO Online

Hey guys, LMS here again. :D I don't really have anything exciting to say so I'll just cut to the chase and present my review of ARGO Online. :)

Review: Prius Online

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here! Hope you all had an awesome Thanksgiving holiday. I know I did. With the semester exams ending tonight, I figured I'd start to review the games I've been playing over the past month or so. I've been playing two games as of late, Prius Online and ARGO Online. I'll start with Prius since I played it first. So let's get started.

Some Minor Updates

Hey guys! :D I'm currently working on updating the WoW Healer Guide page to include Druid and Paladin healing and it should be finished by tonight. I'll be reviewing Iris Online, a fairly new game, this week, so look forward to that on Saturday! I like some of the ideas in the game but I'm not sure how well they're executed. It'll probably be a mixed love-hate review.

I was wondering... I've posted a few non-review things, such as guides or discussions. Do you feel that they're interesting or useful? Would you rather me just focus on the reviews? Basically, I want to know what y'all think! :D Feel free to let me know!

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or anything, feel free to comment on any of the posts or on the Facebook page, link to your right. :D

Review: FlyFF (Fly For Fun)

Hey all, Little Miss Squish here again. I've decided to post on Saturdays to give me more time to play the games each week and to give a better review. Hope you guys don't mind! :p Anyway, when trying to decide what to review this week, I thought about different games. I wasn't really drawn to anything in particular so I pulled out my list of MMOs that I've played and saw FlyFF on the list. I hadn't played it in a very long time and thought, "What the hell, I'll review it!" I don't know why I do that because every time I do, I usually end up hating the game that I say that about. And FlyFF was no exception.

Review: Tales of Pirates (2)

Hey guys, Little Miss Squish here. When I thought about what to review next for the blog, I had a LOT of choices. Frankly, too many. I wanted to do something that was familiar to me and that I could review easily. I pulled out my list of MMOs that I've played before and soon found myself staring at Tales of Pirates. I remembered loving it, since it was one of my first MMOs, and wondered why I had stopped playing it. I redownloaded the client, now Tales of Pirates 2, and logged in.

I quickly found out why I stopped playing. And by quickly, I mean within the first two minutes. It's THAT bad.

Review: Lord of the Rings Online

Hey everyone, LMS here! :D It's the start of Spring Break and I'm super excited! Not for the beach, or a vacation, or alcohol, but for two reasons: no classes and mega internet time, which means more gaming! And that's always fantastic!

Post-Open Beta RIFT Review

LMS here once again, this time with a post-beta RIFT review. I played for a few hours during the February 15th-20th Open Beta session (I wish I could have played more to really review the game but work got in the way... >_<) and I found myself LOVING this game and yet, at the same time, a little dissatisfied with it. I was able to take a few screenshots of the character selection and customization screens because they were interesting to note and unfortunately... I was too wrapped up in playing the game to get screenshots in-game, but I've supplemented with outside screenshots. I'll start from the beginning of the game and work through it in a similar format to the preview from last week.