Ragnarok M: Eternal Love (ROM) is not a new game but it’s one I’ve been playing on-and-off. Since divorcing the love of my mobile gaming life a while ago, I decided to move on and focus my love on this game instead.
A major patch was recently added and it brought new classes, bosses, maps and more to the game. A new server was also added called Ragnarok M: Midnight Party to ease the congestion from the original server.
However, this made things worse and there were more lags and issues than ever before.
The issue was compounded when the company decided to hire Lisa from Blackpink for promotional activities.
Oh boy, that sparked the ire of some players who complained that the company used unnecessary funds for promotion rather than fixing the game’s flaws.
With that said, I’m still invested in the game as I’ve made friends from the game which made me more hesitant to drop it. This feels like déjà vu to me as this happened years ago too when I played Ragnarok Online.
The Origins Of ROM
As you might have guessed it, ROM is based on Ragnarok Online, a PC game from the 2000s.
If I’m recalling correctly, I played the game for about 8 years before stopping.
Accessing the game back then was not easy. I had to buy top-up cards valued at either RM5 (grants access to the game for a day) or RM18 (access to the game for a week).
As my family was not very well-to-do, I opted to play in private servers, as they were usually free and offered the players faster levelling up compared to official servers.
When I was scouring the internet for a private server, I stumbled into servers that were made for SEA players.
This meant I could find friends that shared the same time zone, and that made gameplay a little more enticing.
Gameplay Basics
The gameplay of ROM is quite simple. You kill monsters to gain levels, items and Zeny (in-game currency).
You can then use those items to craft better equipment to fight higher levelled monsters. Sounds like your run-of-the-mill MMORPG now, doesn’t it?
The game does introduce a mechanic that most games try to avoid called Combat Time (CT). CT prevents players from dedicating too much time to the game.
Every day, your characters are given 300 minutes of CT. With each mob killed, 10 seconds are deducted from the CT. Once CT is maxed, loot gained from monsters will be reduced.
This means players do not have to dedicate every waking moment to the game.
Along with the addition of Auto-fighting where you can just leave your character to fight the enemies automatically while you work, playing the game isn’t as time-consuming as it could be.
Back then in Ragnarok Online, players had to purchase illegal bots to automate the farming process. Otherwise, you’d have to spend hours upon hours on just hitting monsters manually.
Choices, choices, choices
Guilds are the main part of the game (to me) as they are one of the ways to connect with other players in the game.
During my first month of playing ROM, I decided to ignore guilds and play the game solo to see how far I could manage alone.
Of course, farming was no issue as I could just fight mobs in my level range. But I was powerless at tackling harder challenges or bosses.
So, I gave my ego a kick and started to look for guilds I could join. Since I was higher levelled compared to new players, I could take my pick.
Some guilds only spoke Thai, Malay and Tagalog. It was futile for me to sift through them on the game so I ventured into the subreddit and filtered the sub for English-speaking guilds.
One guild caught my eye—Creampie.
Not An Just An Innuendo
Creampie fulfilled my requirement for a guild, as it was an English-speaking guild that was looking for people to compete in Guild VS Guild (GvG) fights.
GvG is a mode where guilds fight for a castle that they can call home. As each guild can have up to 100 players, the fights are often hectic.
When I joined the guild, I was welcomed by their members and got to know them over time.
In the guild, there were strong members, and with their help, I was able to tackle the harder challenges that I previously couldn’t. As I grew stronger, so did the guild.
The members of the guild turned out to be players around my age. Some members were extremely dedicated to the game and made calculations on what the best equipment was and so on.
We also had members who played in a lax manner, adding value to the guild by being the comedians of the group.
The guild also has members from all around the world; we have players from the United States, France, Philippines, Australia and even Dubai.
Meeting Up
While the guild has members from all over the place, most of them are based in SEA. In Malaysia alone, there are at least 20 of us. So, naturally, we had a meet-up.
As an introvert, meeting up with people was not an easy task, let alone people that I met in games. This goes against everything our parents taught us when we were kids.
Thankfully, everyone was the same as their internet persona and we had a blast of a time, getting to know each other more on a personal level.
Having online friends has been my go-to social fuelling activity as I feel it’s less draining compared to socialising in real life.
Even though games usually don’t last very long, the friends you make along the way might make them worth playing.
I actually even stumbled into a friend whom I used to play Ragnarok Online with in the Creampie guild. Talk about a small world!
If you’ve been playing ROM but have yet to find joy, perhaps joining a guild would make the game a more pleasant experience for you.
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