I seem to have been the reason that a particularly large private server for Ragnarok Online was issued a cease and desist order, which by the looks of things led to them actually shutting down years ago. Years and years ago, I actually went to the trouble of reporting them to Gravity (and at that, the Korean version) because of all of the corruption that had been… present on that particular server, we shall say. That server seemed to be plagued with corruption, and coupled with the popularity of that server, I felt like I felt the most prudent thing to do was to report them to Gravity. It wasn’t something that I felt particularly good about, as “tattling” has never been something that I have felt particularly good about, but I had become aware that donation money had been misused on more than one occasion and for more than one purpose (and when I say that, I say that in a broad sense). I just felt like that this would keep on, and keep on, if I did not do this.

Weeks after I made the report, the server itself actually appeared to shut down, which impressed me.

Based on what I could tell, it tried to “re-emerge” in another country, but it never attracted the somewhat massive number of players that it had at its peak, which was a somewhat impressive number of players to begin with, and it eventually closed for good at some point in time after that, which eased my conscience.

I don’t want to go into too much detail about the incidences that caused me to report it to Gravity to begin with, but I did have concrete proof of the… second incidences that caused me to feel it necessary to report it, and I did give proof of those incidences to Gravity, namely in the form of them being brought up in conversation by the individuals that they benefited. It didn’t make me feel good to make that report then, and it doesn’t make me feel good now. But it did come up in conversation when I was discussing the “prime” of private servers with some friends of mine who remembered how popular they used to be and was bringing up some of them in particular, namely one in particular that had… persisted for a number of years.

I suppose if there is one thing about me, there is my conscience when it comes to, well, this sort of thing.

One of the biggest appeals of the alchemist class in Gravity’s MMO Ragnarok Online was the homunculus, genetically altered pets of varying types that assisted you in battle. Through AI that Gravity allowed you to use, you could set the homunculus up to attack on its own without you having to manually tell it to attack whenever you wanted it to attack. This essentially gave alchemists a leveling partner, and at that, one that they could choose from — if they didn’t like the homunculus that came forth from their embryo, they could easily make another one. Until, of course, Gravity essentially nerfed the entire homunculus system by making it so that homunculus could no longer automatically attack on their own with AI, forcing those who still wanted to use homunculus to attack to manually make their homunculus attack on their own (or use skills on their own, for the purpose of this blog post being noted as “attacking on their own”) every single time. Returning to Ragnarok Online with Bub having been a proficient alchemist player in my own right, I find this problematic for no shortage of reasons. Not only does it weaken the alchemist class by far, effectively reducing them to “a swordsman without the skills” — as this has actually been said, and I believe it — but this handicaps disabled gamers who then have to input considerably more keystrokes if they wish to continue using their alchemist’s homunculus. Gravity’s alleged rationale behind this was that “too many alchemists” (which I don’t believe) were “using their alchemist’s homunculus to level while not actually being at the computer,” something that a lot of players will call AFKmisting… which can and will get you banned.

Anyone foolish enough to try to level up long-term AFKmisting needs to cop a well-deserved ban for that, quite frankly. First of all, prior to this (as when Gravity made it to where your homunculus could not auto-attack, they could not do this), homunculus needed to be fed at regular intervals. If they starved, they ran away. So anyone foolish enough to “set up camp”, even on a faraway map where they thought they could not (or “would not”) get caught, might run the risk of their homunculus starving to the point where they ran away, rendering this entire “bright idea” of theirs both pointless and fruitless. And secondly, homunculus only net their alchemist base experience, not job experience, which is generally more coveted. Thirdly… the whole ban thing. If you are well and truly caught AFKmisting, you will get banned. No questions there. It’s pointless.

For Gravity to stand up on a soapbox about this one thing and take away something that made having an alchemist character particularly great, I find perplexing if not mind-boggling. Not only is it not smart, but it will get you banned. Why handicap the alchemist character to such great severity? I still don’t understand it.