I know that I mentioned this about Ragnarok Online 2, but I just wanted to clarify it.

https://massivelyop.com/2019/01/21/ragnarok-online-2-stumbles-into-maintenance-mode-as-gravity-officially-ends-development/

“Unfortunately, it is with deep regret that we must announce that Ragnarok Online 2 will not be receiving any further support,” the staff wrote on the game’s official forums. “Ragnarok Online 2 has struggled as of late, but in the last few years it was thankfully given new life thanks to outside funding. However, despite all the hard work, Ragnarok Online 2 did not meet expectations. This has regretfully resulted in the removal of the development team assigned to Ragnarok Online 2.”

I wanted to clarify that in case anyone reading this went, oh, well, you can still patch the game if you download it from Steam or something! (No, all of those are old patches if you are brand new to the game.)

The game will still be available for play. Nothing new will be added to it now or in the future though.

What actually made me report the private server that I have been mentioning in my last two entries was the fact that I had actually stumbled upon sensitive, secret information regarding two of the server’s GMs — it came out that two of the server GMs were using money that had been donated to the server to pay their rent, utilities, and effectively making “being GMs” their full-time jobs, all while failing to divulge that they were doing this with the money that was being donated, and that they wanted to keep this a secret (at least for as long as they could). Given how popular this server still was, and how unethical I knew this was, I made the decision to report the private server (because hosting a private server is not legal) to Gravity’s Korean branch, and I gave them actual proof of what the GMs were doing with the donation money. Apparently, within two weeks of me actually doing this, it came out that Gravity had issued this server a formal cease and desist letter, and they responded to this by shutting down the server. I observed from the sidelines, not saying a word. I suppose it would have been different if the GMs in question had said anything, anything at all, about what they had really been doing with the donation money, but they never once did this. It was apparently supposed to remain a secret for as long as they could prevent it from getting out. (And I don’t think it actually “came out” for years until someone off-handedly mentioned on a message board that yes, two of the GMs were actually using donation money to pay their rent and pay their bills, which I myself had known for years because I still knew people that played that server in… shall we say, positions of authority.)

Some time later, the server made an attempt at “coming back” with a base of operations in another country, apparently an attempt at circumventing the cease and desist with the actual server’s data being located in another country. However, it could never break a player base of 1,000 people when at one point in time between 3,000 and 4,000 people were logged on at any one time. After awhile, it faded back into obscurity. And to be honest, I did feel bad about reporting the server, because a lot of people did play it, and there were a lot of good players on it. But the corruption with that one server seemed like it would honestly never end, and it seemed like it would not stop getting worse. And since this involved people’s money in the form of donation in… extremely questionable ways, I felt that I had no choice but to report the server to Gravity so that it could get dealt with in an ethical way. I felt like my hands were tied in the matter. This wasn’t just some small screw-up, or even a series of small screw-ups, that was occurring. All of these were really large.

One of the first real “problems” with the server (at least that I knew of, because I knew some of the people that ran this server) was the fact that the GM that this server was named after was actually caught embezzling money that had been donated to the server and using it to finance his drug habit. Some people in the years that would come would turn this into a joke, but I can attest to the fact that this actually happened. In the days and weeks that would follow this being confirmed, control of the server would be wrest from this individual, and he would no longer have access to the money that was being donated to the server for what I can only describe as the most obvious reasons in the world. He would never again have access to the money that was being donated to the server. All of this happened when I was a teenager, but I knew enough of the people that were “at the top of this server” to confirm that this actually took place. And as the years went by, his interest in the server actually appeared to… wane, as did my own. I was just never comfortable with the actual knowledge that someone that had built what became one of the most popular “low-rates” private servers for Ragnarok Online had actually gotten away with making it so popular that so many people regularly donated to it that they were able to finance this individual’s drug habit, and that they actually did so for awhile. That’s the kind of “black market” stuff that I desperately want to stay out of, heh.

That wasn’t the only reason that I actually reported that server to Gravity, though.

At that point, that was water under the bridge. It almost became text meme with how often people who were into private servers would joke about it. “Oh, that’s the server where the GM used donation money on drugs”. Never mind the fact that it had a good player base and a lot of good players actually played there at some point in time (since it wasn’t their fault that the corruption started from, and stayed with, the top). To me, it was just the fact that a lot of corrupt things kept happening with that server, and that was what the server seemed to be the most known for. Some people still actually remember that server for the corruption.

If it had started and stopped with this, well, I honestly don’t think I would have reported it to Gravity.