Fantasy Fulfilled: An Ode to Private RO Servers

There is hardly a gamer in this country who did not at the very least dip their toes into Philippine Ragnarok Online (pRO) at some point. Though Level Up! Games is shutting off its servers and having its players merged with the international servers, the tale of the Philippines’ indigenous Ragnarok is a 12-year epic.

Then again, why wouldn’t it be? From Glast Heim to Alberta, GRAVITY Co., Ltd.’s mashup of cutesy anime aesthetic and Norse mythology was an instant hit for the gamers of this country because it was the first exposure anyone ever had to the Massively Multiplayer Online phenomenon—essentially our first taste of collective fantasy fulfillment. And you never forget your first.

Even with a constant shared world, the appeal was that you could carve out a slice of it and make it your own. Every person that logged onto a pRO server was looking to etch their own tiny legacy in Midgard.

At some point, the drive to be masters of their own online destinies drove individuals to break away from the sanctioned playing grounds that Level Up! Games provided to create entire alternate realities in the form of private servers.

These player-run parallel universes were unregulated and there were no limitations when it came to bending the rules of the base game. While there were those who would use that freedom for more radical purposes, there was a vast majority who were just looking for an exciting new version of Ragnarok to play with.

To help paint a picture of what private servers meant to different gamers, I interviewed a few longtime players of private servers to give insight and share some of their fondest memories in the game.

(As per their request, the names of all the interviewees shall be withheld and replaced with their creative usernames)

Worlds of Infinite Wonder

Meet Ezkeraz, a Priest whose private server journeys transformed him into nature’s messiah. His forays into the private server realms began in 2008 as one part curiosity, one part nostalgia and a little bit of stress relief.

Ezkeraz: “It was easy to get into a private server. Heck, it was easy to make one. All you really needed was a cracked copy of the server files. Even when that became illegal, people would just emulate them. Aside from a strong PC, you didn’t need much.”

When asked to describe the main draws of entering a private server, the answer was simple:

Ezkeraz: “It’s free, man. Walang bayad. Walang ‘Mommy, pahingi po ng 100 pesos, please!’ The experience was good, the drop rates were better, and there was a lot of weird stuff that could happen.”

Aside from unlimited play time and the significantly mitigated daily grind of questing for meager experience gains and loot, Ezkeraz stressed that the spontaneity and oftentimes sheer randomness of private servers were delights that he reveled in.

Ezkeraz: “There were things some [private] servers had that you can’t find in the official servers. You could have cheap color customizations, modified items, even entirely new classes and skill trees. I even recall some things like role playing servers and a Star Wars themed server.”

Private servers not only allowed for a wider breadth of content, but also altered the base experience a player could have, effectively changing the very goals of the game in some extreme cases.

When asked to recount his fondest memory, Ezkeraz tells the tale of the day he started an online cult.

Ezkeraz: “I played a Priest and I noticed that the server I was in tweaked the skills a little. I was one of the first people in the server to reach that [job] level, and I found out I could summon a tree. That’s it, a tree.

I plopped one down in the middle of Prontera and boom, people flocked to me like I was some kind of street magician. Soon enough, people weren’t just asking me for heals, but also to give them trees. I remember thinking ‘Wow, did I inspire some hippie cult or something?’”

Brothers in Arms

While people like Ezkeraz looked for new experiences, there were those simply looking to enhance what the official servers could already give. Enter real life brothers SilverHaven and stealthslash. They ventured from server to server over the years, carving notches into their digital tally sticks from battles fought.

SilverHaven: “We spent a good two to three years on the real servers, but it was too much of a hassle. Aside from the money, dial-up internet added to the upkeep cost. It took a while for official servers to go free-to-play, too.”

Forming a tank and spank duo of Knight and Hunter, the brothers recounted why they first left the Level Up! herd for the outlands:

stealthslash: “We got back into it in college because it felt simple. It was a breath of fresh air. The population was small, you could do all the questing you wanted uninterrupted. There were useful things like stat resets, and we got to try new job classes earlier.”

No restrictions meant that private servers could update their game with leaked content straight out of Korea, where Ragnarok originated, before the official Philippine servers were sanctioned to release them. Sometimes it pays to be outside the law, apparently.

All this led to the brothers being unhindered in their quest to be the strongest fighters wherever they went, with few organized parties to challenge their might, and with all the latest toys at their disposal.

Their fondest moment involves a brotherly pact, and a stark reminder that no matter how far you try to stray from the negative aspects of online communities, they have a way of haunting you.

SilverHaven: “We have this yearly tradition. Even if we don’t play RO regularly, we’ll login to a server on Christmas day and kill a random boss.”

stealthslash: “Yeah, we’d just sneak upstairs while everyone opened their gifts. Remember that one time? Imagine this, we were grinding this boss for about an hour or so, just whittling down its HP right? I’m shooting and [SilverHaven] is tanking it up and then this guy just walks up at the last second. Bam, sawsaw, last hit.”

SilverHaven: “That *******. He ran away with everything, and at first we were like wow, that sucks. But we just waited for the boss to respawn and we killed it again!”

stealtslash: “Yeah, it’s a private server on Christmas day. Ain’t nobody gonna ruin our fun!”

Humble Beginnings

New experiences or the thrill of battle are not everyone’s cup of tea. Sometimes, a simple man’s only dream is to ply his trade in peace. Such is the story of kmuf, the honest blacksmith.

He left the official servers for much of the same reasons as Ezkeraz and the battling brothers, citing dial-up and prepaid card costs churning through his wallet, but he had an extra amount of distaste for the official Ragnarok experience.

kmuf: “I was just looking to start over, since I messed up my character on the official server. I was an Acolyte but I had no idea how the stats worked, so I just spread them evenly. Eventually, after people flaming… and saying I wasn’t building right, I struck out on my own.”

kmuf didn’t hesitate to elaborate on his distaste for the Philippine online community. An elite few would come together under guild banners and compete furiously in the War of Emperium, leaving those who desired a more casual approach in the dust. While he initially went to private servers for solace, he soon discovered that even private servers had their downsides.

kmuf: “I wanted less people, but sometimes the [server] population was too small. The War of Emperium essentially goes down the crapper. There’s a 1% that has a monopoly on in-game items, so they control the market. On top of that, the community was flippant because it was so easy to switch. People would come and go like that.”

Without the burden of needing to amass Agits for online bragging rights, and with the threat of negative aspects of player communities ever looming, kmuf made it a point to simply boil the game down and truly focus on the “private” aspect of the servers. Sticking with friends was the only option for him.

kmuf: “We would often try to find the emptiest servers and just [fool] around in there. We’d just do really pointless things like try to fight all the Alices, and it always ended up with something stupid, like one of us dying to dark earth or something.”

With kmuf’s pRO experience pared down to him and a few of his closest comrades with little to no external interaction, he was finally free to enjoy the game the way he wanted, devoid of distractions, big guilds and trolls.

But despite his need for solitude, his fondest memories were of the exact opposite.

kmuf: “The weird and I guess nice thing about private servers is you didn’t just get your usual ****y Filipino community. I got to meet a lot of foreigners over the years. It wasn’t all ‘Baps. Pa baps po.’ anymore. Some of them were really nice. I even added them on [Yahoo! Messenger] and became pretty good friends with them.”

Looking Towards the Future

The beauty in pRO was that no matter the impetus, be it nostalgia, tradition, competition, friendship or pure curiosity, there was always something that would interest a player. Private servers were an integral part of the collective RO experience in this country, and are definitely one of the main reasons why the game has held sway in the Philippines for a dozen years.

Needless to say, the future of RO in the Philippines is a little under question. Being subsumed into the international servers will definitely create a rift in the player base. Some may not be comfortable with the new economies, while others may have connectivity issues. The removal of pRO is tantamount to erasing the canon narrative of a story and leaving behind only fan fiction and speculation.

Perhaps this is the opportunity for the community to truly fulfill their online fantasies as far as RO is concerned. Without a stable base game to call our own, the RO players of this country could see a resurgence of private servers looking to fill the void left behind by the shutdown. It could even be that this lack of an official server will cause an arms race in private server quality and size in order for one to eventually be legitimized as the next flagship brand of purely pinoy RO.

One thing that’s for certain is that no matter what, somewhere out there is a unique brand of Midgard that is anyone’s sandbox—a blank canvas on which thousands upon thousands of fond online memories were painted, with enough room for countless more, if we will it to be so.

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