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Ragnarok Online: Amatsu Expansion |
Written by:
HitNRun
Wednesday, September 23, 2004 7:00 PM
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Amatsu: Yeah, so Ragnarok Online is pretty much done now.
That's the shortened version of the Amatsu review. Oh, sure, those crazy Koreans
at Gravity are still operating like they have a game that someone might want to play sometime, but
that's just because it's not worth the trouble to do things like advertise or defend your product when you're one of the only competent online developers for 4 thousand miles, not counting Japan.
Ragnarok has over 10 million subscribers from the Far East and Pacific countries. These people are so desperate for half-decent computer entertainment native to their region that millions of them will give up a sizable portion of their salary to play Ragnarok, no matter what kind of crazy shit Gravity comes up with.
One such crazy piece of shit is Amatsu. With Amatsu, Gravity goes through every zone in the game and eliminates most of the creatures (and Ragnarok has a large variety of them). Or Gravity inserts monsters like these so players can't cheat by exploring, playing, or enjoying themselves.
Actually, these changes were implemented to prevent botting. For those of you unfamiliar with the
unmitigable sloth of Korean game developers, "botting" refers to using a program that hacks a poorly-secured game so thoroughly that the computer can actually play (and excel at) the game for you. As detailed above, Gravity destroyed the variety of creatures in Ragnarok and inserted some impossible monsters so the bots would have a harder time playing the game.
Now that I've let that sink in for a minute, you're probably asking "Wait...aren't they screwing all their real players too?" And to that, I answer "Do I look like I develop games in Korea to you?"
And so whatever else Amatsu added, or didn't add, or maybe tried to add in a comical fashion, is irrelevant. This expansion set Ragnarok back into early-beta stages. The overseas audience is too stupid and enthralled to do anything about it (at least, that's what I assume considering there are millions of them and they've had Amatsu for months); the Western audience is too small and apathetic. With the former still struggling with the mysteries of capitalism and consumer power, and the latter likely to stop playing altogether, it looks like another game will probably be added to The World's "Hey! Remember..." list. More's the pity.
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