LiA 70 - The Latest Fashion

[RollCasket]

http://www.lifeinaggro.com/Archives/lia20110916.png

I was waitin for Bear to add this one cause it was the newest but then he TOTALLY skipped it! In any case, I'm surprised it took this long for a Ragnarok Online comic, I had expected multiple by now!

I loved this one though, I think the timing was especially good and I totally busted up when Franken-poring showed up, lol. A dangerous fad though...now Porings of all types will be actively hunting humans! I can see it now...a Deviling wearing a skullcap of sorts of the top of someone's head (plus ears) who was wearing a Evil Wing Band...a Poring wearing someone's head that had a Poring hat...

[Bear]

You know, when we first started the comic, I was still pretty burned by Gravity and the whole experience left an unpleasant taste in my mouth.

I think the biggest burn that I remember having was being so passionate about the game, and pleading with the GMs to take action on the forums that would be fair or help the game and community. My topics were being completely shut down though, with them taking some well thought out posts that I had poured a lot of thought and soul into, only to see them lock and bury them in the archives. Nothing feels quite so insulting as being completely silenced when you have only the best intentions.

But then, how would they know that? Who was I? Just some guy...some faceless voice among many. Sure I was a guild leader, but that didn't mean anything to them. I can't say I really blame them because they get criticism and pleas all the time. It's not possible to act on everything and not everyone knows whats best.

In the end, it was the feeling of me feeling powerless that made me really want to see how far Pie and I could take LiA. I wanted to see if we could find a voice that would make a difference in games or even the industry at large. I think Pie and I have some great ideas, but I may be completely wrong. The only way I will know is if we try and work hard at developing a voice so we can be taken seriously - to have some weight to our opinions. That may never happen but I don't want to wonder "maybe we could have if we only tried". Having Gravity stifle my voice and feeling powerless were certainly influential to me.

So yeah, besides being burned by Gravity, I also felt like I wanted to show that Pie and I had a diverse taste in gaming and we weren't "just" RO players since we had basically lived and breathed RO for many years (with the guild and Pie's many RO fan art pieces).

[RollCasket]

Well I can understand that...feeling helpless and maybe a bit betrayed even. So yeah I guess I can see why you'd want nothing to do with RO for a while =P Stuff like that though there isn't really anything you could have done, it was probably long decided that the game was going to another company. A lot of things would have had to have been brought to their attention from a large group of people long in advance. Unfortunately as good as an idea(s) may be they mainly fall on deaf ears =/

Still, I'll always love the characters, jobs, headgears and style of RO...which is why I still collect art from it =P It's always nice seein new RO art, esp of Super Novices, since it's still pretty rare to see anything of them.

[Bear]

To the best of my knowledge, Gravity LLC still owns the rights and operates the game in North America. I don't really think that the Korean buyout of Gravity proper by GungHo made much of a difference in how the game operated as a lot of the decisions being made on how the game was run in America was done by Gravity LLC.

I will always be a fan of the game - what it offered and the potential it HAD. It just tore me up that the way it was managed by Gravity LLC had obliterated it. I don't think it was their GMs or CMs that were to blame for the catastrophe though, most likely everything that killed it was done by business people who had no idea how to monetize the game properly because they weren't in touch with their own community.

[RollCasket]

Well it's also hard to say what stuff they even had control over. I know some other games I play that originate out of Korea they have little control over a lot of it. It's especially hard since the korean version is always way ahead of ours as well. Usually stuff like what they charge for things and cash shop stuff is one of those things that they should have had control over. I think that there were a lot of other problems with RO though =P I did briefly mess with the new free version a bit, and I didn't even know where to go because mob spawns were so effed up, everywhere. Why were they so changed? To make it harder for bots, not that that ever did ANYTHING, which has always been a big issue. All it did was make it harder and more annoying to solo grind anywhere =P

This is sort of a very far aside, but one thing I really loved about League of Legends and possibly one of the biggest reasons it's so successful is that they actively communicate and listen with the community. It's always great when you can tell that a company really cares because the game reflects that.

Going back a bit, I've played on countless RO free servers over the years and almost all of them were great, cause it's really not that hard to make it enjoyable =P I just remember this one where I made this stupidly awesome insta cast super novice that destroyed people in pvp (storm gust and LoV cards bwa ha), unless I got ganged up on or they got the jump on me, cause a SN is still pretty frail, but usually I could teleport away before dying and heal =P