image grab from : http://fiel-kun.blogspot.com/2013/04/childhood-treasures-memories.html
Before online games became a massive hit, I used to play the usual LAN games like counter-strike, battle realms, starcraft, warcraft III (before someone made the DotA map. For those who don’t know or being simply stupid, DotA is only a warcraft III modded MAP! ) and Diablo 2. For me it was a different realm, It’s fun playing with friends and going to other computer shops to play with different people, making friends and enemies as well. I thought that’s it, something much bigger is on the way and will flip the Philippine gamers’ life 360 degrees and making the gaming world more vast and a lot more enjoyable. That’s when LEVEL UP! introduced Philippine Ragnarok Online.
Yeah, before I became a citizen of the Continent of Legend (MU Philippines), I was a citizen of Midgar, native of Prontera (Priest) in Chaos Server and a native of Payon (Hunter) in Loki Server. I have no guild, no group to belong helping other players and trash talking with some of them back in the day.
I learned about the game mid of 2003,My sister told me to play it but at first I was uninterested because I was preoccupied playing Final Fantasy X in Playstation 2 back then. After I re-entered college again (yes, I’ve been a very bad student in college) in 2004, my classmates are playing pRO, and that’s where it piqued my interest, and sign up for an account.
Correct me if I’m wrong with this, back then, there was a free game time when you first sign up and logged in, (a day or a week) so you have a lot of time leveling up before you buy top-up cards which by the way is too expensive for students like me (since I lived near our school, I don’t have a lot of extra money to buy top-up cards ) the cheapest back then was the 50 pesos card and It will take me 3 days just to earn that money and that only last for 8 hours of game time.
That’s the reason why I signed up for MU Online Philippines which has cheaper game time than pRO game time. hahaha!
Oh well, going back to the topic, it was fun, there were lots of first times for me in this game. my first online game, first online account, first online game to be installed in our now-dead pentium 1 PC, first time playing an online game with ISP Bonanza during nights (because ISP Bonanza offers free internet after 12am before, damn.) and a whole lot of firsts I really don’t recall.
After graduating from the novice class, I choose acolyte (because of my classmates suggestion), because if your acolyte became a Priest, that’s where the money flows (like in real life, huh), in demand during parties, raiding GH (glast heim), raising dead players along the way for a fee, buffing for a fee, basically that character class is a money making machine. But it’s hard to become a priest, you have to deal with a lot of deaths before becoming one, and dying in pRO is a bad thing because the meter bar of your experience drops, It’s a mortal sin to die in that game.
Too much dying and an overcrowded server is too much to bear, so I transferred to Loki Server and became an archer, those days were the best, killing mobs in a distance without taking a single hit, and if you become a hunter, there’s the trusty falcon and it’s blitz beat that keeps on killing your prey. ah, the good old days!
But good things don’t last, but pRO lasted for 15 years. for those who still play pRO up to this very day, you’ll have the chance to migrate your account to iRO (International Ragnarok Online Server). Currently, LevelUp are talking to IRO handlers and they will announce the start of migration of the accounts. for more info about the migration you can check their website or check this article : http://www.levelupgames.ph/main/philippine-ragnarok-online-moves-to-a-new-home/
It’s been a good run for Philippine Ragnarok Online, I may not be as loyal as the other player to you, but I will treasure the good memories that I experience playing in your world.
ROK on!
