There’s just something about the cuteness factor of Ragnarok that made me want to come back. It was probably about 10 years ago that I first played the original Ragnarok Online, my first experience with an MMO.

A super-deformed sprite of the original Raganarok Online, fighting the same creature type pictured in the background of the RO2 screenshot above.

I’ve gone back and played the original game many times through the years, and even picked up the game for Nintendo DS a couple years back, but never really got back into it after having experienced the updated graphics and gameplay of World of Warcraft.

But now, the long-awaited and once-scrapped sequel is finally in open beta, and I was keen to get back into the game. But just as I was about to download the client, an unexpected announcement from the game administrators seemed to thwart my attempts:

“…It’s with our deepest apologies that we announce we will not be able to provide the RO2 game service to players outside of our optimized countries – Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam – due to our license agreement with the game’s developer, Gravity Co., Ltd.” — RO2 Administrator, AsiaSoft (source)

This announcement sent huge shockwaves throughout the RO2 community. Many players on the official forums have expressed disappointment and even anger, saying that they feel like they’ve been strung along for years, only to be told at the last second that they wouldn’t be allowed to play the game. But we also have not yet heard any clarification on the topic from the admins — is this a temporary thing? Or maybe just for the beta period? Will the full game eventually be released worldwide? I’d assume yes, but like I said, we’ve not heard that officially.

Regardless, I suppose the game servers have only intermittently received the message that only players in certain areas should be allowed access — I and many others located outside of those areas have still been able to sign up, download and patch the client, and play the game since after that announcement was made. I’m unsure whether that will continue, but I’m happy that I can at least review and share a few screenshots from what I’ve seen so far.

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Sega decided to give LoreHound a taste of its own medicine in the most recent beta test for Phantasy Star Online 2. The latest round focuses on story elements in the sci-fi hack-n-slash MMORPG, allowing players to rub shoulders with the main NPCs of the first four chapters.

Our Japanese remains rusty, so information on the newly unveiled story elements is…elusive. That being said, expect an update to this post once a credible translation is located.

In other, likely more exciting, news Sega recently announced that Phantasy Star Online 2 will be heading to its open beta phase June 21. That’s just a few days away. To guarantee an invite players are required to sign up on the Japanese PSO2 page. This can be quite difficult, but one of our readers dug up a guide that’s still relevant. If you’re starving for a scifi MMOG like this gamer, then be sure to sign up and I’ll see you this weekend.

Hit the jump for access to the latest batch of screenshots from the latest closed beta session.

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Last week I finally hit the level cap in Star Wars: The Old Republic, but didn’t have a chance to get to Illum until this weekend and holy crap does it suck.  Now if you’re already level 50 and have traveled to Illum, you probably already know what I’m about to say, but if you’re not, seriously take you time leveling, you don’t want to be on Illum.

To start, Illum the “PvP planet” isn’t even dedicated to PvP, half of it is PvE, which blew me away when I got there and I had to spend the next few hours completing more story missions. Yay!? =\

When I finished off those missions I finally made it to the other side of the planet where I was greeted with on-screen notification messages of players who were near certain control points. It seemed like there were a lot of notifications coming up, so I started to get excited that I was in for some good PvP action, however as I neared my first control point, I saw no one. I proceed to another point, controlled by the Republic (Im Empire) and again saw no one, so I figured I’d try to take it over.

To take over a control point, you have to destroy the enemy vehicles in the area, which by the way don’t attack you so after about a min, by myself, I took over the point. I though, ok, that was boring, what next? Finally a Republic player found me as I was leaving the control point and decisively thrashed me.  While I don’t like dying, at least it was something.

I continued to travel around from control point to control point for about 30 mins, seeing a few players here and there and getting my ass kicked a few more times until I finally found where everyone was. It seems about 100 players were lined up standing infront of a narrow bridge staring at each other. I hung out for about an hour getting some kills and valor points, however the lag was too much and I finally logged out in frustration.

Visting Illum has now fully convinced me no one working at BioWare has every played a PvP MMORPG. By far SWTOR has the worst PvP system I’ve every played and makes games like WoW look like the grand-master of PvP.

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Last week BioWare released a video of Game Director James Ohlen talking about some upcoming changes to Star Wars: The Old Republic, one of which was the Legacy System.

Up until now, we knew that the the Legacy system would create a sort of family tree for your main and alt characters and they would gain some sort of benefits. I for one assumed the benefits would be non-combat such as cosmetic gear, titles, mounts or something along those lines, however in the video James clearly states that all characters will gain new abilities and powers.

Being someone that has never played an alt character and who doesn’t plan to, this Legacy System completely gimps players who choose to stick with a single character. The Legacy System almost forces players to start over with an alt in order to remain competitive with other players.

Since SWTOR is all about story and is the game’s main focus, it’s no wonder BioWare would put in place a system that puts a huge incentive for players to start over. However for those of us who are not alt-players, this system makes it pointless to continue playing as we would do so with a permanently gimped character.

What BioWare is trying to do is add replay value to a genre that quite frankly doesn’t need it. Incentivising players to start over should be the last thing any MMORPG should do as the game itself should be engaging enough for players to continue logging in even after completely the story. However when you create a game that has the same old game mechanics and endgame as every MMORPG of the last decade, getting players to start-over is probably the only way to keep your subscribers.