Ragnarok Online is one of the absolute favorite games of MeinMMO editor Benedict Grothaus and is associated with deep nostalgia (and therefore a regular guest at the Grindfest). Although the MMORPG has been free-to-play for a long time, he can’t play it here – or only through great detours.
Although World of Warcraft became my main game when I was about 13 or 14, for the years before that, Ragnarok Online occupied me the most. I owe part of my love for role-playing games to this MMORPG, the Bard class (the undeniably best class ever) and the fact that I am allowed to work in the video game industry today.
Over the years, Ragnarok Online became less and less important to me. Still, I keep getting drawn back to the MMORPG from 2002, most recently, because the beta for the upcoming Ragnarok Zero has really excited me.
However, the standard version of Ragnarok Online is not playable in Europe. As someone who is not tech-savvy, I thought: a VPN should suffice. Not even close… In the end, I needed:
- two VPNs that I had to activate at the same time, one alone was not enough
- OperaGX as a new browser because its built-in VPN was the only one that worked
- four new email addresses from different providers that I tested one after another – only a disposable email was accepted
What followed was dozens of hours of grinding, for which most people would probably call me crazy. But for me, it was a wonderful time.
This week, you’ll find exciting articles every day about the topic MMORPG. Included: nostalgic retrospectives, exciting analyses from renowned industry veterans, previews of upcoming online role-playing games, and fun streams.
Here’s the program for the big MMORPG theme week 2026 from MeinMMO
No other MMORPG has ever given me what Ragnarok could
There are dozens of modern games that look better than Ragnarok Online, offer better gameplay, and are significantly easier to play. So why do I have to play this game? The answer is quite simple: no other game has ever had such a good class system.
Instead of simply choosing a class and a spec or a “subclass,” as most games do today, the “jobs” in Ragnarok Online are a journey in themselves:
- You start as a novice, taken by the hand by NPCs – almost a child slowly becoming an adventurer.
- The “first job” then sets the path that you will follow later: swordsman, acolyte, thief, merchant, mage…
- Once you reach a certain level, you have the choice between two advanced classes: swordsmen become knights or crusaders, thieves become rogues or assassins, etc.
The whole system gives characters a depth that no other game (and certainly no MMORPG) has ever reached. I don’t start as a hero (and not as a “nobody”), but evolve slowly, maturing, gaining experience, and power.
Later, more classes were added: after a “rebirth” at max level, you start again at level 1 and can then ascend to “transcended” jobs, later to third and even fourth evolutions of the path – in my case: Assassin, Assassin Cross, Guillotine Cross, and finally Shadow Cross.
A lot of fun for free – despite a greedy cash shop (and bad translation)
All of this obviously takes time. Private servers often bridge that with tailor-made rates, for example, 5x the XP and drop rates. Some crazies even work with multipliers in the tens of thousands. But: That’s exactly what I don’t want; I want to experience this journey.
With my fresh account in Ragnarok Online – which I technically shouldn’t even have, but shh! – I then grinded for many hours just to get a character not only to max level 100 but also reborn again at level 100. Transcended, it even goes further.
A blast of fun. Although I already knew all the areas from back then, I can finally visit endgame dungeons that I was too weak for before. Many fans are annoyed by the greedy Pay2Win shop in Ragnarok Online, and yes, you can buy things like XP boosts or even rental items there.
However, this has never been relevant to me. I don’t want to compete with anyone; I just want to have fun. Besides, it would probably be difficult to spend money from here anyway…
The only downside that I have to point out both then and now: the texts in the game are dreadful. Originally, Ragnarok Online is Korean, and the translation sounds like someone just strung words from a dictionary together. In the new Ragnarok Zero, at least AI seems to be at work, and everything is even available in German, but you have to love the original to tolerate it.
Ragnarok Online is banned for Europeans!!! Or something like that
So why is it so difficult to play Ragnarok Online officially and legally? There’s a long and quite complicated story behind it, which I will try to summarize briefly.
There have been several regional versions of Ragnarok Online, such as one for Europe (euRO), Japan (jRO), Korea (kRO), and an international or English one (iRO). Over the years, this has apparently not been lucrative enough, especially since many servers were on different patch levels, and gradually, they scaled back.
In 2018, the operators finally discontinued Ragnarok Online in Europe because they apparently did not want to agree to the new EU data protection regulations at that time. Since then, it has become virtually impossible to play Ragnarok Online in any “legal” way here.
The official international servers (iRO) have a geoblock for all European countries, and there hasn’t been a European version for a long time. Only private servers have popped up from time to time, but most of them haven’t lasted long.
Since then, private servers continue to appear, some running for longer, some for shorter periods before shutting down again. Warp Portal or Gravity even offered Ragnarok Online in a new version internationally, asking Europeans explicitly not to play. No thanks.
Is all this effort worth it?
For most of you? Definitely not. While Ragnarok Online is a game with an isometric perspective and retro look, meaning pixels and sprites, and has aged “okay,” the mechanics are dreadful.
Without nostalgia, I can’t imagine anyone having any joy in the clunky use of skills, the not very intuitive shortcuts, or the equipment system, where you can hardly tell which item is actually better than another without study. Imagine Path of Exile, just much slower.
However, I would take on this obstacle course again anytime because no other game can satisfy my need for this experience as Ragnarok does. Other games like Tree of Savior or a project by a desperate fan have tried it, but no one has succeeded, and even all successors of Ragnarok itself are miserable in comparison.
Would you also try to overcome so many hurdles just to play your childhood game again? What is the craziest thing you’ve done for a game? Feel free to leave me a comment.
Ragnarok Online is not a game I will play permanently, but one I always return to and that I enjoy… if it weren’t made so hard for me. I know that the German community alone is not small, just based on the many private servers and the German guilds in the test of Ragnarok Zero. So I still carry hope within me. With similar nostalgia, but significantly less hope for a return, I often reflect on The Secret World: One of the best MMORPGs ever now has only 124 players on Steam – What happened to The Secret World?
Your opinion is important to us!
Do you like the article? Then let us know!