Ragnarok Korean Championship 2017

Ragnarok Championships are the so called e-sports of Ragnarok Online. They game have this tournament even before the term e-sports has been popularized. Basically the format of the tournament is a 7 on 7 players using the different classes with no repeating jobs. Each player has a the same fixed amount of zeny to budget. The equipment and supplies are listed with prices according to their effect, importance and overall impact. There are a lot of rules for the game and some notable ones are upgrading the equipment will be until safe limit, no cards or equips with 100% resistance to status ailments, no trading, Emperium will be purchased during the tournament etc.

I stumbled upon the video of Ragnarok Korean Championship 2017 while browsing the posted videos of Gravity Corporation. I was excited to see happened to the tournaments since I was out of Ragnarok Online loop since pRO has shut down.

After I watched the video it looks to me that the Ragnarok Championship has never progressed at all since 2013. As an overview Ragnarok World Championship 2012 is the start of the third jobs 7 on 7. It is the testing grounds to know which skills and equipment should be moderated. The refined format for 3rd job 7 on 7 happened during 2013 with customized tournament maps.

Here are the points that I have observed on tournament:

• No new customized map since 2012. After 5 years the tournament is still using the same maps of Splendid and Manuk field.
• The core jobs are still intact. Core jobs are the jobs that are always present on each team with which only 1 or 2 of the slots are replaced by another job. The core jobs are Devotion Royal Guard, Sura, Clown, Archbishop and Sorcerer. The last slots is being juggled for Suicide Mechanic, Masquarde/Copy Shadow Chaser, Dragon Breath Rune Knight and Warlock. You know that a team is creative when you can see a Genetic and Ranger because this are not top picks. Never seen play were the Assassin Cross and Gypsy. Game rules is a factor why some jobs are not part of the core jobs.
• It seems that the tournament format is still the same 5 years ago. No significant change was added to the rules to somehow shake the tournament for fresh line up.
• I searched for Ragnarok World Championship 2016 and 2017 since this is the void year for pRO and there is none. I believe this is the point where the franchise is on decline where in most of the regions official servers are closing.

As of second half of 2017, the Ragnarok franchise is on the rise again thanks to the revival of official servers like ROPH. Gravity, the game developer of Ragnarok Online, shift its focus on Ragnarok as franchise and released a lot of games like Idle Poring and Ragnarok Journey. The main franchise has been refreshed because of the introduction of Classic Revo servers popularized by thRO. Now iRO has their own version which is RESTART and kRO build their own version with the title Ragnarok Zero. I hope that with the resurgence of interest from players to play this grinding game again that they consider re-evaluating the Ragnanrok World Championship formats. The yearly RWC is something all Ragnarok players are looking forward to and I hope they'll revive this sooner. I'm hoping also that ROPH will have their own Ragnarok Philippine Championship back with the event hosted in a real life venue. It's really fun going to gaming events such as RPC to meet your guildmates and enjoy watching the tournaments together.