About Us

Welcome to Payon Stories

Payon Stories is a Hercules emulated Ragnarok Online server that is meant to create a nostalgic, yet fresh experience for all players. We have created a low-rate server that expands on the hard work of the developers of the Athena and Hercules emulators by enhancing gameplay while staying true to the original design of Ragnarok Online.

Server Summary

Payon Stories uses a classic RO (pre-transcended classes) foundation for players to start their journey. Our research indicates that most of the major balancing changes occurred between RO’s beta and the Episode 3 release. That said, some balancing changes made in later episodes have been retroactively applied to our initial release for the purpose of providing players with consistency and familiarity in the function of specific items, skills, and cards as seen on other servers.

Nevertheless, we have considered key gameplay features when developing Payon Stories that we determined were necessary to balance and/or enhance gameplay and player experience. Such changes and considerations include:

  • A rework of the entire mob database’s base and job experience tables to add competitiveness of the benefit of killing mobs.
  • A rework of the HP and attack of mobs to add competitiveness of the benefit of killing mobs.
  • Changes to the spawn rates and locations of certain mobs.
  • Modifications to some skills to make specific builds more competitive and viable, adding more variety to the game.
  • Drop rates of specific items that are unnecessarily difficult to obtain that are used for quests to encourage NPC interaction and pave the way for an expanded quest system.
  • Additions of informational and flavor NPCs to make the game world feel “full” of actual meaningful NPCs that have value-added interactions with players.
  • Substantial rework of official NPC text for clarity and grammar (it goes without saying the people who originally translated everything did a great job, but we just want to take their work one step further).

Our staff will continue to make changes to improve the game. We plan to continually polish the text you read in-game and balance the core mechanics of gameplay to adhere to our mission.

What's In a Name...

We are named Payon Stories because our commitment to our players is to continually improve the experience of Ragnarok Online. It is rare to find a game that has persisted for nearly 20 years, and we plan to add new life to the game by building on the existing world through release of official episodic content as well as new content that provides a unique, rich experience to veteran and new players alike. The other primary commitments we have taken include:

  1. If content is fun and stays true to the essence of Ragnarok Online, it is appropriate to consider such content for addition to Payon Stories.
  2. Cash shops and other paid-for benefits will be extremely limited, if ever added as the purpose of the game should be play to win and not pay to win.
  3. All NPCs, items, mobs, and other content added to the game are subject to at least a high-level review before they are added to maintain overall consistency and balance in the game. Even official content is subject to review so that all aspects of the game are enjoyable.
  4. We promise to be professional. As the server owner, it is my job to create a welcoming environment that provides a source of fun for players. No favoritism or mistreatment of players by the Payon Stories staff will be permitted and staff are expected to be helpful and responsive to all players.

A Little More on Server Balancing

As fans of Ragnarok Online, we have long enjoyed tinkering with the rich repository of databases related to mobs, items, and other variables. However, we have also observed that the game has evolved to a state where less than 10% of the mobs and items have any viability. We have therefore made it our project to review and edit the mob database to rebalance mob experience, hit points, and attack strength in order to add competition between mobs. Rather than solely leveling on Wolves or Myst Cases to reach job level 50 in their first job, players will be rewarded for killing any level-appropriate mobs.

While technically we are a 1/1/1 rate server, the changes to the balancing may at times feel a little faster than 1/1/1. We still expect players to have to commit a substantial amount of time to reach the max level, but we want to give players more options to reach that end goal. Changing the viability of mobs is the first method in achieving this goal. As a side note, at the time of Episode 3, I recall most mobs provided a fraction of the experience compared to what is currently seen on pre-renewal clients. The 1/1/1 rates of today are definitely faster than those 1/1/1 rates of the game in 2005.

Separately, we will be adding quests as time progresses, including class quests that will provide players making unique builds other viable means of leveling outside of grinding low level mobs. We want players to interact with each other and the in-game world. So, the addition of quests will provide unique opportunities for players to make the characters they want to make without the need for constant leeching or methods of gameplay that candidly are not very fun.

By demand of our players, some skills have been reworked to allow for a larger range of viable builds. While most staple builds such as Double Strafe Hunters or Bowling Bash Knights are unchanged, other builds like Auto-Blitz hunters and Battle Priests are now more viable.

Server Investment

As the owner of the server, I have made sure to self-fund it and set aside a backup of funds to cover expenses. Every month, I will be adding additional funds to ensure that the server remains self-sufficient and does not require community donations. My goal is to focus on continually improving the gameplay experience for our players without the need to rely on external support

If a donation or cash shop system is added, such a system will be used to hire, and by that, I mean pay for qualified professional programmers, scripters, graphic designers, and other people who can contribute to the server experience. In the event that we have even more reserves from such systems if and when added, community-guided charitable contributions and WoE prize pools may be considered.

Closing Thoughts

Again, I want to sincerely thank you for choosing to play on Payon Stories. Our community is first and foremost our most important consideration. We hope to provide you with a nostalgic, yet fresh experience.