• 27 Dec, 2025 *

People make places hard to leave.

I stumbled upon someone mentioning they got Ragnarok Online working on their steam deck, fully offline and single player. I thought that sounds amazing, something I would like to try too. So I set off on this endeavour.. I spent many days and nights in RO, one time I remember clearly playing all night until early morning, having school after. I went to school as usual, but felt so sleepy. I almost fell asleep in the first class, barely staying awake. So the next break I decided no, I’m not doing this, I’m heading home to sleep.. and so I did. It felt oddly freeing, kind of taking control even though I knew it was bad.

I discovered private servers at some point, I convinced my friends to come play on one I set up myself only to find ourselves a bit bored and going to the official one again. I was part of a small community outside of RO, we had a single chatroom where most people knew each other as good as we let each other know us, or a version of us that we wanted people to know. I still have one of my best friends of that time after 15+ years.

We built another world, all together. We spend our actual lives behind our computer, filling this shared space with our memories, dreams and experiences. It was the perfect escape for everyone involved. I went through several online relationships, friendships.. I even got virtually married in RO with my then current girlfriend. A memory I still hold dear.

The private server space was populated with several projects, rAthena one of the few survivors still active to this day. But I was involved with Fusion, who later became Prometheus and Helios. I compiled them myself and did small tweaks to my preference, not having any programming skills whatsoever yet, but it felt liberating.. I managed community releases at some point for those less experienced. I was loving the feeling I contributed and making people happy. The maintainers of the project too, Christophrr and Tsusai still hold a place in my heart while we lost contact all those years ago. In a way, they are part of who I became this day.

Back to current time, I got RO running. I logged in, went to Prontera, greeted with a flood of nostalgia due the BGM and some NPCs.. going out in the field, killing a few porings.. hearing the blob and leveling up sounds.. It was working. It was scratching that deep itch. Having a gm account I warped myself to Morocc, prepping myself to get my thief job, my prefered class next to Acolyte. Not enough job levels yet, so back outside to gain some XP. I was greeted with pickies, paco paco eggs.. and more memories came back. It was serving it’s purpose as a time capsule.. even though controlling my character click-by-click was painfully uncomfortable. I’m too spoiled by nowadays gamepad support..

But it still felt empty and not what I wanted. And then I realised. The people. I’m missing the people.. the vibe. The shared experiences.. It’s all gone.

In my real life, I’m traveling the world. Just last week I was in a little resort for a week. The staff beyond helpful and friendly, they really wrapped us in this comfortable blanket of care.. and we had to leave. Then it hit me. Again with the people. I started thinking back of all the places I felt bliss.. happy. Again, people..

I could go back to any physical place I deeply enjoyed, but being there without the people that made me feel that way, it’ll never be the same. It also makes me realise that whenever I feel like reaching out to someone important from the past, it’s gone. That person passed away, they’ve become a new person. Just like me. With different experiences, memories.. even morals and values probably.