Well many seem to think that WoW holds the crown for most subscribers, but many seem to overlook Ragnarok Online for some reason. RO has had roughly 80 million subs in its life time, and peaked at 25million active subs world wide. Not including the untold numbers that plays on the private servers.

Will there ever be an MMO that can beat those numbers?

Hmmm... there where that many people?

I remember Chaos peaking at 10k online, which was 1 of 3 servers. You sure worldwide there were 25mil "active" subs? It was fairly popular in Korea, but I don't remember being it #1 subbed... I could be wrong.

Give a source and "Active accounts or accounts made" don't count.

Quote: Leafcore on 04/12/2012, 10:40 PM

Remember, that was more than just iRO, Gravity has its hands all over the world. in jRO, it's still so popular that it has 25 servers to this day and its still sub based.

Wiki cited (although the information is out of date) that RO had 25mil, although unsure if it was active subs or not. While on the iRO webpage one of its advertisement is boosting about 40million players.

RO is probably one of the most widespread games I've heard of honestly. Between the official servers and the countless private servers most with a decent sized player base it'd be hard to say. RO was different from the norm in that you also had to aim alot of your attacks instead of just faceroll your keyboard as well. Albeit not aim in the FPS or TERA sense of it.

25 million active paid concurrent subscribers? Source please.

yeah ill need a reliable source before id believe this, i mean i barely ever hear of this game so im having a hard time believing its "the most populated."

and 25 servers isnt really all that much when youre comparing it to WoW as "head honcho."

RO was special. It had a game system that no one made before or prior. Their idea of defence (vit and def), flee evasion, crit and stats in general made the game very unique.

Their skill system was also amazing in that skills weren't obsolete when you advanced. Cards also made the game more intersting.

Perhaps RO2 will continue that style of very board gameplay, not the deep endless teir of shiny weapons.

RO is a game I played for 7+ years so I feel qualified to discuss this. I played in iRO Chaos during the betas, and the game reached a high point prior to transcendent classes.

The problem with RO is that its source code was so easy to emulate and the Aegis coding was leaked very early on. The client was NEVER upgraded beyond that point, so private servers ran rampant.

I agree that around the world, RO was a game that 25million played. The player base was split between the official and private servers.

Ragnarok Online is a very popular and successful korean mmo. It was most popular due to it's 2D graphics in a 3D environment and gaming system. Has since went international(even available in the middle east!). There's a new sequel that's in beta in Korea as well. Even inspired a fan-made spin-off game by a group called "French Bread" which was recognized by the company.


I played mostly as Soul-Linker and Gypsy. This game been around for quiet some time(years actually) but if you never play asian mmo's at all (no final fantasy, etc)or go to general review game websites like mmorpg then you might not know about it. It was a P2P game too.

"Ragnarok Online: the game over 40 million people play" their official website by gravity'

Mabinogi's pretty popular too. There's a sequel being developed in Korea right now.