Servers Dead:

 Been getting a lot of Disconnection on all 3 servers, it is so bad that make the game unplayable. I was getting Disconnection every few minutes, I can even reach the Teleporter or Map. Although both server claimed that the DDOS Attack are over, I don't really see any improvement till now. It is not just me having the issue, a lot of other players also encounter the same.

I can understand that the private servers encountered the same as they are using the same host, but it puzzled me when the official had the exact same issue. What puzzled me most is that the Dance Emote which the official had been working on had already been implemented on private servers recently. 

They might had send spy to copy each other ideas, but I think they might also had send spy to influence the decision making process too. This is the main reason that the official server had become more and more like private server with better rewards and more newbie friendly, while the private servers are becoming more and more like official server trying to Nerf a lot of stuffs to make it difficult so that it can boost the Item Mall Sales.

The private server had been declining since the Nerf of AOE Pets, from the glory of 600 players it drop to 300 players and then further drop to 100 players now. Although they claim that they will try their best to restore the former glory, nothing much had been done until now. A lot of players could had gone over to the new server, but the numbers just doesn't add up with only about 200 players there.

Phoenix Rebirth 3.0:

 Phoenix:

Halloween Event had started, try out the event for a while. It is still very hard to kill mobs at the Event Map, so I will just hunt pumpkin on Juno instead. The rewards for the event are good, with PBI, PPSP, Booster, Med and Curse Removal Scroll.

Had also discover the rewards for the God Hand after playing for a while although it is very rare, the rewards for God Hands are as follows:

Warrior: Devil Rune x 2, Master Stone +17, Diamond

Guard: Prem Drop Booster x 2, LSB, Diamond 

Bravery: Effort Scroll x 2, PSSP, Diamond

Protection: Lvl 14 Chaos Jewel, Lvl 14 Jewel, 5 Cash, Diamond

It had become tough after Level 140, had try using AOE at Tairan Center and also Seeker of Darkness and found it take long time to kill and easy to die and lose exp. It is like taking a step forward and then taking 3 steps back which doesn't really make any progress, the only better options is killing Kanuta and Travox while leveling pet.

Most players will quit after reaching Level 140 like Aphelion at Level 165 when they found it difficult to progress any further without help from other players, this server had become worst with limited content and limited option which seem to follow the same singular path for leveling.

Phoenix Rebirth 2.0:

Horizon:

Halloween Event had start, nothing much had change other than a new boss named Grimvine Jack which need party of few Level 185 Players to kill. It spawn every 6 hrs on Ch 2 and 4 at Top Right of Juno Map at the top of East Side Drake Nest, and randomly drop Wolfrik Leash, 25 Candle, 20 Anniversary Candle, 25 Halloween Token, 5 Halloween Token Box or Halloween Title.

Phoenix:

 

Found out that the Laca Ball and Moonstone Statue are Auto by default, after trying it out and found that most of the stuffs are not really helpful. Lucky to find that there is a Cash Shop in town which sell some useful stuffs at cheap price of about 1M.

There is no Pictorial Book, it is replaced by the Achievement instead. Found out that there is another Newbie Quest at Level 100 which kill some mobs at Floriam Cave for Rune and Master Coins for Monster Combo Accessory. As I start to make a few Raid Boss Hunters, I found out that Egeha Curse Lich and Curse Weaver drop Boosters and Summon Book.

I also found out that Raid Boss will drop even though the toon is higher level, so it is not necessary to be within 5 levels. Because of that it is very hard for low level toon to get drop as a lot of high level will use boss recall to kill steal.

The leveling guide on discord also not very well written, it recommend the following path:

 

1-30 = Juno 

30-50 = Maradaguum Jail 

50-70 = Egeha

70-115 = Tomb

115-145 = Floraime Cave 

145-165 = Tarian either Seekers (best EXP but hard to kill) or middle of Tairan with AOE.

I found out that the better path for leveling are as follows:

 

1-20 = Juno (Newbie Quest and Elder Drake)

20-57 = Temple Of Forgetfulness 

57-87 = Tomb

87-140 = Floraim Cave 

140-165 = Tairan

It can be also break down into finer details as follows:

 

1-20 = Juno (Newbie Quest and Elder Drake)

20-31= Margardaam Jail

31-60 = Temple Of Forgetfulness (Back Pack Quest)

60-100 = Tomb Zombie and Sphinx Commander 

100-140 = Floraim Cave (Newbie Quest)

140-165 = Tairan Seeker or Rawhead 

The former path is harder but faster, while the latter path is easier but slower. It is design base on the Weapon we get at Level 20 with Guardian System and the other Gear Sets we get at Level 31, 42, 57, 87, 121 and 157. It is also taking into consideration of the Dual Class at Level 31, and other skills and additional gears and accessory at different level from other quests. 

With HP and MP Steal and Skill Cool Down, the strategy is to keep spamming skills. Leveling is fast till Level 100 and become slow from then onwards. It is good to know that the level cap is 165, but the lack of space to allow so many players to level make most of the popular spots very crowded.

The Phoenix Anti Cheat also cause a lot of issues as it recognize other version of the game, and the worst is that it doesn't reset when the client crash. Due to that reason, it might not be a good choice for replacement for Official Server. 

Phoenix Rebirth:

Been trolling a lot lately, below are some of the example:

Rogue going around PK

Crussty is looking for her

Spank her

Fifty Shades of Crussty 

NPC for Upgrade 

Same for Self Pleasure, Right Hand

Some call it Ex Sin

Original Sin will be Antonio and Angelina 

Halloween is coming 

I am already celebrating it

My wife wear mask before sleep

 

Phoenix:

 

Try out the new Phoenix Server today, don't really like it much. It is like a hybrid of Sanctuary and Aphelion, and after complete the Newbie Quest there are nothing much to be done other than Expedition. The stuffs they give also not impressive, and most of the good improvement from Aphelion are not implement.

 

It is like putting Aphelion Soul into Sanctuary Body, the look and feel is like Sanctuary while some of the concepts are from Aphelion. I get 1.5K of Cash for voting for Aphelion but only get 100 Cash for Phoenix, I get about 25 Cash per hour when I log on to Aphelion but I only get 5 Cash on Phoenix. There are Auto Ignition, Auto Pick Up, Premium Buffs, but there are no Auto Laca, Instant Moonstone, Offline Merchant.

It give +15 Set at different level instead of +20, and it only give Emblem and no Accessory. The only good thing is that there are Raid Boss at the 4 Basic Maps which drop Rare Accessory, so I might consider this as a replacement for Official Server. But I will have to make a few Raid Boss Hunters lock at different level to ensure they drop, it will be a repeated task as I already have the same setup on Official Server.

Semi Retirement:

 Horizon:

Server is almost dead after recent update which cause a lot of players to encounter issue with Microsoft Visual C++, those who manage to log in also encounter a lot of lag and disconnection. Initially I can still do some pet leveling in the afternoon, but it became worst and I can't even log in for few minutes to complete my attendance without getting disconnection.

They are going to start Halloween Event next week, not sure if they are going to do a make Mooncake Event after the Halloween or completely skip it this year. From the way they run the events, we can see that they do not put in enough effort to plan it properly. Most of the time they just run events according to what the players wanted, it is not a bad thing but it will surely backfire on long run.

Aphelion:

The similar issue of constant disconnection had make me wonder more if this server is secretly related to the official server, even if the official server start to copy some ideas from this server it could not have the same server issues at the exact same period. I had been trying hard to complete my daily and then spend the rest of the day doing Immortal Boss.

Haven't seen Weed log on for more than a week, Speedy and Anaq have also switch to another private server named Sanctuary. I had try it out for a day but don't really like it as it is very similar to Reboot private server, so I will wait for the new Phoenix private server to launch and try it out.

Hopefully the new Phoenix private server will be better, or the Aphelion private server situation will start to improve after the launch of Phoenix private server. Rose Mary had join this server, I let her join my guild and give her the Newbie Package. As expected she is not really serious about this server and only play for a while and decided to go back to official server.

If there are really no improvement on the official and private servers, I might be thinking of quitting both completely and go back to Final Fantasy. There had been a lot of rumors about the Admin going to abandon the server when news leak out about him starting another server, although he had clarify it many times that the rumors are not true but his neglect about the server had seem to prove otherwise.

There are a lot of issues not resolve and a lot of tickets not attend to, a lot of unhappiness among the players and the situation just getting worst days by days. A lot of them had say that it was greed to make more money that had made him decide to run more and more private server, and he already unable to cope with the management of just 1 or 2 servers.

The Nightmare Before Christmas:

 Horizon:

Fall Event had started, more Boosters. The price of Boosters had drop to 10% of the usual price, a lot of players are crying over the fact that they are unable to sell their stuffs even when they lower the price. They are going to reduce the price of Golden Magnifying Glass from 1M to 500K, guess some smart ass spend all the gold on it just to get good seal as AGR are cheap.

From the look of it, the economy is not going to recover for another few months. To make thing even worst is that some players claimed that there are only about 6 active players, so they will either have to do a gold balance or merge the server to save the economy.

 Aphelion:

Halloween Event had started, this time they Nerf the event with only 3 quests. To make thing worst, the new phoenix anti cheat system is causing a lot of log in issue for a lot of players. The worst thing that happen with this patch is the Nerf for HP and Damage just to cater for PVP players, now all the PVE players are having a hard time killing mobs.

I had try killing mob on the Halloween Map and found that I can't even do it with full buff, since the rewards for the event are not as good as last year I will just give it a pass. The server had been going down hill since they Nerf the AOE Pets, the amount of players drop from 600 to about 300 during the recent DDOS attack.

The new patch for 220 level cap is a joke which seem to change private server toward official, and the official server seem to go the other way round to become more like private server. Overall official server seem to improve more with better events, if private server is not going to restore back to the glory of the time before they Nerf the AOE Pets they will be dead in no time.

I also realized that all my P2 Pets are gone, not sure if it was due to the recent server crash or new patch. The previous ticket I raise for missing P2 Pets for my pet merchant had not been resolved and was closed for no reason. It just keep adding on to the issues and a lot of players are not very happy about it. I guess it is just Karma, when a lot of players are not happy and start to curse the server it will came true when there are enough curse.

So it is still a wiser choice to make the players happy if they want the server to survive long, they should start giving players the freedom of choice instead of keep adding more and more restriction which make the game harder. If players had to spend so much time trying to level, farm for stuffs or complete quest, they might as well stop playing and do something better.

Dark Age:

 

Horizon:

Situation had become worst, a lot of players are trying to sell their stuffs cheap but nobody buy. A lot of them thought they are the few who buy Fawkes Gems and thought they could make a good profit off the Loyalty Rewards, but to their surprise there are a lot more players doing the same as them. So it become a price war and a lot of stuffs start to devalue to about 30% of their usual price, the situation will get even worst as the Loyalty Rewards continue.

It is not really a bad thing as those players who play for free actually benefit from the cheap premium stuffs, the publisher also earn a good profit from the Fawkes Gems sales. The only idiots become those who brought Fawkes Gems for the Loyalty Rewards, and there are some who even spend it all in a month instead of spreading it over 3 months to maximize its benefit. They thought the 185 Jump Box would make it easy for them, but they never expect the Level 25 Jewels can only be use for Level 186 or higher gears.

There are a lot of new players joining who can't even survive on their own, they keep asking for help in their leveling while a lot of old players thought it had already become easy with the new patch which give all the stuffs they need. A lot of old players also become less active mainly because of server lag or IP Block, they had also become less helpful toward the new players.

Game had also become boring without good events, it had gone back to the void period with Iris Element Events as filler. There are so many Jewel and Upgrade Event until the whole market are flooded with +30 gears with value below 5B or less, and those who are unable to sell their stuffs to get gold for the events cannot afford to buy or upgrade their gear until now.