Ragnarok Origin will soon make its English debut, though at this stage it’s only officially headed to North America. A pre-registration campaign is now underway for the latest Ragnarok Origin mobile MMO spinoff, suggesting that the launch isn’t far away, even if a date hasn’t been announced just yet.
Ragnarok Origin is a remake of sorts, with 3D character models (instead of the original’s 2D sprites) and improvements to the game’s combat and quest systems, while also “faithfully embodying the feeling of original Ragnarok Online released for PC back in 2002.” Origin originally released in Korea last July, and in Japan in June this year, topping download charts in both countries in the days and weeks following its respective releases.
Ragnarok Origin shouldn’t be confused with Ragnarok M: Eternal Love, another Ragnarok mobile MMORPG that launched globally in 2019. While Eternal Love shares a similar art style, the same jobs, and a broadly similar world layout, it’s very different to the original Ragnarok Online in its game systems, individual map layouts, job change process, and the like. While it had a nostalgic element to it for anyone who grew up with Ragnarok, it’s a very different game, for better or worse.
By comparison, Ragnarok Origin is designed to emulate the original game much more closely: map layouts, monster locations, job change quests, and so on are identical to the original game. At launch, it has all six base classes (Swordsman, Thief, Merchant, Acolyte, Mage, and Archer), with one advanced class route for each going as far as the third class—so Swordsman, Knight, and Lord Knight, but no Rune Knight or Crusader route, for example.
There are a few tweaks to things like the quest system to make things a bit more streamlined and add some fun new flourishes like quests that let you play as powerful NPCs, but overall it’s much closer to the PC version of Ragnarok Online, rather than Eternal Love being more of a reimagining of it. (Just to make things extra confusing, there’s also a third Ragnarok mobile MMO called Ragnarok X: New Generation, but that’s currently only available in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Macau, and Southeast Asia.)
At this stage, Ragnarok Origin is only getting an official release in North America, and will only be available through the United States and Canadian app stores. That said, having an official English release and the relative ease of accessing different regions’ stores or side-loading. Hopefully there’s a proper global release in the future, but this is still a step forward from machine-translated private servers—which, so far, have been the only option for playing Origin in English.
A pre-registration campaign for the English launch of Ragnarok Origin will see all pre-registered players receive a handful of rewards upon the game’s launch, with more reward tiers unlocking as more players sign up. If more than a million people register, there’ll also be a draw for one player to win a Tesla Model S. No launch date has been announced at the time of writing, but with this campaign underway, it shouldn’t be too far away.