Alignment System (Ragnarok Online)

The Alignment System is a defunct feature which was partially implemented into Ragnarok Online which was implemented around 2002. It is thought that it was to be implemented as a means of rating players and potentially making the work of Game Masters (GM) easier by allowing them to view how they had been rated by players in general. It required the user to have at least Level 9 Basic Skill to use.

Background

According to John7, the text contains: 플러스 매너 포인트 주기 : Give plus manner points

Information about this system is limited to what was released prematurely in the Ragnarok Online client. It was originally visible within the client around 2002 and 2003, where when the player right-clicked on another player, they would see the text "align with good point" or "align with bad point"; either of which, when clicked simply provided a modal popup stating "this feature is not implemented".

Further information on the alignment system as a part of Beta 3 was provided by Gravity in a "Newbie guide" which gave some further context on what was planned with the system. Aside from outlining what is known currently with the system in terms of registering positive and negative points against players, those who were within the lowest 5% would have a red-coloured name indicating they were evil, and those which were highly ranked would receive benefits but these were not tangibly defined other than relating to guilds. Gravity also outlined that the history of who had rated the person well or badly would be visible, although this appears to later have been abandoned as the UI does not display this section.

Another view showing the point being aligned against the player.

Looking at the "ragnarok_online_client" release provided by iRO in 2002, the client's "msgstringtable.txt" (a list of pre-defined strings which the Ragnarok Online client looks up) has the following items listed for the Alignment system:

You haven't learned enough skills for alignning.#
Alignning has been done.#
You already spent your point for today.#
Hasn't been a month yet since you aligned this person.#
You got a Good Point from %s.#
You got a Bad point from %s.#
Alignning with a Good Point#
Alignning with a Bad Point#

This was then expanded slightly in some 2003 clients, which outlined that the player required Level 9 Basic Skill in order to be used. Around this time, Ragnarok Online was near the height of its popularity and there were also several high-profile hacking incidents as well as griefing and client modification which allowed people to send unlimited chats and swear words, as well as trade scams, and it's very likely the Alignment System was created to deal with these issues.

There is also an NPC named Newbie Instructor (Ragnarok Online) which informs the player:

    [Newbie Instructor]
    We have a system called "Alignment System"
    When you meet somebody nice or somebody helps you, you can give the person a good point in recognition of services.
    On the contrary, to someone who is ill-mannered or doing evil things on people, you can give the person 2 bad points. Meanwhile you will get 1 bad point for the penalty. This is to prevent abuse of the alignment system.

    [Newbie Instructor]
    The Alignment system is only available for adult characters over Novice level 8 and can be used once a day.
    I know you don't think this is not important right now, but be careful, it causes you the cumulative effects on your character.
    Somehow I believe nice persons will play fair even without this kind of restriction!

Mechanics

The Alignment System from the RO GUI in 2002.

The mechanics of the system can only really be inferred from what has been provided in the Ragnarok Online client. The first part of the client which shows the Alignment system is the UI, where there is a radar graph with four dimensions:

• Righteous
• Vulgar
• Wicked
• Famed

In the client, the message strings made clear that a user could register one point, which could be registered once per month per player, either good or bad. This would be done by the user right-clicking on the user and clicking "align good/bad point" (in the client it is transliterated to "Aligning with good point" and "Aligning with bad point") and then this data would presumably be transmitted to AEGIS and then stored in its database.

According to the official Ragnarok Online website, the four dimensions were used in the following way:

• Righteous - Referred to the number of monsters you killed, and also increased based on a small number of skills or magic spells. This was supposed to affect the attitude of certain NPCs and monsters towards the player and affect the power and success rate of several skills.
• Wicked - If the player PKed others, then they would immediately be viewed as wicked. If other characters attacked you, they would not receive the wicked penalty for killing you. It was also supposed to affect the attitude of monsters towards you in terms of them becoming aggressive or friendly. It also references that "you may be directly touched by a guard NPC", possibly hinting at the fact guards were intended to be similar to monsters with attacks and so on.
• Famed - Presumably this related to the "register a good point" mechanic described above -- was supposed to indicate the character's reputation, and was supposed to be affected by if they joined a "famous guild" and/or based upon quest completion. It was also supposed to be a condition in the completion of some quests.
• Vulgar - Presumably this related to the "register bad point" mechanic described above, but was a different concept to "wicked" which related to player killing. This concept was supposed to prevent the player from joining "honorouble" guilds (which presupposes the idea of "dishonorable" guilds) and was also supposed to relate to the use of abusive language, or stealing items, and was supposed to increase significantly if the user was expelled from a guild or left it.