Private server

A Private Server is a server for Ragnarok Online or other proprietary service which is run by people other than Gravity or the copyright owner of a given intellectual property. Despite the fact they are called "private" servers, they are in fact most often open to the public, and furthermore are actually an example of the commons and public-domain activity -- since they are structures which came into being as a way of providing to a greater or lesser extent, a public good. The concept of private servers raise several key points in regard to politics, such as the role of the commons, commoning, the limits of copyright law, and so on.

On this article and wiki, "private servers" are referred to by their more correct name - "public servers". "Public domain" refers to Ragnarok Online services operated by people other than those expressly authorised to do so by Gravity or its subsidiaries and partners, and "private domain" refers to the official Ragnarok Online services. The term "private server" should be referred to as "public server" because it is something owned and run in a patchwork quilt, by the commons, the people, rather than by a oligarchy such as with Gravity, its subsidiaries or partners.

Legality

The legality of "private servers" (public servers) is something which has been disputed from the beginning of their existence and is something which extends beyond the realm of Ragnarok Online due to the commonality of reverse engineering efforts.

Gravity have consistently published information on their websites for the game either asking for players to report private servers or warning them of the risks of private servers.

While it is true that there are private servers which have performed harmful or damaging acts to the Ragnarok Online community, there do exist various websites which provide some level of scrutiny and oversight on servers which are run by the public-domain community for themselves, such as RateMyServer and others -- and general negativity and player feedback in this regard means that if a server is malevolent, it is likely not malevolent for long because it will cease to attract players or funding for players.

Their profitability is also disputed, but with recent cases, Gravity has attempted to establish a legal precedent -- such as with the court case of NovaRO vs Gravity LLC in 2022 which ended with defendant being prevented from using any of Gravity's trademarks or copyrights or if acting in any way which may be construed as being related to Gravity or Ragnarok online -- which if breached would result in $4,000,000 judgment against former owner of NovaRO, Manuel Ruiz .

Despite this judgment, a clear-cut decision on the legality of Ragnarok Online servers is still forthcoming. A path forward from this may be, as the Ragnarok Online game becomes dated, for the Ragnarok Online Community to publicly license the Ragnarok Online game or to run it as a non-profit entity to ensure impartial and profit-free guidance.

Politics

Public domain and commoning

The process by which private servers came about is a very simple example of commoning, which has several definitions but is most readily explained by Hollender as a way to "bring people together to build collective forms for sharing resources, spaces, and knowledge, in response to situational threats to survival or well­being" or a means of "allow[ing] for a pluriversal and long­term transformation by combining radical political processes with antagonistic strategies for confronting capitalist domination".

In simpler words, it is a way in which people come together to make things which serve themselves and other people for a political purpose, and it is relatively clear that the public-domain Ragnarok Online communities that formed in the early years of reverse engineering of servers and clients creted various communities and efforts to perform this purpose for a simple reason -- the Ragnarok Online game was popular, available only in a limited number of countries and in many cases those outside of those areas were not able to play the game, or more commonly there were many unmet needs and grievances among players who wished for a more inclusive model of Ragnarok Online, and often complained of the lack of updates and crucial fixes required to make the game more equitable and enjoyable.

Within a sociological context, a company like Gravity, could not adequately provision for the large-scale uptake of the Ragnarok Online game, and out of the void of frustration and lack of input in the process from players, several efforts, such as ROServer (the earliest-known Ragnarok Online server emulator), Weiss, and eventually Athena, and others, filled a void which existed to try and make a more inclusive and available version of the game which was accessible to players in other unserved regions and languages who could not purchase the service.

Because of the closed nature of oligarchies (private companies) and their immediate desire to fulfil profit motives and expansion, it can be argued that these efforts -- server emulators, reverse engineered clients and "private servers" (public servers), the game achieved a much larger penetration outside of its target markets of Japan and Korea, and as a result also allowed for many areas of exploration around gameplay to be made with various innovations brought on by server emulators and reverse engineering such as custom content and items, and custom features within the server itself which provided player convenience.

The process of commoning in this sense was that a closed game existed which was the express intellectual property of Gravity and its subsidiaries and partners, but yet the larger desire for inclusion and involvement from the community spawned the creation of a public domain infrastructure for making the game accessible to more people and serving a need which by definition would not be served by Gravity themselves. In a sense, the public has made Ragnarok Online a commonly-held asset.

"Private servers" are public servers

Before a political discussion can be had, some definitions are necessary. For instance, all of the players of Ragnarok Online should be referred to as the Ragnarok Community, and this includes whether people play on servers created by Gravity or others licensing the technology from them at a cost. Ironically, since these communities are only formed of those who Gravity choose, these servers, the official servers are technically the private servers, since they are formed as a part away from public life and owned by a group of individuals rather than everyone.

The private servers, however, are owned in a much more distributed way. Even though they do have individual owners or groups of owners who may choose to run the server in one way or another, the reality is that because of the nature of Server Emulators and the wide distribution of reverse-engineered Ragnarok Online Clients, the means of production which are used to create Ragnarok have actually been severed from Gravity themselves and arguably, in doing so have shifted ownership and control away from Gravity and towards the public in general.