top of page
  • Writer's pictureStorM_RiderS

Community Interview with Shuji, the creator of Jscal

1.About Shuji :


Hi, I’m Adek. I’m 26 years old and I work as a software developer. My hobbies are mostly computer-related: games, programming and, of course, 9Dragons. I also trained karate for 15 years.


About the player on your server (the history from your eyes)


I’m not really known in the community as a great player. You could play with me at almost any server. Played on Acclaim’s Asura and Bardo, then moved to G1 and GC. Definitely GC was the best time for me, after all. When it comes to the private servers, I was a developer behind the Project Alpha, Zeron and New Dawn.


For me, Project Alpha was just me trying to play around with the files and leaked item editor for 2009 files. Then, with Bogdy, Jamie, Arceus and F50, we decided to spend more time on these files. We found out we can modify almost any aspect of the game, even though leaked files didn’t support the features directly. The same logic applied for the next iterations.


2. Why do like to play games? When you started to play games? How would you describe yourself as a player? What is the best moment to play games for you?


Well, I just enjoy the games. I can find something good in almost every genre, though I mostly enjoy soulslike games. MMORPGs are kinda ancient and there’s hardly anything good about them in 2020.


I got my first PC when I was 8. It had 128 MB RAM and Riva TNT as a GPU. I had NES clone before that, though. My first games were The Neverhood and Need For Speed 5.


I’m a completely casual player. I can spend hours on playing, but I’m not a hardcore guy to aim for the top. I prefer to play at the evenings. A nap after the work and a 2-hour-long gaming session is something I do regularly.


3. When your story linked with 9Dragons? How all started? What would you identify as the essence of 9Dragons?


I think it was when I got my Internet connection. People in Poland usually enjoyed Tibia and Metin, my friends were trying to invite me to MU Online, as well. I moved to 9Dragons and Cabal instead. As a martial art practitioner, I was glad to find the advertisement of 9D. It was the game I had to play. I asked my friend if he’d like to join me, and he decided to try it out. We grinded hard to get FD1 and who will get the fast heal to c10 first. I remember he got a 1-month ban on PC for the all nighter he pulled off.


Essence of 9D, huh. I think it has changed during all these years. I loved the lore and the community, but for now, I don’t even know what keeps me going.


4. Do you think 9Dragons back in old days was better than it is now? What do you appreciate the most at 9Dragons ?


The simplest answer would be – yes, the good old 9D was better. The community was bigger and everyone was discovering the game. For now, we’ve got way more content (that, honestly, doesn’t match well with the storytelling), but it’s hardly anything to discover. It’s all about the same mechanics as it was over 10 years ago.


As I said before, I appreciate the lore. I’d love to know the rest of the story, but it won’t happen.


5. How would you persuade someone who has never played 9Dragons to start playing? What would you say or not?


That’s something I want to know myself. To be honest, it’s the worst time to start playing 9D. RedFox makes the old content obsolete and the private servers’ situation is nothing but complicated. If I had to recommend the server to see how 9D used to be, it would be 9DClassic. There are many issues with that server, though. I wouldn’t recommend a New Dawn to the new players, because the content will be mixed up completely.

I would recommend 9Dragons to the oldschool MMORPG players that enjoyed the grindfest. There’s nothing more to that at this point.


6. What do you like most and what you don't like about the game? What about the community, developer’s team and publisher?


There’s a running joke in my group about the devs – that if they ever hire me or Bogdy, they don’t need to introduce us to the source code, because we know it better than them. Jokes aside, I wouldn’t mind being a part of their development team, since there’s so much I’d like to fix and reimplement. There are just so many bugs that people may be aware of, but either they don’t care about it or they just don’t want to risk they’ll break something.

I don’t like the community these days. Drama was the part of it from the very beginning, but it’s far from being “healthy”.


When it comes to the RedFox, they did some nice things. I’m glad they’ve brought the KR content, but it felt completely obsolete (see: Loyalty system). It’s nice we’re catching up to the Korean’s server, but it was rushed. KR has their servers for 14 years already, I think. Even though we’ve got KR content, we didn’t receive a part of it that used to be on GC – such as lucid decos or “burning” Red Stones to BEs.


7. What do you think of the 9Dragons future? What would you change in the years 2020-2024?


A lot of things, actually. Of course, the patch v1.5 that supposed to bring us a new graphics engine. That would bring many people just to test things out. The problem is, almost whole client has to be changed. Even if we ignore the graphics updates, developers should consider some bug fixes, especially texture error and better hack detecting. There are many vectors of attacks, but I guess about half of them could be mitigated by server-side checks.


8. You are the creator of Jscal a well-known calculator of 9Dragons refinement stats . Tell us about this. How you come up with the idea and why you did it? What players should know about your application?


I was doing the analysis of the refinement table extracted from the files. I was looking for a method to easily apply the effects such as TS or ref epithets and calculate the chances. I was working with Plastic AKA dixbutts to finish it. Later on, I found a way to calculate a refinement damage, so I did another calc.


8.What you think about the 9Dragons RedFox forum? Did you visit it often? Is it worth to spend time there? What they should improve? If you would meet 9Arts what would you tell him without censor ? What about Ahri?


I visit the forum daily, but there’s not that much to read nowadays. I like to check sneak peeks for the events and content. If I were to meet any of the staff, I’d say: “you f*cked up”.


9. What characters did you play? How would you describe them?


I played almost every character & role. Through all these years, the roles changed significantly, even though their skills are more or less the same. I played healer even before traps were introduced, and it’s usually my main character. Buffs are important part of the game. I enjoy playing hybrids, as well. Def nuke is awesome and helps a lot in a low level grinding. Nukers have changed a lot since Acclaim – they almost never die in PvE, even without shields. Warriors also got simplified. I think that applies to the whole game, actually.


10. What did you learn from this game and the people you meet along the way? What a hero league meant for you? If you lead a band or would have lead a band what would be your legacy?


I met many awesome people – kudos to Public_Enemies, 9Promils, MH and Witchers (Asura) and all of their members through these years. All of them were Polish leagues, and you guys may know one of the PE leaders – Revered. We could talk about everything. I’d love to meet people I talked with for all these years in game.


11. Playing on a side what you think are the difference between the whites and the blacks? What they war for in the game? Why you think people don’t play the story and keep switching sites and drama is born?


Lore-wise answer: morality, though LoB and BoT storylines are not that obvious. That’s RPG, even if it’s MMO – you should care about your character. I think most of players either wanted to just grind and don’t think about the storytelling or they got fed up with the same stories for 10 years straight. I truly believe we will see the next chapters of the story, even if it’s going to be a fanfic.


12. What is your opinion on Item Mall prices? Mall stuff creates advantages for your character or not ? How to do you see the items in the store ?


I consider the prices high. Way too high, actually. Band attributes are so hard to get in-game they almost have to be bought. Same goes for the new premium, search scopes and other things. A lot of items sold in IM are not tradable and you can’t get by any other means.

9D engine is quite old and doesn’t allow many changes, but I wish to see that IM things are only gambling items (that you can actually get the other way) and decorative stuff (decos, obviously).


13. From your experience are the clans balanced in 9Dragons?


Not completely. The original concept was quite balanced, but the advantages of some clans (beggars and SF) disappeared after so many years. Almost everyone goes BoT/Shao warriors because of the range 2.0 on actives and high refinement damage (because the calculation is based on max damage). Mastery skills also were more important back then – additional 1.5k shield for LoB was the only way to get such effect with CK hyb.


14. How do you see romance, friendship, relationship in 9Dragons?

It’s like in any other game. Lore-wise, there are not so many relationships we can enter (just a few quests that show us the story and relationship progress). When it comes to the community side, I miss some of the systems (e.g. marriage) weren’t implemented. It would make it more interesting.


15. What are the strong and weak points of the game at this moment?


I dare to say, there is nothing I’d call a “strong point” of 9Dragons. It’s old, quite generic MMORPG, after all. The story, skills and leveling system were quite unique back then and I still enjoy them, but it’s not something I’d decide on playing the game now. It runs on old PC, that’s all I can think about.


A list of weak points are quite long: new features don’t appear very often (if we exclude the pet system, we can easily assume there were no new features since cloth refining). There are many small UX bugs (typos, not intuitive UI, bugged Chi Breathing, to name a few). Hacks (such irony, coming from me). No new Road to Dragon quests. No advanced clans or roles.


16. When you think the game stops and the real life begin?

Treat your real life as a game, so it won’t ever stop.


17. What are your thoughts on RedFox content and the Korean content? Why do you think we didn’t get in order the korean content and events? What you think about RedFox community events?


I mentioned it before, but I’m glad we’re getting new content. The order is messed up, completely, that’s why some dungeons and relics are even harder to get (*blink* *blink* item mall). Still waiting for the BM revamp – we had the event that allowed us to upgrade plates, but in my opinion it was hard for casual players to get their hands on BM plate.


My feelings are somehow mixed – it’s good that community keeps the game alive, but in my opinion, staff should care more about the things like events. If they only could create the events by themselves...


18. If you would have a magical wand and had the power to change things inside the game, what would a 9Dragons you create look like?


Definitely more “seasonal” events, with either unique (permanent) or “OP” (timed) content. Let’s say summer event should have a 30-day “good” deco, so people would have a reason to switch to that. Not just to make another screenshot event with themed deco. Definitely I’d optimize and upgrade the game engine, focusing on its security.


19. From your experience, what would you share with the others players? What would your tips & tricks?


There’s only one thing I can say, since I’m not the best player. Just enjoy your game. There’s literally no more to that. Finding new tricks, tips, tactics and strategies are the part of the game, so you should enjoy it to the fullest.


20. Anything that was not covered and you have in mind.

Just wanted to say thanks to you, for creating this project, and a bunch of people I worked or played with:

- Bogdy, Arceus, Jamie, F50 – original Project Alpha staff – thanks for all these years. We started in 2015 and enjoyed ourselves to the fullest, finding new things.

- zeroBurner, saweet – if not for you guys, this game wouldn’t get this far, especially private server scene.

- Tengerecki, Zozohun, MrOfficer – even though you were toxic for most of the time, you still have the game knowledge that I missed at some point.

- Luke, sirEPOX, Tyna, Revered – for being awesome league members/leaders. I want to keep the list as short as possible, but I’m grateful to anyone that played with me.


JSCAL :

37 views0 comments

Recent Posts

See All
bottom of page