the problem with ryzom is that with low population the game sucks , but with if u can play with ppl the game is very enjoyable , however in this days of solo / solo  / solo more ...ppl dont like "group content" until endgame.....

i miss the days of grinding lvls with groups :( , roaming dungeons (ala eq) or pulling to a spot (ala FFXI)

Skuall, we had more then enough show up for an OP (out post) battle the other night. I was a blast even when Bones, from the other team, walks up and say Hi! because you find yourself listening to tghe coma music.:D

Mishy

Im gonna hop back in this game again at some point; once I have my own place again after a not so great 7 months of unemployment.  I'll enjoy it while it lasts for I can never tell how long that will be with this game.  If a decent amount of new people dedicated themselves we would be having a lot of fun just like the launch and first 6 months or so was.  I'll have fun either way though.  I too judge most mmos by the pure amount of fun I had in this game with other people as well as with myself.  Will never forget this memorable game.

Ryzom... STILL trash after all these years.

Surprised that this horrible game has survived this long.

Ryzom... Not worth a second look or even a first look!

>:(

What killed it for me back in the beta were the bloody invisible walls blocking you from dropping down even the smallest of ledges, the perma grind of everything and the slooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooow harvesting/crafting. Some of this points might have been adressed by now, tho.

Khm ... i can like many things in any given games, but what for sure hate is lfg-ing for hours to kill few rat critters. That is not what I consider being fun. And it looks op was fascinated by this. So ... big NO NO for this game. Not even wanting to try. 

I first tried Ryzom back during its beta.. I still remember loving the atmosphere of the game, seeing how the weather changes were reflected in-game, how passive animals would come up to you and curiously check you out. The yubos standing up on their hind legs and "pawing" at you.... I also remember wondering about the facility of having the multiple interfaces you could switch between (like multiple desktops in Linux).

The crafting system is awesome. The Stanza system is brilliant, and even harvesting is an interesting task in that game.

I still have the original instruction manual and install CDs :-p.

I played into retail, but quit a little while later, after Nevrax released what I called an "are they out of their minds?!" patch. Speaking of which, who else was here for one of the game's first patches, where it seemed that Nevrax had lost their minds? Yubos were practically invincible - as newbie mobs no less! Forget trying to kill the Ragus and Gingos outside the Matis city... That, along with other really poor changes had a significant number of players leaving the game in disgust.

Nevrax eventually balanced things out more.. but I really still wonder to this day what the heck they were thinking with that patch lol.

Anyway... I've come back a number of times to check it out, and always have a lot of fun for the first couple weeks. Then it sinks in that, aside from hunting creatures, harvesting or crafting - especially at lower levels when you really can't get involved in things like Outpost Battles - there really isnt' all that much to do in the game.

Now, I know I'm probably about to get pounced on by some people who are going to say "Sandbox!! SANDBOX!!!!"

Yes, I know... It's a sandbox MMO... you make your own entertainment. I understand and appreciate that. The thing is, Ryzom never seemed to have enough "tools" in their sandbox, at least for me. Although, in my experiene, it clearly wasn't only the case for me considering how I saw people doing exactly the same small handful of activities they were doing when I'd left.

For example, after I'd left, I'd come back to check it out again once a year or so (except the period it was offline, of course), only to find that the height of "adventure" for many players was still trekking from Tryker-land to Matis-land to Fyros-land, picking up the teleports along the way, just as it was the last time I'd played a year or so before.

I'd ask people "What else have people been doing in this game as far as activities in the past year or so? Has anything new been  added?" And the answer always seemed to pretty much boil down to "not much more than what we were doing about a year ago".

Now for those people, that was plenty. They were satisfied, though I believe it probably helped that many of them were role-players, which really does sorta give things a different 'feel' and helps prevent monotony. I could never get into roleplaying in that game for some reason, so maybe that's why.

For as much about Ryzom as I *love*... there's just something about it that's lacking. I don't know what it is.. but I just find myself losing interest in logging in after 2-3 weeks, once the novelty of its systems becomes commonplace and I find myself wanting for something more to bite into...

What puzzles me is, people say well it is to empty, not enough players.  Umm if you don't play then how is it going to have more players.  It never makes sense.  You have to stay and bring friends with you to make player base bigger.   maybe I am wrong but you have to stay.

"The only game that I've found that was better was a game called Final Fantasy XIV."

Really sorry... but once u typed that your entire review just lost ALL weight.

Ryzom is definatly a good game to get into, and has done much that was 'out of the box' but at the same time, they did the same thing wow did... took the 'good' out of previous games and implmented it into thier own. Wow went with the easymode 'quests' (Where one can just easily snag quests and get ou tthere and into the dirty right away) While ryzom did the crafting thing best.

I wold suggest to everyone to give it a go, it is worth it.

It 'almost' gave me back what asheron's call gave me back in the day, that 'feeling' that your in the right place... but the lack of the ability to jump kinda wrecked the feeling for me in Ryzom :D

Originally posted by kazho

What puzzles me is, people say well it is to empty, not enough players.  Umm if you don't play then how is it going to have more players.  It never makes sense.  You have to stay and bring friends with you to make player base bigger.   maybe I am wrong but you have to stay.

I see your point, and its valid, but there just aren't enough players who want what Ryzom has to offer these days.  I suspect that at best, its a niche of a niche, and if it has enough players to sustain it, thats going to have to be good enough.  The graphics are now quite outdated, the game play is focused on a demographic thats growing smaller all of the time.  Too many bad decisions on the part of the Dev's (mostly past), but these things add up.  Bottom line, they missed their window, years past, and its current state is the result.  But I do wish them and those who still enjoy the game all the best. 

Originally posted by Wraithone

Originally posted by kazho

What puzzles me is, people say well it is to empty, not enough players.  Umm if you don't play then how is it going to have more players.  It never makes sense.  You have to stay and bring friends with you to make player base bigger.   maybe I am wrong but you have to stay.

 

I see your point, and its valid, but there just aren't enough players who want what Ryzom has to offer these days.  I suspect that at best, its a niche of a niche, and if it has enough players to sustain it, thats going to have to be good enough.  The graphics are now quite outdated, the game play is focused on a demographic thats growing smaller all of the time.  Too many bad decisions on the part of the Dev's (mostly past), but these things add up.  Bottom line, they missed their window, years past, and its current state is the result.  But I do wish them and those who still enjoy the game all the best. 

I know Ryzom had a rough history. Heck, when I discovered it, it was down because one of those bad descisions in the past.

But I started to play again last weekend, and found that the server is quite active. I'm not sure if it's because of this article (some said they were in Ryzom because of it, while others found it elsewhre - Mac-stor & linux download), or this activity is normal.

Anyhow, I'm having a good time there so far, but I haven't really seen/done a lot yet ;)

As a man of my word, I downloaded the client, created an account and I'm playing under Xabu for now. Making my way through all the tutorials before I hit the mainland.

The game is definately sandbox and very interesting so far. No where as near sleek and visually impressive as some of the newer games, however they (the devs) did a few things that I really am impressed with.

1) Released a scenario editor so now the community can start making their own content. I'm very supportive of amatuer community creativity like mods etc.

2) Released the source code for free and to the GNU free software community: reasons stated above and I also support the GNU Community.

3) Lowered monthly fee without any initial client costs. $11 bucks a month or $60 for 6 months makes sense to me. The fact that they didn't attach themselves to the free-to-play (edit) means I can play for 6 months whenever I want to without the mechanics nipping at my pockets.

Which is one of the reasons that we (the mmo community) does not like F2P games is because I don't want to constantly be reminded that I need to spend money on this or that. I know that at endgame, if there is an endgame in Ryzom, that it isn't pay to win and a more level playing field.

4) There is a TON of database information out there. TONS... I found a really good website: http://ballisticmystix.net/ that gives all the info in easy to read form.

What I've noticed so far is that Ryzom has depth without being overcomplex. Many sandboxery style games try to make things so incredibly confusing ::cough Mortal Online cough::: that the newcomer gets overwhelmed. 

5) 3 shards, 1 is german speaking and 1 is the newly established francophone (french) version. That shows some growth and I do see people, its not a barren wasteland as I expected, haven't hit the mainland yet, but its not a complete ghostown.

Day 2: so far, so good. Hit me up on Xabu if you want to group up.

Cheers,

~Ink

SoR was my first MMORPG. I loved it but then like some of posters here i got swept away with other games. I will definitely give this F2P a go, to just bring that feeling of nostalgia of long years ago in this little world. Was good times... Then WoW came and changed the world of MMOs to dumb template of grind and raiding... i wish WoW never happened. We'd have all kinds of MMOs today, for any taste and color. But... unfortunately it did happen and all the MMOs today are the same.

Impressive article.

Ryzom was my second MMO (AO was my first, and URU Prologue was too different to be compared), i started playing it in december 2004.

I was at a game shop to buy EQ2. Once there, i found that awesome Ryzom box, so beautiful that i decided to buy both.

I didn't know anything about the game when i bought it. I played EQ2 1 month, I'm still playing Ryzom (with some small break).

Because Ryzom is not just a game, it is a virtual world. If you don't understand this, you'll never enjoy it.

I've tried Ryzom several times, and never managed to get hooked. It's perfect on paper, I just can't seem to stick with it, mostly because of lack of people playing.

That said, I gave it a go again today, and the newbie area seems to be a LOT more populated than last time, the very generous scope of the unlimited free trial means there's no rush to see as much as possible before deciding if it's worth a monthly fee, and last, but not least, the native linux client is pure awesome and almost enough reason in itself to support the game. WINE is great, but I usually end up booting to Windows anyway just to get the most out of graphics settings on my aging computer. Ryzom actually runs smoother with all settings maxed out in Linux than it does in Windows 7.

Hi, I'm Vianney, CTO of Ryzom. I would like to thank you all, Ian Stolz for the article but also all of you who post those nice comments. It's really great to see so many people talking about Ryzom like that. THANK YOU we love you!

Originally posted by Senadina

Just tried Ryzom last week. I have to respectfully disagree about the graphics. They are horribly outdated. But, that said, the crafting is intriguing and the stanza system is unlike anything else in MMOs. You can basically make your own actions, whether they be combat moves, spells, or recipes. In fact Ryzom is probably deeper and more hard-core than I am looking for. Grouping will become necessary at some point. And I am a soloer at heart.

Ryzom is an interesting little game that those looking for sandbox elements should check out. If you are cool with the old-school look, it is a unique game, if ultimately not for me.

 

You nailed it smack dab on the head for how I feel about this game, too.  I have nothing further to add, wow, get out of my mind, lol.

The one game I'm always returning to after trying out quite a few others, including the most successful ones (which usually were terrible, brain-dead grinders as far as I'm concerned). The only game I know where you can become a real character and don't have to roleplay in a self-imposed ghetto just with friends. The only World where I also can just sit down and watch the time go by, because it's so beautiful to look at, and so alive. I wish they'd be more players - I fo remember OP battles with about 200 people - fascinating to look at if not involved, and hell of a challenge when - but still each time I log in I feel at home. And we all know there's no place like home, don't we?