I enjoyed the crafting in Horizons, at least for a while. Going hunting to find a particular componant which gave a certain bonus ot the crafted item was something that appealed to me and I liked having to use the various machines stationed around. Unfortunately, after a while it was very much all grind and walking a lot, and with no equipment deteriation and no PvP to make crafting worthwhile. Being able to make buildings was a nice addition, although it meant that you'd walk past half finished, abandoned villages a lot.

The crafting system in Ryzom would take some beating (not that there is no room for improvement). It's very in depth with a lot to learn to know the right materials to balance the stats for that perfect item. Because Ryzom is skill based, not class based, you can choose to be a dedicated crafter, or you can take up other skills with no penalties to your crafting ability.

There's something about Ryzom that seems to filter out the l33t speaking ganker types of player. You may meet a few in the free trial area, but they are pretty much non existant on the mainland. The community is generally mature, friendly and helpful. There is a good mix of role players and non role players (and plenty inbetween) who respect eachothers style of play.

The game is a fairly original one and takes some time to get used to. It's perhaps not for everyone, but well worth having a look at the free trial. Those players who do like Ryzom's features will often say they've not found another mmorpg that comes close.

Some have been known to get 250 in a skill in a matter of weeks, but that takes a fair bit of patience, dedication and some good teams. Others have played for two years and still don't have any 250 skills. It depends on what you like doing.

A lot of people obtain at least one 250 skill, but few have many (and I believe that nobody has ever levelled all skills to 250).

It's worth mentioning that although a 250 skill will make you more useful in PvP battles,spending all your time grinding a skill will probably mean you're missing much of what makes Ryzom special.

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Originally posted by Archaos
How childish. You people act like robotix is attacking your religion. He just stated his opinion of ryzom and your first reaction is to insult him? This whole thread is sad. I didn't care much for ryzom either. I must be an "uncreative pleb."

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If Robotix had just stated his opinion on the game, I think the reaction would have been quite different. What was actually implied was that those who enjoy Ryzom, enjoy being bored, at least that's how I perceived it. To say "personally, I found the game boring" would have been vastly different and less insulting to the current player base and highly unlikely to provoke that kind of reaction.

Then you start your post with insults and are put out when they come back at you?

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Originally posted by Neas

Aye, if you lack friends in real life so much that you have to imagine a different world to escape to.  I Occasionally have uninspired days when I actually believe i Live inside a computer game.  I often find myself waking waiting to enter this virtual world.  If this sounds like you then ryzom is a must for you.

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Not only is this "just a biased unevidenced opinion", it is an ignorant, personal attack on virtually every registered member of this site. Why not change "Ryzom" to "MMORPGs" and put your post after every post on every forum of this site?

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Originally posted by Neas

P.S anyone can do this. Its just a biased unevidenced opinion and shouldn't even be bothered posting. 

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Isn't that just a biased unevidenced opinion?

When responding to a question about if something is "good", the whole concept can only be subjective and therefore a matter of opinion. The way I saw best to answer such a question (which was not asking for a long description of the game) was to descibe the sort of people who might enjoy Ryzom, as clearly some do and some don't.

Why you saw that as being a "biased" opinion, makes little sense to me, when you ignored comments such as "This game sucks..." and "If you wanna get really bored with a game that has hardly any content" which hardly describe Ryzom's gaming experience or give any indication of what they disliked about the game. Is an opinion only "biased" when you disagree with it?

Unfortunately, the post I wrote a few days ago which went into some depth about some of the aspects of Ryzom, vanished when this site lost a few days of database changes, however, I would be glad to expand on the points I made earlier in this thread...

Ryzom has a strong back story and in-depth lore and players with a good imagination will find it easier to immerse themselves in the story and are the ones more likely to enjoy the game and stick around.

Atys is a large, beautiful and dangerous world. There are plenty of places to explore and things to learn about the world. Even after well over a year of play, one can still be discovering new things. There are lots of interesting creatures each with different behaviour and migration patterns meaning that by spending time learning about them, a player can know the best methods for fighting different beasts or the ideal seasons to travel in certain regions. If you want to craft the best items, you will need to discover the ideal recipes and also learn where to find the best materials, whether they are made from the body parts of certain creatures or the place, weather and season they can be dug up. A player who has a sense of discovery may well love all of these aspects.

Other than for the tutorial, Ryzom is not a quest driven game where you follow a story that is laid out for you. There are hundreds of (mostly pretty basic) missions, but you can choose which you want to do and which NPCs to do them for. You choose your own path and set your own goals. Some call this freedom, some call it lack of content, but if you expect a game to give you direction and tell you what to do, there's a good chance you will find Ryzom dull.

These are of course still my own "biased unevidenced opinions", but I hope they might give people looking for such a game an idea of if it might be something they want to have a look at.

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Originally posted by Neas

 Maybe this is why your game is dead/.

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And talking  about "biased unevidenced opinions"....

Magic can take a while to get going, but will give you the biggest damage by far in the long run.

It's worth mentioning though, that to be the most effective with magic, you will need as much health as you can get and the quickest way to get a higher health is to level your melee. Close combat with your gloves will do less damage than any other weapon and will take a lot of patience to level.

Another factor in your decision is armour. Medium and heavy armour will penalise magic use, and cost more sap, but you ideally wouldn't want to wear light armour or no armour for hand to hand combat.

The real choices will come at level 51 and 101 when the skill trees split. For now I would recommend getting the biggest, meanest weapon you can get your hands on, and switch between working on melee and magic skills and equip yourself as best you can for each.

Have a look at  http://www.ryzom.com/newcomer/game-download?set_language=en

There are a couple of other options for downloading that you can try mentioned there.

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Originally posted by Vanguarde

I always knew from the beginning this game will fail, guess my intuition came true. That is ever since Ryzom launched into retail. HAHA Owned.

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We are yet to see if your intuition came true...

I'm not sure it's reasonable to describe a game with thousands of paying subscribers and ranked among the best MMORPGs on this site, as "failing".

Ryzom is currently "Owned" by Nevrax who for financial/legal reasons have to sell, and will shortly be "Owned" by someone else - whether that is to another company or the group this thread is about. Not quite sure where you are finding humour in that.

Arispotle and Cho are the two English language servers.

Arispotle is the older server and therefore has more players with a larger range of levels, more guilds and more history. In your time zone, you are likely to find more people to play with in Arispotle. Cho technically has everything that Arispotle has and could be argued to have more opportunites for a newer player to make an impact.