GameSpy's new Onlife column contains a bit about The Saga of Ryzom, which Nevrax liked so much they linked to it from their official website.  Here's the piece:

This one just keeps looking cooler and cooler. I got to sit in on a pretty long demo of it last week, and it looks like the team of Nevrax is definitely shooting for something interesting. What strikes me the most is the character system. Like a few other games, it totally eschews the concept of levels. Rather, your character's abilities gradually increase as it uses certain skills. Using a one-handed melee weapon, for instance, will increase the appropriate skill. Things get crazier when it comes to magic. You know how in some games, there will be two spells of approximately the same level of power, but with mildly differing attributes? For instance, a pair of fire spells that do just about same amount of damage, but one takes a few microseconds longer to cast? You end up having to buy them both, for completeness' sake, and it's a total waste. The way Ryzom buries that ridiculous concept is by allowing you to, in a sense, design your own spells. Let's say you want to create a ranged fire spell. Depending on what you set its range, damage, and casting time values to be, it'll cost more energy to cast. And you can tweak these any time you want. How cool is that? From what I gather, you can even have multiple versions of spells prepared, to have on hand in a variety of situations. This is the type of customization that I get real excited about, and it's great to see it being implemented into such a cool-looking game.

You can read the entire Onlife column (which also touches on EverQuest II and Guild Wars) by following this link.