Ryzom Ring Review - Edit

Whether hosting a Mastered or Masterless adventure, you have a few options to who can play in your scenario. Once you're live with your hosted scenario, you have the ability to approve entrants, manually approving each request to join, the invite only option, or to set it to auto-invite anyone who meets your criteria. You can also manually add people to the invite list so they don't have to ask to join. Of course, you have the option to allow anyone from any server, level or guild. From there you can set some basic, but useful restrictions. The first is the most obvious, server restricted. You can choose to let any combination of servers enter. There are 4 servers to choose from; Leanon, Arispotle, Cho and Aniro. You can also specify whether it is guild only or not. If set to 'Guild Only' then only your guild can enter. One thing I will point out about this option is that if you select this, then manual invites to the scenario won't work; non-guild members still will not see the scenario in the hosted scenario listing. Other options include being able to set the level requirement, based on combat skill level, for the scenario. Setting the skill level range will stop any player over the range from entering the scenario. Overall these options are very good and cover most of the ways you might want to restrict entry.

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Currently the only way to host a scenario is to do so from your own login. If you're hosting you cannot be running around on Atys playing the game. This is a big oversight on the part of Nevrax. Advertising a hosted R2 scenario is pretty much limited to making a post on the Ryzom.com forums. There is no R2 chat in the game to announce something is being hosted or anything on the main website to show you're hosting. So when you're hosting you're stuck sitting around doing nothing while waiting for people to come try out what you've created. There has in the past been mentioned paid hosting on the Nevrax servers so that the scenario is always live and running, but how this will work or how much it will cost hasn't been confirmed.

It has been mentioned that there will be rewards for both hosting and playing in scenarios. It has been mentioned that the rewards will be physical items such as special catalyser crystals. These rewards are supposed to be broken down into the following level groups:

• Novice: level 0 to 20
• Apprentice: level 21 to 50
• Confirmed: level 51 to 100
• Advanced: level 101 to 150
• Expert: level 151 to 200
• Master: level 201 to 250

When you use skills in these groups you gain points in these different level brackets that you can then 'buy' the rewards with for use in the game. There are supposed to also be roleplay rewards, but specific details have yet to be revealed about how they will work or what they are.

I'm not sure how good the rewards for playing and hosting scenarios will be. If done responsibly, and in a way that encourages the use of the ring by players, both hosting and playing, then this could revolutionise the world of MMOs making player content the next big step in the evolution of online RPGs. If it is done badly and the rewards aren't good or are poorly implemented, then this could end up being a tool that is left by the roadside by players.

Overall, at this stage, I believe that Ryzom Ring is a good tool for players. Both players and creators can enjoy the stories that they want to tell, make places that are fun and new, but it will take a lot of work on Nevrax's part to make this truly revolutionary, truly useful. The scripting is currently very basic and the only big weak point. With more scripting abilities we'll see more coming out of the Ring. I'm really looking forward to the future development of this tool.