my leaving game post from Feb just in case you were interested.
Why did I leave (and perhaps more importantly, why did I come back?)? my leaving Atys was a combination of frustration and burn out. Grinding my levels was fun to do because of the guild I was in. We joked around, made the long 230+ levels into something fun (like seeing how many plods we could take at once or standing in the kincher spawn). but the hunt became somewhat pointless for me. After mastering ele, pike and DA, I'd met my goals (besides PR and HA craft, but those aren't hunt related). I started new projects such as Master of Magic or Master of 2hand combat, but lost motivation for it since there is no reason to grind more than one melee tree to 250 (other than the title). As a guild we killed every boss, we trekked to every city, we hunted, we dug, we pvp'd. But even with that whole buffet of fun, it still grows old after a while... and that leads me to the frustration part
development of this game is.... extremely slow (to put it nicely). This is made even worse by the potential this game has. I think that SoR could easily be the best MMO out there... it just needs to get its butt in gear. To give you an idea of what i mean: there was a bug in game called the Map Bug (it displayed your team mates in locations that they weren't. You'd trek over to them and they'd actually be 100s of meters away). It was recognized as a bug and talked about a lot on the forums. It took over 1.5 years to fix it. The giant list of changes that occured during the patch that introduced RoS was a giant list of bugs and fixes that had been talked about just as long as the map bug. After 2 years of people asking for high end content (you hit 250 and theres nothing to do besides the rare OP battle. You can grind a new skill, but after a few of those, you're not seeing any return on that grinding save the new titles), Nevrax has only just released 'plans' to make a high level area. Now, they've only just started talking about it, so god knows how long it'll take to get in game (another 1.5 years maybe?).
I realize it might seem like I hate the game or that I think its a failure, but I don't. Not yet, at least. This game has MASSIVE potential... its just not being tapped enough. The game has so much story, a great combat system, the much-talked-about-rarely-used RAID system, etc etc etc.... the list goes on and on. The potential for events (they give us a big one every 6+ months or so) is huge. The combat system is great. The skill based system is even better... but its not being used to its true potential. and that is one of the many reasons that people leave the game. No high end stuff. I remember an Atys that was packed of players of all levels (When Thesos actually used to have people in it!). A /who in any region came up with at least 20 names. But even then, there were complaints of nothing to do with the levels they earned. Now, years later, the regions grow more and more empty (even Dyron is much more empty than when I left it in Feb). The intro of OPs and global PvP pushed others away (another shining example of development speed... OPs and PvP were supposed to be part of the release... yet, 1.5 years later, they arrived). anyway, better stop my ranting there....
as for me coming back, I came back for two things. Digging and crafting. Thats right. The thing I complained about the most (hasn't everyone from time to time?) yet it brought me back to the game. However, it wasn't enough for me to limit myself to just Ryzom (or rule out leaving for another game). I'm currently playing SWG (with the rest of Infinity) and come back to SoR in the slow moments to do a bit of digging or crafting (I attempted to hunt and make Ryzom more of main game, but no one hunts any more and theres no real reason to keep grinding, so... meh). Anyway, thats why I left game. Frustration (due to lack of content, bugs, slow development, etc) and burn out (any game that remains the same becomes boring... if it didn't, then we'd still all be playing Pong).
... There is another MMO I am waiting on tho ... So no telling if I will be back in Ryzom for a long time to come... (if ever).
I noticed as I re-read it... that it seems sorta harsh 
