So expect the following to be either praise or constructive criticism
My first impressions of Ryzom were mixed, when you download the trial you get no manual, so the learning curve is quite steep, with most of your information coming from the limited help system, bugging some poor mug who was foolish enough to answer your first question posted into region ( hehe
), and the occasional resort to asking a guide or gm (who were pleasantly and surpisingly helpful)Well heres a few notes on my views of the different aspects of the game i have experienced, hopefully in the order i experienced them, with a couple of my own opinions for improvement.
Harvesting - more interesting, more complex than simple dig it up and use it - similar in a few ways to how SWG handled it, with materials having different qualities.
I was a bit disapointed that the resource was always a pile of green blobs and wondered if it wouldnt be nice to have different colours or appearances based on the material found, even some different effects for explosions - or even totally different hazard reactions.
One thing that would be nice to see is an occasional Super Success - so when you find a material and harvest the first batch it suddenly explodes and covers a BIG area arround you with loads of visible nodes of resources.
Combat - fast - i like that, but there are a few things that bug, for example gingos loose their xp value quite quickly yet are still able to be a real pain when they gang up on you. If there was a bigger xp reward for handling a multiple opponent combat this might be more balanced - i love taking on five gingos in mad rush - much more fun that just one bigger opponent, but the reward doesnt seem so good.
General interface - Generally easy to use - escpecially love the multiple desktop - some wierd and distracting effects can happen, occasionally whilst in combat i spin round to tackle that aggro that just plowed into the back of me to find my view of the screen completely obscured by the top of a tree that was 20 yards away.
Also it would be very nice if i could pan out my view just that little bit further.
Crafting
Again similar in some ways to SWG, and a good system, but its unclear at the begining what you are suposed to use for what part, I soon figured this out and found it to be one of the more interesting parts of the game.
Skills and stanzas
The way the whole stanza and skill progression - the bricks effect - works well, but a lot of the skill descriptions are too ambiguous, so when your looking ata a skill you sometimes dont really know whether it would be useful or not. Eventually through trial and error i got used to what was useful at early levels - because although you have no limit on what you can learn, you can still make your progress more difficult for yourself by buying the less useful stanzas early on.
Noob to Mainland gap
I stuggled with this, the game tells you you are ready and level 20, you're not by far, after four atempts ive succeeded to get along ok after waiting til i was level 25 in everything and level 35+ in at least one combat orientated area, I think the noob area needs a little bit of an NPC info rewrite - not loads, but just enough to give new players a fighting chance.
Community/social
The community and social atmosphere outstrips anything i have played so far in any game, but the chat channels i find are a setback to this
you cant just create a channel and invite some friends to it - other than the team channel, theres no little indicator to say that a new message has appeared in a channel so sometimes i miss things people have said because i was too busy to be constantly swicthing channels.
Some global channels would be nice - i mean other than region, maybe a trade channel or two, or an OOC channel.
It would be nice to be able to alter the size of the text so i could fit more in without taking up screen space aswell.
Overall the whole community atmosphere is far nicer in ryzom than in any other game ive played, ive been to a few events recently - a wedding and a fashion show, im yet to experience the big combat ones, (i missed the nexus event recently)
There im done - all in all im enjoyiong ryzom and looking forward to watching the game grow.
Im also anticipating the new patch
(thats going on whilst i type this)I think it is very inconsiderate of you not to do the patch whilst i was asleep last night ( joking
)Wondering if you could hurry up please i want to play
before my wife comes home and gets me to do more decorating 
