I strongly believe this game has a future, and that the promised features will arrive. The game is already incredible, and to get such a project this far with a small team is very commendable indeed.
However, I'm also standing at the crossroads. I've been playing Ryzom on-and-off, since last April (the start of Open Beta 1). My almost-accurate Ryzom timeline looks like this:
April 2004 - End of June? 2004
November 2004 - March 2005
So, around 7 and a half months of playing Ryzom. I absolutely love this game - I loved it when I first played it, I loved it even more when our guild (Atysian Sentience) was started in Open Beta. I met new friends, and I had some great times. Unfortunately, AS died officially just before Christmas, and a lot of my online friends are no longer here. Since then, I've been hanging with my remaining friends, and generally harvesting and crafting enough to supply Manchester United with their football merchandise for a whole season.
I've been on trips (hello lovely Zella
), and guild-organised escorts. I've been to see the Goo and the Kirokya in the distant Grove of Umbra (nice harvesting spot btw...), and I've wandered some of the roots. I've been to 2 weddings, and honestly couldn't attend another one - sorry guys
I think my main problem is this : Although I love logging on to chat to people, that isn't why I bought the game, and it certainly isn't why I pay a monthly fee. Also, though I love the game to bits, it pains me to admit that I spend an entire evening logged in, doing nothing but chatting (and harvesting at the same time), especially when I spend all of my day in front of a PC. In all honesty I think I'm looking for something that's less of a time-sink, something where I can happily not log in for a couple of days, and know I won't have missed anything major. Something where I can play for just a couple of hours, and still see lots of new things.
My will to play Ryzom has been steadily chipped away. I saw a lot of this game back in Open Beta (please don't say Encyclopedia, you know it's irrelevant), and to be honest my options now seem to be just those I had in Open Beta - further explore some lands I've already seen, harvest, mob hunt. If I hadn't been playing this game early last year, this may not be such a problem at the moment. I know there are 'secondary' things we can do, but they're all social-based (meeting up, big hunts, impromptu trips etc.) and time consuming. I also believe, they are
secondary to what this game should offer - I couldn't spend all of my time doing social stuff, It's just not me
Some, yes - I look forward to it. But when game experience is second to chatting, I'm afraid it's downhill for me...
And one last comment : If I do choose another direction from this crossroads, I'll be keeping my Ryzom account open for as long as possible... I guess something may come along soon to ignite the Ryzom fires again.