Review of Ryzom after two weeks of play: The Good and the Bad...feel free to discuss

[lucasd]

No way EQ2 will fail, even if its completely horrible(which I sincerely doubt since SOE did an incredible job with EQ) people will still play it for the name. Soe also has almost inexhaustible resources so even if its not as incredible as it should be, they will be able to expediently correct anything that goes wrong. Additionally, they have 5+ years of experience from EQ to draw from which gives me confidence in the original product and their ability to fix mistakes.
But back to Ryzom, the leading problem with the game is the bugs. IF the game dies, it will be for that reason alone. Nothing kills my desire to play like ending up with 3x the death penalty I should, or the lag that makes many elements of the game impossible to play. Even if they are corrected, if this is not done so very quickly, it will be too little too late. The Gm's have been fairly responsive concerning problems, but often do nothing to actually correct the issue. A gm responded to one persons complaint about being stuck in terrain with "I dont know what to tell you." That is just entirely unacceptable.
My packer died several days ago and I am still unable to replace it because they neglected to add the option to free a dead packer. Its still lying dead in Zora. Also, my highest skill is PR forage which is at 157. Now the PR are almost impossible to get into. SO when I die, I get the Death penalty of a 157 skill, but I have no way to work off the death penalty using PR forage, which means it takes 10x as long for me to get rid of it.
The biggest issue however, is the lack of compelling gameplay. Sooo, im 157 forage, now what? I can level it more to gain more focus, but gain no more unique skills. Were I a combat skill, I could level it to do more points of damage in combat, but the gameplay is still the same, just with higher damage on mobs with more HP. Crafters gain nothing new as they advance, just the ability to make items with a higher Ql and more bonuses. Theres no story, no missions, no ultimate goal. Many games have this problem, I logged into FFXI the other day and realized that there was nothing really for me to do, LS was killing the same HNM we had been for several months. The difference was that it took me a year to reach that point in FF, I feel that way about Ryzom after 2 weeks. Yes the content is promised, but the fact that they are to be implemented not only after release, but after the 30day trial seems pretty sketchy. I have also seen no signs of the touted monster retaliations or invasions.
The interface also is a pain, often I will go to type and end up closing half my windows. There appears to be no way to get by using the keyboard alone, which is irritating, and the windows themselves feel very cluttered.
I was very stoked about the game initially and raced to level my character, but now I feel very little reason to play. Even when I do log in and get on a roll, inevitably some bug or glitch will occur and I just wont feel like playing anymore.
The community is pretty good, but extremely sparse. I was in the capitol of Zora the other day and there were less than 10 people in the whole region, I have played muds with a greater population. Our guild of 40 people comprises 90% of the population of Zora, I would guess that peak population never exceeds 500 people on the entire server.
The game truly still feels like a beta. There are some great features to the game, the action system is novel and fun, and the invasions seem like they could be great, but in its current state, the pros dont outweigh the cons.

[xixan]

some issues I didn't even know about...ouch.