Ryzom

Genre? Science Fantasy. No humans, elves, dwarves, etc. Setting is the living, plant-like planet Atys, and the four races are Homins: Zoraï, Matis, Fyros, and Tryker.

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2D or 3D? 3D, with very beautiful graphics. Very nice animations and effects as well.

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PvP? Yes, in several forms:

- Duels: Consensual, 1vs1, anywhere (except inside guild halls).

- Matis Arena: A small PvP arena in the forest.

- Faction vs. Faction (FvF): After working up your fame with a faction (Karavan or Kami) a bit, you can do a rite (quest) to swear allegiance to that faction. Then you can turn on your FvF tag, which allows you to attack players of the opposite faction who also have their tags on, and vice versa.

- Outposts: A guild can attack an outpost occupied by another guild. Though intended to be Guild vs. Guild (GvG), often the battles to attack/defend outposts are essentially faction vs. faction because most guilds are either Karavan or Kami aligned and a guild usually calls upon all its allies to help.

- Prime Roots: Part of the underground caverns called the Prime Roots are openGvG-enabled.

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Open PvP? Pretty much no, since some kind of consent is involved in all PvP in the game. Whether that consent be accepting a duel invite, entering Matis Arena or the Prime Roots, activating an FvF tag, or choosing to participate in an outpost battle.

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Skills/classes? Classless. There are four skill branches to begin with, which branch off at level 21 into sub-branches, then again into more sub-branches every 50 levels. Max level for each branch is 250, totalling about 11,000 levels. Given enough time, patience, and determination, you could attain all 11,000 levels with no penalty. You can use any skill at any time, for example you might heal someone, then kill something with offensive elemental magic and/or melee, then forage/harvest some materials, then craft the materials, all within the space of a few minutes.

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Crafting system? Interesting and complex. "Monsters" don't drop items or money (why the hell would an animal be carrying that stuff anyway? ), so almost everything is player-made (exception is some fancy armor dropped by an extremely-difficult-to-beat boss NPC). Instead, animals drop craftable materials like skin, teeth, bones, etc. There are also materials in the ground (which is actually bark since Atys is a plant) which you forage/harvest/mine (no metal though since, again, Atys is a plant and everything native to it is living). You would craft an item using materials either looted or foraged. Each type and grade of material has certain attributes, and you would mix and match materials to acheive the desired attributes on the item you're crafting. Materials also affect the effects of each other's attributes to some extent. This means a crafter's personal knowledge of what recipes produce what results becomes more important than any crafting skill level. Crafters end up making their own more or less unique recipes.

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Combat system(s)? Melee can be less than entertaining sometimes, I admit. When training with a team you can start attacking the target and go get a snack. Naturally though, the same may not be true of solo. However, there are some interesting aspects, such as how different creatures have different protections against different types of damage. You might want to use a mace on one creature because it has little protection against Smashing damage, or a pike against another creature because it has less protection against Piercing. Ranged (rifles, pistols, launchers, etc) allows you to use ammo with different damage types in the same weapon.

There are also, of course, differences in the balance of weapon types. For example, a daggers do very little damage but are very fast. A 2-handed sword is slower but does much more damage. 2h sword sure to win? No, not necessarily...someone wielding two daggers can beat a 2h swordsman, because what the daggers lack in damage, they make up for in speed. Ranged does little damage as well, and seems very underpowered and unbalanced, but in reality can be fairly effective. While the longest range a spell can have is 50 meters, a ranged weapon can have a range of up to 60 meters. And you can move and hide while firing a ranged weapon, while a spellcast would be interrupted by any movement. Get pecked to death by ranged bandits (aggressive NPCs) from afar and you'll see what this means. XD

As for offensive magic, there are basically two types: elemental and afflictions. Elemental is damage-dealing. Afflictions are spells usually used to compliment melees, healers, and/or elementalists in a team, such as Stun to stop the target from moving/hitting and make it easier for melees to hit, or Fear to drive away an add, etc. As with melee damage types, each creature has a set of resistances against different spells. One creature might have a 50% resist to an elemental Fire spell and a complete resist to Stun, and another might have a 75% resist to all elemental spells except one or two, and be vulnerable to all afflictions. There's no way to see these damage and spell protections/resists, you learn them through trial and error.

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Story? Roleplaying? Ryzom won mmorpg.com's Best Story award for a reason. The story is deep, and present enough ingame that it cannot be missed or ignored, even by non-roleplayers. Instead of being presented through static quests, the story is advanced through live events, both GM-run and player-run. There is little anti-RP sentiment in the community, and there are several roleplaying guilds.

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What are the factions? There is no Good vs. Evil. It's not that clear-cut. Instead, we have the Karavan, Kamis, Elias Tryton, and as many flavors of neutrality as there are neutral characters.

- Karavan: Mysterious beings who always wear suits/masks, making it impossible to tell exactly what they are. They came from the stars, and the metal in their machines and technology is the only metal present on Atys. They worship the goddess Jena and they say their mission is to convert homins to Jena's Church of Light. They want Atys's resources but the Kamis do not allow them.

- Kami: Also mysterious, the Kamis are nature entities capable of taking on various forms, from cute little furry creatures to huge muscular Sentinels. They claim to be the guardians of Atys, incarnations of the life energy Ma-Duk, advocating preservation of its fragile equilibrium. The Karavan consider the Kamis demons.

- Elias Tryton: No one is sure who or what he is. He has appeared as a Tryker before, but he is also the former husband of Jena? He claims to be a hominist against the Kami and Karavan and supporting of homins. Recently the Guild of Elias descended into the Deep Roots (lower layers of the Prime Roots which the Karavan forbid homins to enter) in search of something.

- Neutrals: Both, neither, either...the beliefs and politics of neutrals, particularly relating to outposts, is complex, intriguing, and varied.
You/your character have/has to decide for yourself/themselves what is right, what to believe, who to follow. You can choose any regardless of your character's race. Now that the Kami vs. Karavan war has heated up, the choice is more prominent and significant than ever before.

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Dynamic world? The environment includes monsters that seem to have their own lives rather than simply wandering around waiting to be smacked. Carnivores attack herbivores, herbivores fight or flee when attacked by the carnivores, herds migrate with the seasons... There's a very good weather system with rain, snow, day and night cycles, etc. Some forage materials are dependant upon conditions such as season, weather, time of day. Players coming from other games into Ryzom have said how much more alive it feels than other games.

eagleyes wrote:Hey, I'm a UO/SWG/WoW refugee and was turned onto this game by a post I saw.

I'm wondering what I can expect when I log into the game. How's the skill tree?

Is there PvP?

What is everyone's generally opinion on the game?