Ryzom

So...what do you think?[/QUOTE]


First off..mmorpg history... EQ.Daoc.AC. AC2. AO. SWG. CoH. PlanetSide.

Was biding my time in EQ waiting for WoW.... came across the open beta for Ryzom by accident and gave it a try. At first i thot the game was weird. but stuck with it and after an hour or so the game started to grow on me.

I love the little things in the game that make the world seem alive. Scorpions skittering about in the sand. snakes appearing then disappearing. bugs swarming around a brite light. Spent five min watching birds flying around way up in the sky. The way they would circle around and seem to play with each other was so cool.

I love the nite sky. stars. planets. meteors. i love the solar corona on the sun ..you can see the solar flares shooting off the sun.

i love the creatures and the way they act and react. They arent just some static mobs standing in one place. Predators and prey act and react with each other. I like how creatures come up to you and "check you out" sniff at you. pee on you

I love the sound of the wind. the sway of the trees. small clouds of dust kicked up by the wind and drifting across the dunes. Was facinated in beta watching mobs go into and out of the water. Realistic water splashes turned to dust being kicked up as they came out onto the sandy shore.

There is probably tons more i cant think of right now. played about 10days of beta and just started in "live" game last nite. I have no idea what the game is like past the mid 20's ..i look forward to the discovery.

one thing i really liked about the game at start. the control ot your character. one thing i loved about EQ ..(i use a Trackball) press and hold right button. u have mouse look. keep pressing RMB and press and hold LMB (left mouse button) char moves in direction you are pointing. let go of both buttons and u have mouse pointer...no other game has done that (Wizardry 8 was close but not a mmorpg)

One thing i liked about Asherons Call was the ongoing story and with that the things that changed in the world. This game is supposed to have an evolving story and changing world that we can affect with our actions or inactions.

I think you answered your own question :

1. That's no problem, I've been beta testing for years now.
It has already been B/Tested, it's still empty.

2. If you have played DRPlat, you'd know just how role-playing centered we are over there. Again, storyline, lore, roleplay...these are what I typically enjoy most.
Nope...none of those here....(yet....here's hoping)

Hope this helps

EDekar wrote:... Again, storyline, lore, roleplay...these are what I typically enjoy most. ...

EDekar wrote:...
Storyline (or lack thereof)
...

Well, there is a lot of storyline to digest for Ryzom, what a number of players miss in the game however are quests of the epic "save the virgin from the dragon" kind. There are none of these quests in Ryzom - and I'm not sure whether the upcoming encyclopedia will change that.

Personally I have no problem with that but many players need these quests as "guidance" what to do. However currently Ryzom forces the player to define their own goals ("My goal is to collect the materials for that fine blue suit of armour", "My goal is to visit the western village", "My goal is to be a ranger and to kill all predators in this region", etc.). For some reason many players will do these things when they are presented to them as a neatly formulated quest (and have a handsome REWARD!!!) but are unable to formulate these goals for themselves. Consequently they complain that "there's nothing to do" in the game.

As is said above I've no idea whether the upcoming encyclopedia will satisfy these players.

Concerning roleplay, many players in RPGs are used to play the role of the powerful adventurer, however Ryzom puts the player into a far less heroic role, you're a refugee, you have nothing, you are nothing, you know nothing - and most characters will never advance much further than the peasant role no matter how many levels they have. You aren't even a member of an advanced civilisation, you're just some poor guy from some minor tribe on some minor planet. It seems to me a number of players have difficulties to adapt to that role.

The last point I'd like to mention is that some players complain "that there is no implemented storyline". These players seem to expect something of a MMO-version of Morrowwind or a NWN campaign with a fixed story for the players to play along. However Ryzom has life GMs on all servers and the story for different servers need not be the same and can change depending on how players react to events on Atys.

To show you how things are done in Ryzom I copy here an announcement that Shadowweb, the event-manager for the Euro-English server made yesterday:

"Some of you may remember when the Matis Ambassador last visited Zora city.......

Homins who lined the square in Qai Lo to greet and in some cases insult the Matis Ambassador, were taken aback by the mysterious appearance of a strange Zorai shaman. This shaman raged at the Ambassador and condemned the talks shortly to take place in Zora.



Escorted by the requested entourage, the ambassador arrived safely at Zora Castle, but when he commenced speaking, chaos erupted, and he was taken hostage by a band of dissident terrorists.

They were however no match for the determined might of the assembled Zorai and Fyros who mounted several expeditions into dangerous, hostile terrain to rescue him from his unlawful prison. All seemed well, but for the reappearance of the strangely ragged shaman as the Ambassador made his speech of thanks. The Shaman threatened all sorts of terrible things none of which have yet come to pass, and seemed to vanish from the soil of Atys.

Now however homins of all races have reported sightings of the strange, mumbling figure dressed in tatters and mumbling vague threats and curses. Is this the return of the dreaded Oba?"

Now, you decide whether to join in this storyline or not.

(A repeated request to NEVRAX: Make the player forums, at least the Saga and the role-play and the player-guide forums readable by guests! Darn, that's free advertisement you guys are throwing away.)

Well you asked : You are wrong.

Did you ever read Ryzom's story? The history of Atys? The wars among the tribes? The story of the ancient tribes? The story of Kami and Karavan? Does this all even make a ring for you?

Of course the Quests are called tasks (tasks no missions), cause you'r looking at the tasks from those npc's, not at the quests (that if you look at the thread about next patches you'll see... oh, my... quests! ).

The thing is, if you read about Ryzom, we'r in a world in decadence under heavy attack from Kitins (you also need to read about Kitins, yes... read the background stories of EVERY single game you play to enjoy it completely ).
So of course it's hard to travel... what do you expect? To travel freely the whole world with no attacks at all? Go and make a team of 9 players and travel a bit around, or become a master at sneaking and learn the different sight ranges from the different monsters out there so you can calculate the safe distances both if they'r looking or not at you, or from a side (yes, they have real sight range and notices you differently if you'r on their front or they back, also depends the monster... you need LORE!! Knowledge of the world!! Go and earn that knowledge... ).

We're in the begining of that story, we're populating the cities for first time, the Karavans and Kami are fighting the Kitins so we can flee from our home lands into these more safe lands, so we're more safe at the moment that we would ever be in a future, most probably, since we hadn't notice each other as of yet (or shouldn't at least... too soon for that IMHO).
When we notice each other (for example, Fyros hate Matis people cause they invaded them and broke the water trading routes with the Trykers, Matis hates everyone else, there's some anger between Zoraï and Tryker people, Tryker hate Matis too since they enslaved in the past) there sure will be some hard things going on there, also when Karavans start doing things to Atys that the Kami don't precisely like being doing... ).
This is a story, every story has a begining, and an end, we are at the begining... remember the lord of the rings? what was the begining? A party at hobiton... they weren't fighting nazgûls from the very begining in a deep quest, the quest didn't begin till later on, after Gandalf researched long time for the writtins in the ring....
Same as this, every story has a begining and an end, and again, we are at the very begining of the story!!!

The only thing I wonder is... why all those people talking bad about ryzom do the following :
1. Say how bad ryzom is, based on things that is natural for ANY mmorpg to be like this at the very begining (as long as it's a rpg, you can't expect a new realm to be in deep political wars from day 0, that would be lame and lack of story and role play IMHO).
2. Say how good another mmorpg is (actually allways the same mmorpg... shame on you ).
3. Say that almost all of the testers didn't make it to retail... I actually do know a LOT of beta testers from both beta3 and fbt that are playing, and actually do know very few beta testers that are NOT playing, even know testers from beta3 (first open beta back in april, lasted till the first days of june) that left at the end of beta3 and are playing at retail!

So.... to conclude this post...
1. Again, you are wrong.
2. Don't listen to people saying how bad is one thing, don't even listen to people saying how good is the same thing. Try out yourself, it's a mix of taste and maturity, some like playing tetris more than watching a good film, some prefers instanced dungeons than a deep underground story of an isolated world with a mix of fantasy and sci-fi and a nice story to come.
3. In doubt, you can allways wait till there's a free trial (I'd say it'll be there in time, eventually), or watch some screens, or read comments from the people that ARE CURRENTLY playing the game (how can people say how bad the game is, if they are not even playing? that's way so lame ).
4. Once again, you are wrong. (sorry, but you asked the question ).

Well, have fun .