Ryzom

I've played a few MMOs in the past that disappointed me, but I keep trying new ones because I'm drawn to the idea of the multiplayer experience. In FFXI, I loved that the difficulty of the game forced players to work together even to grind. In Nexus War, a browser-based MMO I played for a while, I loved the focus on guild conflicts (Barhah!). I like the feeling of not just being around other people but of all of many people working together for the goals of the whole, not of themselves. I hated how WoW focused on solo grinding until you got to a high enough level to raid. I'm not playing an MMO so I can chat to people while I do single player activities. When I read about Ryzom, I was enthralled by the idea of massive invasions, guild conflicts, and faction warfare, because I thought finally I had found a fully developed MMO in which I could really be a part of a whole.
I recently reached the mainland for the first time, having spent the past three days on Silan grinding by myself (I mean, I was doing quests, yes, but it was still essentially grinding), and when I ask "What now?," all anyone tells me is "explore" or "trek" or "make your own fun." Are these ideas that I find so exciting even really here? Is my search for an MMO that is truly massively multiplayer, in content and not just in form, a futile one? I'd like to join a guild, but I'm not just gonna join a random one, and nothing I've seen in the list of guilds has been very helpful. And even once I do join one, given what I've seen so far, I wouldn't be at all surprised to find that it's essentially just like the guilds in FFXI and WoW, a place for people to chat and ask for help, rather than an organization with plans and goals, goals being the key component here, of its own.
Anyway, any help in this, whether it be telling me about a guild with goals where I would feel at home, or even just letting me know now that I'm not going to find any of this here, so I don't have to waste time on it, would be greatly appreciated.

some guilds are glorified chat rooms, some are goal driven etc, its a case of asking around and finding the right one.

all the things you want to get involved in are there, just you have to be with the right people.

questions you need to ask

kami or karavan - ofc depending on who you wanna join
are they a guild who dig and crafts more than they hunt and fight
how active they are, what timezones etc
ask other people their opinion of your intended guild
do they have people in your level range

you gotta give pointers as to what you expect though, and dont always believe people when they say they do everything you ask for. A good guild makes a huge difference to enjoyment of this game.

Guild conflicts and faction warfare exist, and often go hand-in-hand. People might be a little more docile about it now, though, due to the fact many of us just went through six months of Ryzom downtime and even more months of uncertainty.

The story events, the invasions, "The Saga of Ryzom" and the sense of Homin purpose it provided...that existed long ago. We can only hope the new owner revives it. In the meantime, "make your own fun" is not as pointless a suggestion as you may think. We can run our own events, creating our own content and our own fun, simply by exercising a wee bit of creativity, setting a time and place, and posting on the forum about it. Even further, we can use the Ring to create dungeon-style content for many purposes.

I will start this post by saying I honestly don’t know how easily or how fun it would be to achieve the level and sense of fun you’ve described when starting alone. When I first started playing Ryzom, I played through the free trial (way, way, way back when…) and more or less foraged and crafted by myself. I left when the trial ran out.

The second time I tried the game, not too long after trying the first time, I joined with a friend and we spent more or less all our time on the game together. We stayed much longer, but still generally only interacted with one another, killed some things, did a lot of digging/crafting, and generally enjoyed the experience. But still, after a few months we left.

The third time I joined, about a year or two ago now, I brought about 3 friends to start with. From my previous time in the game I had realised that interacting was the key, because I’d not done much of that either of the other times and generally my enjoyment had been limited. So we 4 friends started out grouping and grinding on Silan, completed all the quests, then moved to the mainland and sat down to think about what we’d do. We set our initial goals, firstly to become Karavan aligned (despite starting with more Kami fame and being a race that traditionally followed Kami… actually, this specific goal was the source of a lot of fun) then to set up and buy a guild hall.

We had an amazing time doing that, and on the way introduced about 3 other friends we knew and picked up a few others we met on Ryzom. But once we’d achieved all that we started to use the few contacts we’d made with other guilds and solo players and quickly became involved in an Outpost battle.

Let me stress, none of us were very high level and honestly, our usefulness was limited in that first battle. But still we joined in, we died a fair bit, some of us did more than our fair share of rezing, and generally we were made to feel incredibly welcome by all the other players in the battle, many of whom made a big fuss of us for coming out and helping, being such a new guild.

Without doubt that single moment cemented Ryzom in our list of favourite games forever. The feel of being part of a) a battle that had /hundreds/ of people fighting in it at once, seriously, it was glorious! And b) the way the other guilds and players welcomed us into the fold. Pretty soon we were receiving messages about other outpost battles, and had created a network of contacts that could help us with info or good rates on armour/arms.

We really felt like we were a part of something big and something that was moving forward, it seemed every time we achieved a goal new ones would manifest themselves. And we had been around for at least one invasion event which was rally enjoyable. Not just actively taking part in it, but seeing how /everyone/ else was doing the same thing, really created a sense of camaraderie when the enmity between factions dissolved (mostly) to give way to cooperation against a more pressing and overreaching threat.

I realise this doesn’t tell you whether you will be able to find what you’re looking for, or how easily you will do so, or even how to go about it… but I hope that in sharing my personal experiences that it will illustrate that the sort of things you’re looking for /are/ out there and not just some fancy marketing ploy without any substance behind it. I think we share the same desires in an MMO, and at least for me Ryzom is one of the only MMOs that I’ve ever found that has been able to satisfy them.

I hope it can be for you as well

Excellent post ssiege.

To the OP: Your description of what you're looking for reminds me of a few major events that brought this feeling out very well.

Firstly, one about a year ago in the "guild conflicts / faction warfare" category. Understand that since the introduction of Outposts there have been (roughly speaking and oversimplified) two large alliances of guilds battling it out over those Outposts. At one point the alliance that had until then been the underdog for over a year, suddenly launched a massive worldwide attack on every Outpost simultaneously. They seized 5 of them in one day and permanently turned the tides: after that they managed to capture more and more. I was the enemy so I'm not sure how exactly it went, but to me it felt like something they must've been working up to for a while.

Secondly, one about two years ago in the "massive invasions" category. Their was a week-long event where the whole world was swarmed with particularly difficult Kitin. The normal invaders could still be taken down with a small team, but there were also 4 bosses that literally took dozens of people to take down. Seeing how people from all guilds and factions, anyone and everyone who just happened to be randomly present at the time, quickly formed into a single army to take the bosses down, was a very nice moment of working together for the greater goal.

Perhaps one more in the "make your own fun" category, over three years ago, when a player asked for help rescuing her mount from the Prime Roots. Yes, as simple as that. A few dozen players came and fought through together, and we still barely survived at one point. Ofcourse this was back when almost nobody was max level yet, and the Prime Roots were still full of Kitin Patrols: high-level Kitins that moved in groups and could see you from miles away. But it's still a good example that you don't need to wait for something to happen; you can go make something happen.

So, if that sounds about what you're looking for, then know that it -has- been here. But as has been said, right now Ryzom is still 'restarting'. Players are still coming back and getting reacquainted, so the outpost wars haven't really started back up yet. The new company is still busy getting the game running properly and doesn't have any plans for invasion events yet. We're all hoping these thing will start up again, but ofcourse nothing is certain.

Also know the events I described above are the once-in-a-year highlights. Even at best we'll have perhaps one invasion per month, one outpost battle per week... the rest of the time you'll still be playing alone or in a small group. Though you can still be working together towards the next such event. In a way I was always preparing for the next outpost battle.

At one point Ryzom too was so difficult that players were forced to work together even to grind. But over the years the players got higher levels and better equipment, and the devs gradually took the difficulty down. (Personally I'm hoping they'll reverse that second part ) Perhaps the best way to archieve a feeling of 'working together towards a greater goal' is to do what ssiege did: Don't join an established guild, find a few other likeminded newbies and start a new guild together, and then archieve everything on your own without accepting help from highlevel players.

But that's for you to decide ofcourse. The problem with joining an established guild is that there are very few challenges left for them. Apart from outposts, the only goal I can think of that really needs more than a single team to tackle, and that you could do at any time without having to wait for an event, is taking down the NPC bosses or invading a Kitin lair.

But if you do decide to join an established guild, I'm sure there's some goal driven ones out there, though it's not really up to me to say which ones. Don't be afraid to 'guild hop' a bit until you find the right one for you, mostly nobody minds as long as you make your intentions clear rightaway, and you don't ask every guild for stuff and then leave.

Wow, I didn't realize this actually posted, as I had been logged out by the time I finished writing it. Anyways, I'd just like to say that my original post was based on my experience upon immediately arriving to the mainland, which was fairly frustrating, I think mostly because I wasn't ready for the sandbox to be suddenly thrust upon me after having some well layed-out goals in Silan. Since then I've become a lot more comfortable on the mainland, primarily because I have found goals I'd like to accomplish.

In that light I'd like to say a couple things to all new players who either have just recently moved to the ML or are planning on doing so soon: a) the mainland is absolutely not a continuation of Silan, and you will have a much more pleasant experience if you do not approach it as such, and b) if you find yourself a goal, even one as simple as "get my harvesting skill to the point where I can look for specific crafting ingredients (my current goal)" it will make the game that much smoother until you can start to get to know people.

Thanks a lot for your responses, too, which give me that much more hope for the future in this game. I'm honestly OK with invasions being an occasional thing (as long as I don't miss them entirely), as it will probably make them that much more exciting. <ramble>I know some of my best experiences in other MMOs have been the rare and exceptional events, like when my party in ffxi accidentally pulled something too hard for us but we killed it anyway, or my pure crafter in Nexus War signed on in the middle of the guild stronghold being invaded, and he managed to get a couple shots off from the pistol he keeps with him at all times just in case, before being brutally cut down by an Infernal Behemoth.</ramble>

Anyway, hope to see ya'll in game. I'll be sticking around for a while.

hasimir wrote: In FFXI, I loved that the difficulty of the game forced players to work together even to grind.

Players should group because its fun to do so, or because they just want to, not because they have to.
Some players love to be forced to group but many others dont.
I dont think you will find a modern mmo that would force you to group from begining to the end because thats what you seem to want.
Ryzom is a very group-heavy game. While you can grind and play alone, its very hard to play that way, and some skill trees cannot even be leveled alone.

sidusar wrote:At one point Ryzom too was so difficult that players were forced to work together even to grind. But over the years the players got higher levels and better equipment, and the devs gradually took the difficulty down. (Personally I'm hoping they'll reverse that second part )

Me and my girlfriend subscribed in Jan 2005 and we quit after a few months because of the excessive difficulty level of the mobs.
Came back to try Silan and we re-subbed and stayed subbed to this day.
Personally i hope they dont reverse the second part


MMOs are played by a large variety of players, soloers, groupers, raiders, PvPers, PvEers, RPers and ideally they should offer content for all these categories.
Personally i like to play solo/duo, and i noticed in many games some players are upset when they see solo-able content, even when there is a lot of group-only content in the game. MMOs are in many ways similar to any public place, so why not eat your pumpkin pie and let me eat my apple pie without arguing which one is better and without taking either off the menu?

Funny thing is, some peeps complain about the Game "forcing" them to group, other complain its not "forcing them enough".
Just the same with the "difficultness", some rant about the game and MOBs "difficulty" to master, others say it´s far to easy.
Some go on and on about the "horrible grind", others love the fact that there are several hundred levels to learn.
People tell terrible tales of them hating the fact that there are no set classes, others love the freedom of a classles system.
*sigh*

You´ll just never please them all. *shrug*
It´s nice to see posts that specificaly call out a certain weakness of the game, but it´s unknown if the devs will ever "get it right*.


CU
Acridiel

kay22626 wrote:Me and my girlfriend subscribed in Jan 2005 and we quit after a few months because of the excessive difficulty level of the mobs.
Came back to try Silan and we re-subbed and stayed subbed to this day.
Personally i hope they dont reverse the second part

*shrug* What level of difficulty is most enjoyable is subjective. I subscribed around that same time, trained solo quite often, and the excessive difficulty was exactly what kept it interesting for me to do so.

I used the term 'forced' loosely, just to illustrate Ryzom was more challenging back then. The technically correct term would be that it -encouraged- players to work together more. It was really quite possible to train solo, trek solo, dig solo, etc etc. Just, as said, more difficult. But it was more difficult across the board, not just more difficult to solo; groups had it more difficult than they do now too.

The mobs are actually not any easier now than they were back then, there's just less of the aggro ones around now. And it mostly affects the high-level zones, while the low-level zones are still as dangerous as they ever were. Keep it hard for the newbies, make it easier for the highlevels; that's what I want reversed.

I have nothing against solo-able content. In fact I'm strongly of the opinion that every skill should be possible to level solo and every area should be possible to reach solo. I'm just not of the opinion that it should all be easy, but that goes for group challenges too.