Bad or Good? The first day

[9e32bcd]

I am suprised to be answering positivly to the question "is it fun". After signing up for the trial without trouble yesterday I proceded to start playing today.

Things did not start pleasantly for me. The large 1.1GB free trial download on my computer took about 4hrs total. The problem for me was after getting 1GB of the 1.1GB client program the download stoped. Argggh! I was enraged but thankfully did not delete the part I had.

So after a little flailing about I decided to try the bit torrent download method(I previously downloaded direct from nevrax). WOW! what a waste of time downloading directly. For me not only did the bit torrent program finish my download without needing to restart it was faster. So in the end the hassle of installing the bit torrent program and trusting the program by opening up my firewall was worth it.

I thought the game was incapable of running in full screen the first time I started the client. For some reason my copy starts with a top title bar that I can't get rid of. This is a problem I still have. So through the login screen and character creation there was that less then informative title wasting precious pixels at the top of the screen (at this point I was pretty much echoing all the negitive comments I had read in the forums about ryzom). After heading to noob island the game switched to full screen.

Having read the manual during the download and a bit of the public forums I felt comfortable that getting started would not be that hard. Wrong! I spent most of my time trying to figure out what was going on (and remaping movement from arrow keys to WASD). Although, now looking back it all seems so simple.

So what do I like?

First, The region chat at least in the Matis starter island is a great place to get questions answered by friendly and considerate players. This is by far the best way to find something out. I did not see one question that was responded to in the form of "hey stupid go look it up". Ask in region chat if you want to know something!

Second, I like the idea of players specilizing in different skills in the presence of a free market. Yes, the world looks neat and the critters run around in an interesting way but after a while that fades (right?!). The interesting part in a game is for your actions to have some meaningful, recognized and lasting impact on the game.

Imagine if every player decides to specilize by doing what every he likes (fight, craft, harvest). Each player gets the option to further customize his character by selecting and even building new powers for his character according to the time he has spent in game. However, just having a powerful ability is not enough. A character needs tools, weapons, and armor to be most effective. Weapons like swords and missles made by players according to there skill.

Can you see where this could lead. A community of interdependent players. Where the fighter provides materials from difficult and dangerous beasts and the harvester with his finely honed skills providing what the fighter never could to the waiting crafter that supplies all the fighters, harvesters and crafters with tools, weapons, and armor to make all there skills so much more usefull. Sure any player could make it on there own if they wanted to put that much time in but together the players of Ryzom could do something unique. Have a community of players that not only played in the same game but depended and thrived on the success of others.

So is this a fantasy or a dream? Time will tell. So why not try Ryzom with me for free? (heehe That is what the public forums is for smashing and advertising ryzom; Right?)



Sporadicly inclined to delete characters is an affliction of mine but for the time I'm:

Ligedt on Matis newbie island
Windermeer