Long time player, love the game

[sprite]

Well, since there are so many posts from people who have never played the game and are still whining about this or that, trying to discourage people from playing it, or people saying they played it for a few days and hate it, I thought I would start a post expaining why I love this game. I'm also going to try to get the people posting in the members forum who love the game to post here too. Please don't turn this into a flame thread; just try to let the people who like the game explain why ok?

Firstly, the graphics and the detail in the game are in my opinion, amazing... The first time I ran out into the wilds and watched the Yubos getting interested in my leg before peeing on it, or watched the kipee nibble on some grass before going to sleep and snoring, I knew this game would be something good. The cherry blossom in Matis and the lakes and waterfalls in Tryker, the sunsets in the desert all scream attention to detail, and this is something that I think is very important in any game, especially an MMORPG.

The player customisation system is almost unique as far as I know in that it has no classes, and allows you complete freedom to be what you want, and to do what you want; if you want to be a "jack of all trades" you can be, if you want to be a master mage, its up to you. This freedom of choice means that even if you do get bored of one character, or you somehow reach the top level ages before they bring out a major upgrade that adds levels and skills, you can just try something else out. Or if you can't find any materials to harvest or no-one to sell stuff to (the new system of npcs reselling playermade items means this is very unlikely), you can just go out and exact your revenge on those darn gingos. There are also the wide variety of ways you can adjust the look of your character, giving them tatoos or new hairstyles or whatever.

The game may have been changed by "Patch1"; some people say it became impossible; but most people, like me, say that it was too easy to begin with because you could easily kill mobs 30 to 40 levels above you. Sure, they overreacted a bit with the "nerfing" of some things, but ever since then they have been constantly fine-tuning things in response to player feedback to get the level of the game at a nicely challenging one - this shows that they care about what the players are saying and are making regular fixes to bugs/regular balances within a week or so of people commenting on it.

The Customer Support of Ryzom is top-notch. Everyone on the North American forums, and most people on the Euro forums (I can't speak german or french so I can't vouch for them) sing the praises of the CSR teams because they have such fast response times; there are numourous stories of someone submitting a bug ticket and within a minute a GM comes and spends an hour helping them resolve it. How many games give you that level of support. I have always found the team very friendly, willing to give a helping hand or advice if you ask them nicely, and I hope those of you who play this game will find this too

And since I hear it *so* many times, I'm going to reiterate this one more time... the free trial is free - the £1/$1/€1 test amount that is deducted from your account is put back very quickly; you probably won't even know it is gone

[usinuk]

*posted out of frustration over some ridiculous cheering of the OP, but deleted as I still want newbies coming in for a base*

[sprite]

I'm glad to hear your opinion usinuk, the more balanced views we get the better it is for the people who are thinking of buying the game
However, I do want to disagree about one thing:

there has been thread after thread requesting better communication.

As far as I have seen, the requests for "better communication" have been directed at the people who moderate the boards not updating the announcments so we don't know when patches are happening, and us not being told what the developers are working on right now. I think the latter has improved (two updates on work in progress of patch2 for example) but unfortunately I do think that, at least on the Euro board (it is apparently different on the other ones), the moderators are a bit slow in putting up announcements

[usinuk]

I'm glad to hear your opinion usinuk, the more balanced views we get the better it is for the people who are thinking of buying the game
However, I do want to disagree about one thing:

As far as I have seen, the requests for "better communication" have been directed at the people who moderate the boards not updating the announcments so we don't know when patches are happening, and us not being told what the developers are working on right now. I think the latter has improved (two updates on work in progress of patch2 for example) but unfortunately I do think that, at least on the Euro board (it is apparently different on the other ones), the moderators are a bit slow in putting up announcements

Strongly disagree. There has been thread after thread - and I have read a wee bit on the French and German boards too, even if both languages are about 10 years out of date for me - asking for the devs to come on up for air and why changes were made. To date, no response, no dev chats, no nothing. Similar issues arise with numerous suggestions and bugs going into the ether after a nice sweet powerless Guide responding in that under 5 minute timeframe, only not to be able to do anything about it. To me, the most disappointing feature of the game...if we had an idea where this was going, many of us could at least make our minds up whether to stay.

And I deleted the original response as I really do want people to come into the game and didn't want to discourage them. I also do think that painting an overly rosy picture, though, on top of the arguably hardest learning curve of any MMORPG doesn't do anything for retention.

But come play. Please. And while the game has some real, real serious problems, there's enough in there so that even someone as disappointed as myself at the devs and CSRs is still hanging in there. That should tell you enough.

[mrozzy]

pff, what are you all actually complaining about?? I can't see anything decently wrong with SoR (yes, content, but more and more is added with every small patch and the events currently going on). So what would you all like? maxing your char in three weeks? Overpowering any mob you see in a few days? Having the best gear in a month?

If you are looking for an easy game .. bye bye .. if not, check things out

[yy48n19]

This had been said before. Ok Ryzom has 5k or so costumers on the NA server. SWG had 650k, Wow had 500k on beta.
So is it easy to help out 5k costumers with problems? or 500k? Enough said

And your point is...? Even if the customer service is good only because of having a small population, it doesn't change the fact that the service is good.

One other thing I want to point out here: many, many people complain that the player base is too small. I disagree. For me, it is about the right size. It is what I am looking for in a game. I played SWG for a while and there were lots of people. It was hard for me to build in-game relationships because of that. I would see someone and rp a bit with them, then maybe never see them again. With the small community in Ryzom, I feel like I know something about everyone, and I have lots of in-game relationships. I am part of a close-knit guild, and still keep in touch with several people that I grouped with and traded with on newbie island.

Another positive effect of having a low server pop is that you really do get a sense of player characters being characters in an unfolding, epic story. Recently, there was a guild summit held in Fyros. People were afraid that it was going to be impossible to get there, so one powerful individual organized a huge pilgrimage that gathered people of three different races from their homeland and swept over Atys to arrive at Fyros. This was a huge player-initiated event and it now has legendary status. I'd say it had more impact on uniting the races and player base than the actual guild summit itself. The result of this is that Zzei, who organized it, has taken on mythical proportions (don't let it get to your head, Zzei ), cooperation and tactics in mass combat were practiced, spawn points were gained, people had fun.

Ryzom is a different kind of game. If you like a game that walks you through a series of events to make a story, then this game is not for you; however, if you like a game that allows you to create your own events, that challenges you to work with other players to get things done, and that allows you to make an impact on the world, this game is for you. Some people don't like small communities. They think bigger is better, and so are suited for an MMORPG with more people. Ryzom will never be EQ. It will never have a population like SWG. I don't think the Devs ever intended that. Of course, they want their game to be successful, but I don't think that they are counting success simply by whether or not they can attract hundreds of thousands of players to their servers. They want people to play and stay, yes, but they are also interested in creating a quality, story-driven game that is an alternative to other MMOs, many of which have very static worlds when compared to SoR.