Ryzom... revisted.

[Signe]

Ryzom will be shipped shortly.  I believe it's been shipped in Europe, although the only people I know who have it there are French.  I have 3 Brit friends who have not yet received their copies.  In the US, it will be shipped on the 20th.  My EB order has been delayed until the 23rd, however.  

I tried to beta test this game early on but suffered from technical issues that prevented me from maintaining a connection.  A month or so ago, I tested it again and found that these issues and many more had been resolved.  So I gave it a fair chance.

I like it.  It's very pretty and it's starting to come together nicely.  But wait... starting?  Shipping is right around the corner!  This game, as nice as it is, doesn't seem ready to be released (as usual).  Ah... maybe they have a miracle patch!  That's it!

There are bits of the game that just go nowhere.  When you fight mobs, they drop bits of themselves that you would expect to use in crafting.  Most of these items have no use whatsoever.  They just fill up your inventory.  You cannot use them and you cannot sell them.  Strangely, this is the most annoying bit for me.  I like to move around quickly when I fight and, because of this, I have to either pick and choose what I want to carry or stop and 'destroy' a bunch of crap.  I'd rather be able to sell it all in one big lump.

There are plenty of quests, both combat and crafting, but they are all very similar.  I didn't have enough time to test any high level quests and I'm hoping that they will be a bit more involved and offer up interesting rewards.   I have not noticed that quests progress the story or that players have any real interaction with the storyline.  I've been told that this will change in release and the story will be more involved and the quests better fleshed out.  I hope so.  I like stories.

Crafting is crafting.  It can be tedious, but then, I've never found crafting to be a riveting profession in any game.  The nice thing about it is that you can experiment with different materials (and there are TONS of different resource types)  and get a different result.  Your xp for the items you craft is linked to the quality of the end result.  This bit is good.  There are different skills you can use to find different sorts of materials, too.  Such as a skill to find resources for clothing or weapons.  There is a resource tracking skill that I have not been able to figure out, and neither has anyone I've chatted to about it.  I was told, however, it's working as intended.  

Combat is ok.  I've been told by a dev, and as we all know... they are always very truthful... it becomes more interesting as time goes on.  They do have a colour coded indicator that will tell if the mob is aggressive and how much power (level) it has.  This wasn't working properly at the end of beta... it indicated all mobs were aggressive though the force indicator seemed to be fine.  They have worked hard on collision detection and my initial impression is very good.  It seems to work well for both players and mobs.  This made me happy! :)

The world is pretty enough and it runs very smoothly on my mediocre machine.   The only time I had noticable lag was during the announced stress tests and, even then, I was able to play with little difficulty.  I enjoy the way the animals migrate and interact with you.  You'll be trekking through the woods, looking for something to do, and a group of creatures will pass by, sometimes one will stop to pee on you or attempt to play.  

It took me a while to get used to the interface.  It's not standard in any way.  Although it's not so cumbersome as to make it annoying, there are too many windows which does irritate me a bit.  You can turn them off individually, though it would be a better idea to merge some of the windows or implement some sort of tab system.

There's a lot to do in this game and evidently the higher level content is pretty significant.  I hope so as it will be hard to compete with the games that are coming to fruition soon.  Ubisoft has made a distribution deal which seems almost last minute and the game will be on the shelves very shortly.

[Righ]

Crafting is okay, it's not even too boring. You won't get bored with it because the intensely protracted and uninvolving prospecting and foraging will prevent you from grinding it fast enough to get bored. You may however give up in frustration if your name isn't Santa and you don't have a crew of little helpers digging up resources for you.

Combat is as good for early levels as it was in Horizons. Lets hope it doesn't follow the Horizons schema of packing all the interesting features into the early levels. It has to be better than the initial experience.

Technically, the client is very good. The game does not suffer from the clipping issues seen in the majority of game clients, where different characters and objects vanish or lose body parts depending on angle or zoom. You can run with a higher degree of graphic complexity than in other games, and not suffer terminal client slowdown. So the game is fairly friendly to people not running the most modern iteration of hardware.

There appeared to be fewer retards in beta than I've experienced in past MMOGs. All things considered, I like the game more than I like the gameplay, which puts this one in the same camp as SW:G for me. I'm prepared to try it, but I'm hoping that their live team are busy little people and add a lot of interesting gameplay.

[Der Helm]

*stuff*
I'm prepared to try it, but I'm hoping that their live team are busy little people and add a lot of interesting gameplay.

Don't hold your breath ...

[Soukyan]

I pre-ordered it so I'll see you on Atys. Maybe... I think I may be the only NA player playing it.

[Signe]

Well, Righ and I are going to give it a go, so they'll be at least 3 NA players.  I suppose to play together, at least in the beginning, we all have to be the same race.

[Azhrarn]

You can run with a higher degree of graphic complexity than in other games, and not suffer terminal client slowdown.

It does a bit more monitoring of graphics load then some other clients, and scales the amount of polygons/etc up and down dynamically to keep things moving smoothly.  I typically have everything turned to low and in a window when I'm doing other stuff, and it doesn't look too bad as well.  Also, they've finally worked out most of the ATI/Direct3d issues from what I've seen.  Which is a plus.

[ajax34i]

It took me a while to get used to the interface.  It's not standard in any way.  Although it's not so cumbersome as to make it annoying, there are too many windows which does irritate me a bit.  You can turn them off individually, though it would be a better idea to merge some of the windows or implement some sort of tab system.

If I remember correctly, the UI was designed with a whole different concept in mind than most games.  Most games try to give you as much shiney real estate as possible, and thus have dockable windows and popups for pertinent information.

Ryzom has 4 virtual desktops, and you're supposed to use them, from what I understood, based on what you're doing:  my first desktop was combat, my second was resource gathering, my third was selling/buying.  You have to keep the pertinent windows open only on the specific virtual desktop you want, and then switch based on what you're doing:  as you exit town, switch to the combat screen, if you're going to shop, switch to the trading screen.

[HaemishM]

There was entirely too much "I hope" about what seem critical features in your post for me to have any hope this game will be worth buying.

[Signe]

You know me, Haemish... I am ever hopeful, cheerful and ultimately  disappointed.

[Righ]

There was entirely too much "I hope" about what seem critical features in your post for me to have any hope this game will be worth buying.

This is a "play free month then switch to something else game". There are few enough MMORPGs that if $50 for the box is no big deal, its worth a gander until the next one comes along.

There is good in Ryzom, but ultimately it depends on whether there is large enough of a rabid fanbase to sustain the game until the developers finish more of it. Such things have happened in Europe. It could be next year's AO. But it most likely won't be.

At least they got to the release stage. That's becoming a rarity itself.

[Signe]

Another interesting feature of this game is the Stanza system.  Some of the skills you buy have actions associated with them.  Such as accurate attack or increase damage.  Each of the actions are made up of other components.   You can edit these and string them together to form new actions, name them and put them in your hotkey bar.  There is a balancing system in place that will prevent any serious problems or exploits, such as being able to cast high level spells continuously with no mana or stamina cost.  You can do this with all professions... combat, magic, harvesting and crafting.  The new actions can be deleted and changed with impunity so it's been fun experimenting with customising my combat actions.  I have especially enjoyed using my 'DIE FUCKER' combat move on the goddamn pig/racoon hybrids that stop to pee on my leg.

[Furiously]

They really did make fighting with 2 daggers look darn ninja cool.

[Soukyan]

Haha! Dig the ability you came up with, Signe. I'll have to find out how you built it if my box ever fricking arrives. Now I remember why I always go to the store to buy my games at release. Shipping prices are a ripoff and if you try to save money, they fuck you by letting the package sit in the warehouse for a week.

[Signe]

There is something strange going on with this game.  Since I've started it, I've played mostly days and Righ, when he plays, nights.  The first day I logged in, there was only one other player in my region.  Later in the day it went up to 5 or 6.  That evening there were 11.  The next day the number had gone up to between 10 and 20, depending on the time of day.  During the first event, the highest number I saw was 56 in the region where the event took place.  That's the highest number I've seen so far at any time and, you have to reckon, that some of those attending  had made alts just to watch the event.  

They split up the events by race (there are 4) and will have the event in a different town on different days.  There would be 4 races and 2 towns for each of them.  That is 8 events.  Tryker, who had the first event, is the 2nd most popular race, slightly behind Fyros.  Only 56 players?  Have they actually sold more than 1K boxes of this game in the US?  There are 4 servers for different areas,  Euro (UK), France, Germany and NA.  I'm just looking at the NA server.

I noticed that there are quite a few posts on the website from people who have not received their boxes yet... but that happens all the time.  Even taking this in to consideration, this could possibly be the worst launch in the history of anything, let alone an MMOG.  I definitely think they need Sir Bruce to ask them the question, "Could things have gone any worse?"

[Soukyan]

There is something strange going on with this game.  Since I've started it, I've played mostly days and Righ, when he plays, nights.  The first day I logged in, there was only one other player in my region.  Later in the day it went up to 5 or 6.  That evening there were 11.  The next day the number had gone up to between 10 and 20, depending on the time of day.  During the first event, the highest number I saw was 56 in the region where the event took place.  That's the highest number I've seen so far at any time and, you have to reckon, that some of those attending  had made alts just to watch the event.  

They split up the events by race (there are 4) and will have the event in a different town on different days.  There would be 4 races and 2 towns for each of them.  That is 8 events.  Tryker, who had the first event, is the 2nd most popular race, slightly behind Fyros.  Only 56 players?  Have they actually sold more than 1K boxes of this game in the US?  There are 4 servers for different areas,  Euro (UK), France, Germany and NA.  I'm just looking at the NA server.

I noticed that there are quite a few posts on the website from people who have not received their boxes yet... but that happens all the time.  Even taking this in to consideration, this could possibly be the worst launch in the history of anything, let alone an MMOG.  I definitely think they need Sir Bruce to ask them the question, "Could things have gone any worse?"

I think a lot more people have not received their boxes just yet. Hell, I know I haven't received mine. I'm half tempted to go to EBGames store and buy one and just ship the one I ordered back once it arrives.

But on the topic of populations, what were their expectations? How are the European server populations? I'd wager they're much higher than the US server.

[Signe]

I don't know what their expectations were for launch, but I reckon you're right about it being more popular in Europe, especially France and Germany.  They seem to have had quite a head start regarding interest, as indicated by the amount of fan sites, especially unofficial ones.

[Soukyan]

Finally! It arrived today. Alas, my pre-order code is 4 digits too short so now I must email EBGames support and try to get that resolved. At least now I can actually play. Wooha!

[Azhrarn]

Submit a ticket in game or via email (technical-na@ryzom.com I believe), we have a list of the (suspected)incomplete pre-order codes and can send you the full one if you give us the incomplete code.

[SirBruce]

Azhrarn, you're doing support for Themis?

Bruce

[Azhrarn]

Yup, and no, I don't have numbers. :p

[Soukyan]

Submit a ticket in game or via email (technical-na@ryzom.com I believe), we have a list of the (suspected)incomplete pre-order codes and can send you the full one if you give us the incomplete code.

Thanks! Actually, EBGames must have been made aware of the problem and they resent the pre-order codes with all the digits this time so I received an email from them the next day with my complete code. It's working now.

Also, I get a lot of players asking if I'm a GM when I wear my Elder of Atys beta tester title. It turns out I can usually help them with their problems anyhow so I'm rather enjoying how that title is working in tying the newer player community to the elders in the game. I don't know if any other testers have had a similar experience though.

I just noticed that the Test Server was opened on Sunday for play by the beta testers. I'm quite pleased with that as I get the opportunity to test out some of the cool new features coming down the pipe.

Good stuff so far. The game is shaping up well. I see the potential for a tight-knit community a la AO in this game.

[Signe]

Speaking of titles, I just noticed today that my level 40 fighter is still using the title "Refugee".  I didn't bother to change it as it rather suits her.

[AlteredOne]

Interesting I'm in Durham NC, wonder if there are any good jobs available...   Then again, I already have a decent job :)

I broke down and got Ryzom this weekend, got tired of waiting for other games, after burning out on DAOC.

I played about 8 hours this weekend, enjoyed myself quite a bit.  Think I'm 26 melee, 13 craft, 5 magic, 4 harvest.  I left the newbie island, and got a good group near Ykranis for an hour before I logged out last night.  With a set of QL20 heavy armor and a QL20 2-handed sword, I feel pretty comfortable on the mainland.

Random thoughts...
1)  With only 4 skill trees, will we see enough differentiation between characters?  Will there be a ton of warrior-mage-crafter-harvesters running around with everything maxed?  I will say, it seems like most people will probably specialize, because it would take too much work to max every skill.  And I guess the specialization "titles" help you figure out who should play what roles in what groups, instead of relying on cookie cutter classes.
2)  I hope most people wait until at least one skill is above 20, before they leave newbie island.  You could really hate life if you left too early, and there is no way back that I know of.
3)  The crafting system is cool, but I would also like to see some "unique" items.  Hopefully some of them drop somewhere, or can be crafted using rare ingredients?

I'll admit, there's still a lot to learn, but I'm enjoying the game so far.  It doesn't feel too much like a treadmill, with the constant progression in some skill or another.

[doubleplus]

I started a guild within the North American server if you guys would like to join. It was originally going to be a goon-only guild, but I'm still working on selling a few of them in PMs, but you guys seem to be a bit more accepting. Guild name is Pen Is Mightier, my character name is Piggy. I'm pretty much gimped, but I figure a crew of gimps beats being a solitary one.

[AlteredOne]

After only 2 weeks of my first month, I am profoundly unimpressed.  Nevrax has especially annoyed me, by limiting access to their test server to pre-order code holders.  

Nevrax makes a big deal about how they are testing a huge "Patch 1" that will address many complaints, yet the testers say the test server is empty.  So I post asking that all registered players should have access to the test server, and I'm shouted down by fanboys saying I don't "deserve" to test the game because I have a bad attitude.

Meanwhile, the game is just a very long level grind, chain-killing the same stuff, with no quest content.  When I'm not killing things, I can wander around "prospecting" for invisible junk, with a miner's pick.  Woot, is that my cat's ass I smell?

[HaemishM]

I don't "deserve" to test the game because I have a bad attitude.

Only evil people like Saddam Hussein DESERVE to test an MMOG.

[Soukyan]

*blink*

I'm a tester for Ryzom

...

[AlteredOne]

So are you still playing?  Must be nice being so privileged as to be a tester! :P

[Soukyan]

So are you still playing?  Must be nice being so privileged as to be a tester! :P

Yes. I'm still playing. Heh. I do think that they should open up the test server to anyone who wishes to help out, but hey, what do I know?

[doubleplus]

You really aren't missing a whole lot, AO. Most of the issues and cool stuff has already been leaked to the main boards. Hopefully they'll have a fix for the weird stuff regarding the consignment system, but otherwise things are looking better.

[AlteredOne]

I'm afraid I concluded that Ryzom is not my game.  In theory, I thought it would be cool to explore their world.  But it's just a huge grind, with little real sense of exploration.  The AI is terrible, you cannot escape once a battle starts, and all you fight is bigger versions of the same monster, with a broken con system.

It didn't help that the famous "Patch One" went live with game-killing bugs, thanks to the complete lack of testing.  I have never heard of a company limiting the test server to pre-order customers only.  Sure, give your pre-order folks access to beta events, let them reserve a name or whatever, but once the game starts, every paying customer should be treated equally.  And I happen to be a paying customer who likes to test patches.

[ajax34i]

Yeah, they really screwed up with this Patch 1, if what I'm reading on their forums is correct.  I don't play the game, and I was going to wait a couple patches for them to add enough content and features to call Ryzom "a game", but it looks like they are unable to actually deliver much.   It doesn't feel like a good dev team to me.

We'll see what they do with Patch 2, if they even get there.

[Sky]

Only players who attend the first annual Ryzom fan convention get patch #2.

[Azhrarn]

There were a couple of quick patches to fix things today, I haven't looked into it the specifics yet on the patch notes, but apparently people are all happy and such on the forums.  Most of the packer issues (dying spontaneously and such), and harvesting complaints seem to have been fixed.

Just so ya know.

[AlteredOne]

Hopefully the patches helped.  I'll drop by during the next 2 weeks before my account runs out.  I really wanted to like this game, and I do hope it becomes a solid title.  Right now though, I just feel too much like a guinea pig, and my wife finds the game lacking in charm.  For a married couple, it's important to find something both of us can enjoy.