English

So I've heard Ryzom is going on Steam. I urge you to reconsider. Yes, you will get funds but you will also attract the most horrible and vile elements of the internet community to your front door. Repelling these people is a full time job when they come en masse and as someone who has been in the gaming community since its birth I can tell you that Ryzom will not survive the experience.

IF you are able to repel them they will attack you both in reputation and in Denial of Service attacks. The people beyond our borders are the dregs of humanity and will see your refusal to admit them as a challenge to be met with the most underhanded and repugnant behaviour at their disposal.

Going on Steam will be the death knell of this beautiful game and I'm begging you, on my knees, not to do it.

a) Ryzom is a complicated game, I'm pretty confident that abusive players wont have the patience to stay here for any long amount of time.

b) Ryzom can't die, if Jena sees that it is falling into a coma, she will respawn it. :D

I quite now don't believe that Steam has a higher ratio of abusive players than other platforms/communities by average. I think if something's going to kill Ryzom it's the lack of resources caused by a lack of players.

Will steam turn silan in a wastland > yes I think
Will steam turn mainland in a wasteland > I don't think so since we are kind of a self regulating community if you aren't nice you don't get gear and help and without gear and help you are kind of busted in ryzom.

Ryzom isn't an easy game you can't come on here with your XXX guild and think you'll run this game in 2months. Ryzom takes time, practice and alot of DP. So I think the bad elements will dissapear once they hit the mainland. Silan is already bad at times and I can only imagine how much worse it's gonna get for new serious players starting on silan.

While I understand your concerns, I don't share them, mostly for reasons others have already given.

Many of the ill-behaved are too lazy to learn the intricacies of Ryzom. Many don't even bother learning basic mechanics like UI elements let alone more complex things like trainers or missions. Those sorts will weed themselves out. Most likely won't leave Silan, and those who do will resign when find that they are no longer big fish in a small pond as so many of us are about 200 levels above what would be considered "powerful" in Silan.

The dedicated trolls that have the patience to grind their way up high enough to be a threat will find that grind takes longer as they will either use inferior equipment or stop training fighting in order to craft their own gear. I don't see too many q250 Supreme Vedice 2H Axes for sale, nor do I see any master crafters who have access to q250 Vedice and Sups making such an item for anyone other than a friend. Such trolls rarely have powerful friends, and I think the digging required to get even one weapon crafting master to sidestep that need would require more patience than those who just want to go out and troll often have.

Of course, you don't have to be at the level of most of us in this discussion to troll other new players or spam Uni, but if the innocent victims are made aware of things like the /ignore command that problem is largely self-regulating. It's made a little more difficult considering that PvP here is by mutual consent and there is no looting of player's bags or meks. And it's not like counter-trolling is out of the question; if I want a break from digging, I might be inclined to answer distress calls from bullied players just as many of us respond to calls for a rez. It might be a little more effort from us, but I think it's manageable.

Now, if Ryzom were more conventional then I would agree, but I think that between the inherent design of Ryzom and the community, I don't see them being too much of a threat in that aspect. Many other games have a far more level playing field and/or strong "pay-to-win" aspects that allow one to be a true menace in a short amount of time. For instance, in World of Tanks you can just buy a Tier 8 tank with cash and be a powerful bully within seconds of installing the game. And it's not like Counterstrike allows one to have fifty times the HP of a new player just by grinding or opening the wallet.

As for bad reputation/publicity, that's a matter of numbers and they are outnumbered. I've seen plenty of reviews of Ryzom and I sincerely doubt that the ratio between good, bad and neutral will change from what it currently is; the only difference will be absolute volume. The only thing left is DoS attacks, I view them the same way I do viruses for OS X; technically possible but not a big enough target to be rewarding enough to offset the effort required to pull it off, especially if you want the DoS to last more than a few minutes.

Overall, I see Ryzom on Steam as merely change. I see no real dangers that we don't already face due to the inherent nature of being online at all in the first place. Yeah, we may have to make a few changes ourselves, and Silan might wind up a bit polluted (for lack of a better word) but I think we'll be fine overall.

Ack, so now I know that I'm most horrible, vile and ... uh, belong to the dregs of society? :( Like up to 125 million other people (however just up to 10 million active at the same time in average)?

Sorry, I cannot see why the Steam-community should be worse than other gaming-communities? Many have written reliable, factual reviews that point out the good and bad equally. There are as many or few trolls on their forums as in Ryzom - and also as many or few fanatical fans. The Steam-features I've been using are mainly in English (a few in German as well) and host people from all over the world.

So I don't get where this negative view of the Steam-community *in general* (!) is coming from? Okay, maybe I don't have the best insight, because I'm not overly active, and I still have a very small friend-list (I hate to be notified by Steam all the time about every little thing other players do).

I'm on Steam since July 2011 (Terraria). Since then I've written a few long reviews for games, have taken part at forum-discussions for certain games, have commented new updates/patches and have even become part of a group of players (called "Society of Ethical Adventurers" for Planet Explorers). Being part of the Steam-community has also motivated me to add stuff to game-Wikis, write bug-reports and reply to help-questions of players.