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I'm a new player just getting a feel for Ryzom, and I wanted to understand what people love the most about it, or whether you have any memorable moments in it.

Wow, that's a great question and one which is bound to get some essay length replies.
For me personally it's the friendships, albeit online friendships, but friendships non-the-less.
The chatting and banter is what's most important to me, the gameplay side of things doesn't bother me so much. Now i have high enough 'skills' to get by and not die every 5 minutes, i find myself enjoying helping out other people more than anything else (i despise grinding with a passion).
It's a hard slog at first and making friends makes it far more enjoyable. 

The gameplay things i do love though are the complexities of the game, i.e., the crafting system (though i don't craft much) - 1000's of possible combinations of materials. The way certain animals have certain statistics meaning this sword will be rubbish against this guy but that axe will be ace! 

It's true what people say in that you make your own game.. once off the starter island you're not really guided in any way to do things. It's all your own personal choice. You can run missions if you want or you can build a fire and just sit watching the world pass by. You might want to gather a team and go rid the world of all its nasties, cool, do it!

My advice would be to stick with it, many people drop out when they leave the starter island for one reason or another, but the mainland is very rewarding in its own wierdly sadistic way. :)

I have played Ryzom once before. The first time, I had a stroke and had quit for a few years because I took about two years to start functioning again, or eve remembering Ryzom. My second time I had started again in December 2013.

In my opinion, the best thing about Ryzom is the community. In general, other players will help everyone else. I have been "resurrected" many times in the past, thus avoiding my Death Penalty. In my opinion, this is because healing gets experience, so people get experience for that single kind of help. That is a good thing.

People within Ryzom are willing to explain things that need explaining, like not bothering to use acid against Kippees, instead using cold. It is little things like that that will be helpful to other players.

Again, I agree that staying in Silan for a while is a good thing, although I am thinking of creating another character and jumping straight to the mainland, but that is because I have learned to HATE silan.

I had once tried to stay on Silan for a while, until level 60, but it had started me going crazy. Sure, it was good to be helpful, but Silan is just a training period. You NEED to move onto the mainland.

I have had levels 104, 80, 70 (all in fight). If I had stayed in the limited resources in Silan, I would probably be only level 65-70 in Silan.

However, understand, the mainland is different from Silan. The challenges are less-programmed, and more dangerous. But in my opinion, they are well worth it to me.

OH, as a PS

Things are both cheaper and more expensive in the mainland. Even with player-generated items, I can get a good level 70 "oven-mitts" less than what I can buy in Silan, and no one in Silan can even MAKE level 70 "oven-mitts" in Silan.

"oven-mitts" = magic amplifiers

Actually, nobody gets experience points from rezzing another toon or healing someone not in their team, they were doing it for you because Ryzom is full of friendly people willing to help. It's one of the things I really love about the game, I've made some really good friends from all over the world Here, and I think that everyone can agree, we have a really great community of players. I started 3 years ago and, at the time, thought I would never EVER pay a monthly fee to play a game online, Now I pay for 2 accounts.

I didn't know that non-team-members didn't get experience, which only reinforces that the players of Ryzom are friendlier than, for example, Whorecraft.

most of the ryzom community is about friendship before gameplay, but there are those that feel gameplay comes first (or it seams that way sometimes)

Actually, I do both.
I LOVE the gameplay, but will always heal people who need it. Sometimes I will allow someone to fight something because I know that I can heal them if need be.
But, my spellcasting abilities are probably substandard, so it will tak e a while to heal someone fully.
But for me, the game play is as important as the sense of community.

i was thinking more along the lines of extreme roleplay that doesn't allow you to play with some people, to me that's a little too much in a game as small as ryzom, it's one thing in the structured events and things like that, but it's a game, and i feel we don't need "hate" at all, even if it's simply RP, save it for the RP events, not the day to day gameplay.

Things I love most about it?

Joining a guild shortly after leaving Silan and leveling up with new friends my strength level day after day and going with them where you explore the huge world together, whether it be training, or fighting strange new monsters together and getting smeared, or just watching while one of you run through a bunch of aggro and make it back safe to a friendly camp while the other laughs his head off watching you. Launching fire bombs at a pod of kinchers.... :)

Learning from eachother, the thrill of first joining an op (outpost), fight and having your blood pump so fast you sweat!

There is so many other things to mention, you simple have to experience it, it is not something that I can say to you where you will totally agree. You may like other things to do on Atys that I don't, maybe you WILL agree totally, who knows. I just advise to try it and give it a real fair chance! I can say, you will love it.

Also, making fun of people, yes, I admit it, i get a kick out of funny questions and I will answer them funny if I can in Universal chat. (Don't worry Newbies, I love you, and will fight for your protection! So don't take it seriously, so expect some banter), So please ask questions!
~Yours Truely,
Naema

Things I love most about it?

The complexity of the game is super for me! A world living on Atys.. Guild is more like a family and sister guilds are like distant families. We support, quarrel, hunt, war, dig, fight, sing, tell stories, lead path and do all other possible activities together and get happiness and spread happiness.. What else do we want? oh yeah.. a colourful yubo :P

Apart from this.. This game takes a very very low network bandwidth (1KBps for me) and multiple chat windows. I keep on showing this to my friends and they appreciate it too. [well I feel high at that time :D]

What I love about Atys.

I love watching the wildlife move back and forth over the course of a long digging session, seeing how it changes with the seasons and the cycles.

I love it when a plan comes together and the team I am in takes down a Prime Roots Boss despite the attempted interference by three Kitin Patrols (RIP).

I love the feeling of success when I run through/around/past a field of aggro without exciting a single one of them. I also love the feeling of managing to escape with my life by the skin of my teeth when I fail the first task, and the minor triumph when I manage to make it to a point where it will be simple for another homin to resurrect me before I am taken down.

I love the view of a waterfall, or of a herd of bolobis moving around as evening falls and the glowing sparks of sap-rise fill the air. I love the glowing plants and floating globes of the Prime roots, the colors of the wildflowers, the growing flames of the Sun as morning comes.

There is more; these just a few of my favorite things.

Mac'Od Bittty

Wow, where to start?! :o)

The community in Ryzom is, IMHO, second to none. How many other games can say they have communities where a homin will run for miles just to save you some DP?

I love the sunset over the Flaming Forest; I can happily sit on a summer's evening and watch the sky fade slowly from orange to black.

I love running non-stop from Dyron to Pyr (or vice versa) through Lonesome Pass, picking up Gingos and Frahar as I go; just because I can without dying.

I love to sit and watch the interactions between predators and prey within the eco-system; little things like how a Varynx circles the corpse after a kill before eating. It shows how much effort was put into crafting a beautiful game by the original devs.

I like treks, specially in big groups, just don't let me navigate!

I like swimming through the Lakelands; my second favourite land even if it does have FAR too much water! :o)

I like that the game is tough and doesn't coddle you, as you can guess from my signature.

I like that Bittty is quoting the Sound of Music. :-p

Another thing I like about Ryzom is that, as a character, you can choose the worst possible "levels" imaginable, but you can recooperate from those bad decisions over time, a possible very short time, and "recover" from your mistakes and get a good character from the old-bad character.

That is because this is a SKILL-based game, rather than a level-based game.

Suppose you decided to spend alot of effort in magic, but for whatever reason, you start hating that decision. You can then gain your experience in fighting, and become a very good fighter, because, in the end, it really doesn't matter what you have done in the past.