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On a less fanboy-ish note, there is healthy number of reasons why Ryzom isn't that popular amongst wider audience.

1) Heavy grind, that become even heavier, once you reach high levels. Getting last 15-20 levels before you hit that magical 250 number is a pain, even in good training team and with use of xp catalisers.

2) The game is inclined to harvesting and crafting, also killing countless thousands of mobs. If you aren't in these somewhat meditative processes, you will presumably get bored soon.

3) Lack of general valuable goals, that the game has to offer. Once you have reached a couple of middle-term goals, like getting some mastered skills and best gear, establishing your guild and capturing one or more Outposts, you have to ask yourself "What's now?". And at this point Ryzom have nothing left in its sack to offer to you. You can kill more bosses, get more skills mastered, capture more Outposts, but you are getting into kind of a loop here. Ryzom gives you lots of skills and stuff to obtain, but quite a few things to use them for.

4) PvP is poorly motivated, lowly rewarded and has minor variety, which brings in repetitiveness and boredom. All in all, PvP is treated like a fancy addition to the game, rather than activity, that can stand in line with PvE.

5) Dated graphics. Not an issue to me, but i've been told many times "I'd give it a shot, if graphics weren't that crappy".

6) Skill system, while looking promising, utilize a lot of useless or rarely used actions. That leads to only few setups being really effective that most people stick to. As example, that "shadow priest" is viable of course, but in no way it can be as effective as average elemental mage of equal level.

7) Lack of player-made content. For the game pretending to be a sandbox, there is very little of live action going on. In fact, it can be boiled down to a couple of things: player-run events (which are rare), treks, boss hunts and Outpost battles. Not to mention all forms of daily grinding, but this is obvious enough.

8) Players have close to none impact on the gameworld. Not very sandbox-ish again. Things like building and destroying structures, planting or chopping woods and such are non-existent. Sometimes developers start building events and grant players ability to build something during these events - but only in predefined places, predefined numbers and types. Once such event is over, players unable to change anything in the world. Placing drills at Outposts can be considered as actual building though, but again, you are bound to numbers (one drill per Outpost), place and types (basically there are two of them). Ironically enough, two important sandbox-like features in Ryzom provided by the Outposts, so called "non-desired" content, discarded by some grumpy vets.

I think various combinations of reasons listed above distracted lots of players through last years, both subscribers and trialers.  Also i think it has nothing to do with WoW relise, despite fanboys saying it all the time like a mantra. Yeah sure, the game itself is flawless, it's nasty WoW that draw away players from Ryzom. WoW is a themepark game, Ryzom pretends to be a sandbox. These sub-genres aim for different target audiences. Sometimes these audiences can cross eash other, but most often they don't. Themepark players in general find sandboxes rather unfriendly and confusing. Sandbox players find themeparks simply boring. For instance, i never played WoW, not even on trial (can you believe that?), nor its clones and have no interest in trying them out.

So, what's happening, if average sandbox player, looking for something new, gets a word about unknown sandbox game, named Ryzom? He's going to check it out, encouraged by its features. Only to become disappointed later, when he face one or few of the issues listed above. And if grind and graphics are minor ones and can be overlooked (or don't even considered as issues), #3, #4, #7 and #8 strike him hard. So most of these people quit, searching for greener pastures and leaving vets grumbling about WoW, lack of publicity and low population. No wonder it's low - themepark players aren't interested in Ryzom and may get a quick glance at it, only if they are bored. And sandbox players find Ryzom lacking some important features making it a sandbox.

IMO, in its current state Ryzom is going to remain as it is - low-populated game, occupying its own little niche, never intending to break out of it. That seems, Ryzom owners are pretty happy about it with core players fully supporting them and different opinions either ignored, or mocked, or criticised once they appear.

 

 

 

@Yalbadoath: In the many games you played or are still playing, have you asked your friends what they think about Ryzom? What do they say?

All good reasons why Ryzom is inferior in the present, Tumbleweed, but all of that could have been different had Ryzom had a bigger playerbase and thus more steady stream of income to work with from the start.

Heck, the whole reason Ryzom is inferior in the present can be summed up as "there have hardly been any major additions made in the 10 years since launch", which in turn was caused by the lack of players and thus lack of income since launch.

Thus, "why has Ryzom failed?" really has nothing to do with the present state of the game, the real question would always be why it wasn't popular at launch.