English

The diamond in the rough.

Perfect description of Ryzom, I have played mmorpg's for over 10 years and never heard of this game, yet, it has some of the greatest features of a game world to date, for example;

Full customizable spells, forget letting developers design each and every spell and class in the game, instead they put that power into the players hands, want to be a Shadow Priest? Make life drain heal spells, health drain attack spells! Want to be a Warrior? Create after parry, after dodge bleed upgraded attack moves! It is insane how much freedom you have in this game! Create your own named class that not one person has ever even dreamed about!

Want to be a realistic harvester! You need to learn the season and weather conditrions of the material you wish to harvest! how cool is that, you even have to locate it through the search and proscepting in the game! Why has this system not been copied! Only God knows why! To go along with that, a world based upon a real ecosystem, herding, migrating, symbiotic behavior! Frikkin Awesome!

Want to be a realistic crafter! Each of the things you make is based upon the specific stats of what you harvest and how skilled a crafter yopu are, no pre made items in this game, completely unique items made each time!

I mean, why is this game not a triple AAA contender up there with other high population games? I just do not understand it!

Other games are boring and send you on a linear path, want to live your own life in an awesome world, that is what Ryzom offers, how is it not more popular?

One of the reasons I know is, because I never even heard of this game, and I am an avid mmorpg player, Asherons Call, World of Warcraft, Mortal Online, Darkfall, Lineage, Everquest, Vanguard, Rift, SWToR, and those are just the ones I can think of....yet I have never even heard of thjis game untill I picked a random game off of the mmorpg.com game list?

What gives? How can such a cool ass sandbox and one of the most creative games I have ever played be sitting in complete obscurity?

Someone please explain it to me!

Yalbadoath I love your post and enthusiasm for a world I have called home since 2004. You see what all of us that love Atys see. A place where you actually live. Not so much a game but another life you slip into. An alternate reality.A true second life. There are a few reasons I believe that has led to it being hidden gem. It was realesed within weeks of the powerhouse mmorpg that all modern mmos tries to copy,WoW. Next Neverax was a small French company with wonderful vision but little experience and by the time they finished had not enough money left to market the game. They prolly were cash strapped and just couldn't compete with Blizzard's advertising budget.Patch 1 for the game was a disaster. I personally was hooked and was patient while they scrambled to fix things but many left in droves and very few returned. Compared to WoW Ryzom has a steep learning curve. The things you and I love about the stanza system and customazation confuses many. Still at this point I think Ryzom had a strong chance to flourish but they started to scramble. They brought in(sorry I forget her name) someone to "fix" Ryzom to attract more subs. She shifted the original concept of the game to a more PvP approach. She failed to understand that the existing sub base were a tight cadre of ppl who absolutely thrived on community and helping each other(Ryzom at launch was a signifgantly harder game). The player base was so tight because we all needed each other to survive at launch.PvP caused major drama and many more left in droves because the Atys they loved was a place where we all stood together to face the kitin threat and fight to regain our history and culture(on a side note I always felt it was stupid for ppl to be fighting each other in the face of the kitin threat and not be uniting as we were).As the company was scrambling trying to stave off bankruptcy they merged the US server Windermeer and the English speaking rest of the world server. This in itself was fun for many of us but showed the game was financially shakey. Some ppl don't want to invest effort into a game that may close. Meanwhile WoW is a runaway hit drawing the interest of many. Neverax then started putting development money into the Ring. Ryzom was the first game ever to venture into player made content.The problem being they never finished it to where you could pay and they would keep your scenario up on their servers.It seemed mgmt would have great ideas but never finish. Eventually it was bankrupt.Game Forge bought them only to also go belly up. Two bankruptcies really doesn't help attract players as well with limited funds the game stagnated few patches little story.Luckily with 63 skills to Master to 250 there is alot to keep you busy:) It came down to great vision to little dapper not enough marketing.For those of us who have lived here it has some shortcomings but it also has been a way to have a mature community that thrives on helping ppl and self polices itself to keep out the some of the immature potty mouthed slack jawed mouth breathers that seem to flourish in other games as well as Gold Farmers and spammers that live in the dark underbelly of many games.

Jessica Mulligan <3

I think the problem with Ryzom for most players is that there are no short-term concrete goals. Instead there is one long-term, abstract goal that you have to set by yourself.

Thanks Jable:). Glad to see your about. How's things? Have you seen Kyerna recently?

Unfortunately I haven't. :(
I've heard that she made a short return around this time last year though.

One could say Ryzom is a primary example of perhaps the biggest flaw in our economy; that marketing trumps product quality. It came out at the same time as WoW and WoW gobbled up all the players with it's far superior marketing.

And the thing with MMOs is that once they are small, it's nigh-on impossible to become big again. Small playerbase automatically means nobody pays any attention to it, so it's never mentioned anywhere, and the few players that do find it are scared off by the small playerbase as well.

This is why new MMOs tend to open with a huge hype & marketing campaign. They know their only chance is to have a player explosion on day 1; because if at any moment an MMO has a small playerbase, it's impossible to get out of the downward spiral anymore.

One could also say Ryzom is a primary example of how a product that is too far ahead of it's time never does very well. Almost 10 years later and still almost every MMO uses WoW's much simpler harvesting and crafting systems. Still no MMO has re-invented anything close to Ryzom's systems. Apparently the population at large just wasn't (and still isn't) ready for such huge involved systems.

I often wonder what the MMO genre would be like now days if Ryzom had set the benchmark rather than WoW. This game could have set the industry off on a totally different path.
I wish they had had the funds to finish the job that they originally planned.

I think Ryzom is the game we all still wishes
that it should have fully delivered. And probably
the reason a lot of players comeback just to see
how is doing .

I for one am not fully sold as a FtP toon to have
only a few restrictions:

I like how it made it available to new players coming in
and discover all the freedom they can have without a
paid subcription, but at the same i dislike how they can
stay and do almost everything without supporting the game.

Kil said it all. Ryzom is a place to live in. It's the only MMO around with a mix of "game" and "virtual world".
It's not perfect, I often criticized the devs (past and new) for their choices.
I don't count GF as something to care, they only used Ryzom to acquire some investor. Lucky for Ryzom GF left before they could totally ruin the game.
The actual owner have done some good thing and some mistake, as usual. But at least, they care of Ryzom, and respect the original concept. That's enough to hope in some good addition in the future.
The old days are gone, but we are still here, and what's important, we continue to support our virtual home, with or without mistakes or choices that differ from our tastes.
Having Ryzom as your virtual home doesn't prevent you to play other games.
It's even better, because you'll know that, once you are bored of any other game, you can just come back at home. Still, if you love Atys, you have to support it, regardless of your playtime. It's cheap.

The fault lies fully on Company that made the game and no one else. Eve online started like ryzom small unknown space sandbox game, the diffrence is CCP who made the game did never stop evolving the game, constantly upgrading evolving , features overhauling grafix...

And they started basicaly in garage with the game.

It is a very old game yet it has still survive even if being a sandbox and with exception of ryzom eve online continued gaining player base. We had highs and lows with EVE , now its almoust 13y old, and still gaining playerbase every year.

For a space sandbox that is best game out there.

For land sandbox Ryzome is kickass game and would be leader of all sanboxes if only company invested more in the game.. and evolve to higher lvl.

After so many years i returned only to see nothing changed...

Want grafix overhaul, more lands, unexplored areas, new animals, new mats, new bosses, housing/city building options, farming, hearding, mounts, invasions, ...

I still love ryzome!!!

Of course...because it is so obscure, there is always the option of upgrade and "re-release"...because many would not realize it was not an original release. As stated above, many of the concepts used in Ryzom are still revolutionary to the MMO industry...

I think it would be interesting for the current owners to poll the long term residents and find out what features they would like added (not just the little stuff from the suggestions forum, but big game features). I want to know, if the sky was the limit, what would FyrosFreddy, Marelli, Kilgoretrout, and the others who have remained steady customers/players from release, what would they want added? Build what they want...add it in a big patch/upgrade and treat it like a new MMO release.

The MMO world is starving for a real sandbox...

(Personally, I would ask for a Minecraft like construction system and huge uncivilized lands for my guild to tame and build in ...that imo would make it the perfect sandbox).

Me? I'd take a few pages from EVE's book, because the one thing that guy up there is right about is they do the sandbox thing much better.

I would want a small civilised world - the current world will do for this - controlled by the NPC nations & factions, where most of the story action takes place. I then want this civilised world surrounded by hundreds of square kilometers of no-mans land that is totally shaped by the players. They'd be able to built their own outposts & cities etc there.

Though unlike EVE I want two game-mechanically separate no-mans-lands. One should be open PvP, so it's where the PvP megaguilds can fight over who gets to lord over it, including destroying eachother's outposts etc. The other should be PVE-only, with kitin & goo & primitives & tribes etc being the only threat to the players who try to built there.

To then finish this world, I want the random mini-instances like suggested here and here, popping up everywhere for the players to explore and find small treasures. And a Ring-system that allows us to make our own more permanent mini-instances and attach their entrances to for example the outposts we built in the no-mans-lands. (These Ring instances would be permanently available - loaded onto the server when someone enters and closed again when they're empty.)

Apart from that, I'd want more exploration anyways. I'd want some system of tracking down the randomised instances, I'd want amber cubes out in the world to be tracked down. I would want excellent and supreme materials to be treasures to be found, never in the same spot twice. Same with nameds and bosses. (Aggressive specimens might thus all have to be relocated to the no-mans-lands.)

Then finally I'd want the stanza and crafting systems re-worked so that there is no longer a "best combo". No more weapons that have all important stats maxed or near-maxed. No more armours that offer near-max protection against everything either. A system that forces you to actually choose between damage or speed, between accuracy or range, between slashing or piercing protection.

My last two wishes, crucial as I believe them to be, probably wouldn't go over well with a small group of current players who are used to having their neverending supply of max-everything gear from reliably available sups, though :)