Here's the deal:

Saga of Ryzom: Download Game

  • Duration: 14 Days
  • Client: Retail (1.2Gb)
  • Credit Card Required: Yes

This is another game I'd had a little previous experience with, from open beta, and even previewed it in it's beta state, on my previous blog. That review, (and blog) is now lost forever, but on the whole, I was quite harshly critical of the game at the time. Has it changed any?

Three Good Things

  • Quirky:

    While at first glance appearing to be yet another sword-wielding elf-fest, it soon becomes apparent that Atys, and the creatures on it, are something distinctly unique and different. The world itself is one gigantic plant, the various zones and creatures all part of its ecosystem. Metals are unknown, and various humanoid races have created civilisations in amongst the mind-bogglingly huge roots and branches of the planet-plant, and many species of bizarre and deadly monsters roam the hinterlands, culminating in the Starship Troopers style Kitin, gigantic insects intent on destroying everything.

    The feeling of strange 'otherness' pervades the whole game; the armours, the cities, the lands, to the point where the only really recognisable elements found in other games of the genre are the swords and the boobies. A very captivating and refreshing feel, particularly in the light of more traditional fantasy settings, such as Everquest and World of Warcraft.

  • Community:

    This must be one of the first times I've encountered an massive online game that can use the word 'Community' without eliciting a derisive snort from me. While in most cases, 'Community' is a word used by devs and producers to try to create a 'blitz spirit' in players, to encourage them to put up with a bad or broken game, with Ryzom, it genuinely seems to be a community, and one that includes both players and developers. Two weeks isn't a long time, but during that fortnight, practically everyone I met was helpful, polite and showed a real passion for their chosen game. Roleplaying seemed to be more a default attitude than a forced hardship, and no-one laughed and pointed at those people when they did 'RP' it up.

    Most interesting of all was that in the space of only two weeks of semi-obsessive play, (and two randomly chosen weeks at that), I saw game-wide broadcast messages detailing no less than six GM-organised events, and even ended up taking part in two of them. I don't think I've seen six events in four years of Everquest AND Anarchy Online combined. I also saw shout-spam for two further player-run events and ended up going on one of those. For the most part they were simple riddle-based treasure-hunt affairs, but it's a great feeling to be involved - to matter.

    Clearly, Saga of Ryzom is a game that both the players and developers care deeply about, which is more than I can say for many of the more successful and commercial online games out there today.

  • Vendors:

    Saga of Ryzom has possibly one of the most genius systems for the buying and selling of loot and crafted items I've seen in any online game ever. It goes like this:

    You go out and kill monsters, rip out their spleens, etc, and go back to town. Now all this monster guck is useful to other players for crafting, but instead of standing in a town square spamming local chat, or hosting it up on a vendor in a cottage in the middle of nowhere, you just walk up to any NPC vendor, and sell it to them. You get a set amount of cash, (about 40% I found), and can then go on your merry way, thinking no more of it, BUT, and here's the clever bit, the item stays on the vendor, and if another player then buys it, for a mark-up, you get the mark-up bit of cash (the other 60%) on top as well, either at the time, or when you log in next. You can have 128 items listed in this way, for 7 days, but after that, since you've already been paid for it, they vanish.

    Market competition still exists, because the 60% bit is adjustable, allowing finished crafted goods to be priced higher or lower according to market forces, but it means that all the useful loot bits found by people who just want to hunt and not haggle still make it to the crafters. After the 128 item limit is reached, you still have the option to sell to the NPC for the base 40% or so - the item just won't list for others to buy. I'm certainly no Terranovan, but I can't see any obvious downside to this system - as far as i can tell, everyone wins!

Three Bad Things

  • Stanzas:

    The skill system in Ryzom works off a customisable and editable set of hotkey actions, which are built up from individual blocks they call Stanzas. It's a quite complicated balancing scales equation - for a very simple example, to make a usable hotkey action you might include a 'Do Extra Damage' Option, for -10 points, and then have to balance it with a 'Uses 5 Stamina' Credit, for +10 points. I could add 'Increased Accuracy' to the same hotkey action, but would have to find another 'con' to add as well if I did. New Stanzas are bought with skill points, which are only gained when you level.

    As far as I can see, there is no way to 'unspend' those points at all, and the sheer complexity and variety of the available Stanzas means that it seems very easy to very badly ruin your character. While the system does provide an unprecedented level of character customisation, I'm almost certain that many of the Stanzas are red herrings, either unintentionally, or by design. While certainly not game breaking, this system will probably take most players several 'goes' to get right without a fair degree of background research/surfing. However, once they are understood, they do seem very versatile and powerful, provided the damage hasn't already been done at that point. I'd like to see some kind of limited 'respec' option there, to allow for experimentation or recovery.

  • Dangerous:

    The world of Ryzom uses both zones, and unzoned internal regions, and the difficulty of the creatures in these areas is nowhere near as linearly defined as in other games. Out of a potential 250 levels of Big Swordery, I reached 48 in the two weeks, and there were still creatures within sight of the main city gate that could kill me without breaking a sweat.

    This only gets harsher as you travel further, and getting from one race's city to the next is an exercise in supreme patience and unnatural zone-walking skills, or a matter of finding four or five level 200+ people with nothing better to do and get them to escort you through. Personally, I love that kind of challenge, but most people would find it difficult and ultimately frustrating, and it will be a long time before the new player can really go exploring in any useful sense.

    Added to this is the difficulty of the mobs themselves. Unlike the usual formula where 'Player = High Offense, Low Defence, Low Hitpoints' and 'Mob = Low Offense, Low Defence, High Hitpoints', the mobs in Ryzom seem easily as offensively capable as the players. They hit very hard on the whole, and unless you see them first, it becomes a real risk tackling an even-levelled single carnivore-mob. If attacked by two of these, you'll almost certainly lose. Agro mobs will follow you indefinitely, if triggered, and will even remember you for later if you get too close to a pair of them fighting between themselves. I got hit in the back a few minutes later, out of the blue, several times like that. In particular, the carnivore hyena-type mobs are a nightmare, as they move suddenly and fast and are very difficult to predict, or indeed, see, in the bushy forest country. Running does not seem to help in the slightest - if you are seen, you are dead.

    It also took me quite a while, and not a few deaths, to get the hang of the frankly odd 'con' system, used to gauge how lethal a mob is before engaging; a weird system of colours and stars not seen anywhere else.

    While the novel unpredictability of the world and it's denizens is a good thing, and can be accustomed to over time, I wonder if the somewhat harsh jump in learning curve from something more predictable, like Everquest II, won't scare a lot of newer players away initially. At any rate, at least death penalties are comparatively light - an accelerated 'xp debt' system that I never found seriously tiresome, and no equipment decay at all.

  • Limited:

    Granted, I'm something of an obsessive, but after two weeks, I was 1/5th the way to the top, had seen all but one land (according to a map spoiler site - I know, I know, but I'm on a limited timescale here!), and had gained a pretty solid understanding of what the next two to three months were going to be like; namely hitting progressively powerful things very hard with a very big sword.

    I did try a 'Magic' character briefly, and found it to be very unsatisfying at newbie levels, although they do seem to become the most powerful class in the long game. Range combat is an alternative, and seemed quite cool initially, using pistols made out of tree bark and mud and the like, but the mob takes one ranged hit and closes to melee range anyway, so Ranged becomes just an ineffective form of Melee, with much higher running costs - swords don't need ammo.

    Foraging seemed initially interesting, but again comes under the 'good in the long term' category - newbie foragers seem to have a difficult time getting the hang of the various prospecting skills, and even then it seems more a secondary hobby rather than main game. Crafting likewise.

    And then what? Well, the experience system is a branching one, meaning that at Level 250 2-Handed Swords, you can then go back, buy a gun and start from Level 21 Ranged. Similarly a L250 Swordsman can spend some spare skill points and buy into level 1 Magic - in effect, given enough time and patience, everyone can be all classes. Ultimately though the game does not seem be a lot different each time you level up a new line.

    Although it does seem to suffer the same 'rinse and repeat' content shortage that most MMORPGS end up with, in all fairness, it is new, young and fresh, and they do seem to have a lot of ideas for the future, and that episodic approach that served Asheron's Call so well in it's early days. Next on the cards is a guild-owned outpost system, a.k.a. 'Player Towns', although on the face of the evidence so far, they'll probably be quirky, if complicated, and involve quite a few new ideas.

All in all, I liked it. The people were friendly, the game interesting, and the grind, when I actually got down to it, was hardly a grind at all. While being an Everquest clone in the strictest sense, Saga of Ryzom is sufficiently novel and different to be a welcome break from the usual thing, and I’d recommend the freebie on that basis alone. Getting more involved, with plots and events and guilds, would undoubtedly provide even more rewarding experiences, but alas, my time is up. I actually felt a sense of loss and sadness leaving this one, and could definitely go another month or two, even with my limited attention span and jaded palette. Still, apparently they’ll keep my little newbie on file for three months, and I have a sneaking suspicion I’ll be quite likely to find that useful.

Final Verdict: Well worth a look, and maybe even a subscription!

So it’s not ‘Goodbye’ Atys, but ‘Au Revior’ (Nevrax are French, see? Geddit?). I’d like to stay, but duty calls. Operaton Cheapseats continues, and since I hate myself, I’ve decided to punish myself for enjoying myself too much – next up, Shadowbane! Can I cope? Am I a ghey f4g n00b? Will I emerge form two weeks of unremitigating total PvP a Man or a Gibbering Wreck? Stay tuned to find out!