Recently I have been getting into a old mmo called
Ryzom. There have been a few threads on this in the past, but they are all pretty dead, so I decided to start one of my own.
Blurb: The Saga of Ryzom is a Science Fiction/Fantasy MMO that came out in 2004. It seems pretty noticeable for a couple of cool ideas it has. Actions (such as a dagger stab or spell) can be customized from basic parts, team play is hugely important, and in addition to the normal of 'fighter' and 'magic user' there are major advancement paths for 'forager' and 'crafter'. In fact, I would say foraging is pretty much just as legitimate a profession choice as fighter. That said, it is a old MMO, so you gota keep in mind there are a lot of things people hate nowadays. Almost all the quests I have seen are 'kill X number of Y animals' or 'gather X number of Y items'. Additionally a lot of modern polish is simply missing, despite the fact that the game has been out for almost ten years it's had a rough time in the past and so is still hugely janky in some places. And quite frankly it's pretty grindy some times. I have personally been having a lot of fun playing it with some friends, but If any of these things upset you or if you can't find anyone else to play it with (hopefully this thread will fix that issue) it is likely not the game for you.
Story and Races: The world of Atys is apparently a giant tree, although it's also clearly spherical and has deserts, so what's up with that? At any rate. There are four main races who are collectively called the Homin. The Empire building, Noble, Arrogant Matis, who are pretty much humans, they have a interest in biology and genetic engineering, there is a abandoned Matis city in the tutorial area surrounded by giant deadly plants, take from that what you will. The honorable, Desert Dwelling, Warrior Fyros who think of themselves as protectors and have a affinity for Fire, they are pretty much humans as well. The Mysterious, Magical, Nature loving Religious Zoraï, they are masters of electricity and magnetism and they have close ties to the Kami and genetically bond freaky masks to themselves to honor the Kami, they are pretty much night elves with freaky masks. Last and likely least, the short, carefree, inventive exploring Tryker, who have a affinity for wind and water, they used to be slaves to the Matis and are pretty much tall gnomes.
As far as I can tell the races are totally cosmetic, after the tutorial you can even pick which major racial city you start in, although apparently it is hard to reverse that choice.
Additionally there are the two powerful and mysterious races:
The Kami, who are strange and magical... Dudes, physiology does not seem consistent. They taught magic to the Homins are generally into magic and nature and balance and stuff like that. They seem to have good relations with everyone but the Karavan and especially close relations with the Zoraï.
The Karavan are the master of technology and heavily religious (ironic considering that the Zoraï like the Kami more). They appear to be humaniod, but I have never seen one outside of their spess outfit. (Not seen one at all really, not far enough in the game.) They appear to have good relationships with all the Homin races, perhaps the Fyros like them the best, or that might just be bias on the part of the few npc Fyros I have talked to.
Both of the major races were in a cold war with each other until the the Kitin came. The Kitin are a insect race who came from deep within the roots of Atys, probably uncovered by a Fyros expedition. They slaughtered most of the Homin and forced them to the top of the world. I don't know much about them, but I am guessing they are the main bad guys and they might have a little bit of 'revenge of nature' theme going on with them.
Price: It's important to note that the game is in fact not free. The current subscription fee is about $10 a month, honestly a little expensive in this day and age. But luckly it has a very extensive free trial, the only limit to the free trial that I have been able to find is that it puts a max level of 125 on all your skills. I've personally sunk ten hours or so into the game, and assuming that I totally focus on only one skill I believe at this rate I could reach that cap in maybe another 25-30 hours, assuming level gain does not slow down. But realistically I have much longer to go, because focusing on a single spell would be pretty strange.
Skill system: In Ryzom there are no classes per say, instead you simply have four skill trees. Fighting, Magic, Foraging, and Crafting. Every time you do a action from one of the skills you get XP in that skill. When you max out a skill the next level of that skill opens up. For example, all the base skills start with a level cap of 20, so when you level your fighting skill up to 20 you unlock Melee fighting and Ranged fighting, both of which start at level 20, and then if you level up, say, Melee fighting to level 50 you unlock One Handed Melee Fight, Two handed Melee Fight, and Close Combat which all start at level 50. After that level up on of those categories you start specializing and specific types of weapons such as smashing or piercing. After that you start specializing in specific weapons, and then finally the last category is mastery of those specific weapons. All in all the manual claims that there are a total of over 2000 levels to gain in fighting. That said, levels don't mean a bunch by themselves, to the best of my knowledge they only offer points to be used in the Action crafting system.
Action crafting: A very interesting part of Ryzom is the ability to craft your own... Everything really. Almost everything you can do in the game is called a action and each action is made up of one or more Stanza. There are four categories for actions to the best of my knowledge: Fighting. Magic. Foraging. And Crafting. Every time you level up your skill you gain 10 points for that category, which can be spent buying Stanzas
or if you don't want to bother with making your own you can directly buy prebuilt actions, which from what I can see are priced based on the Stanzas in them that you do not have yet and they unlock all the Stanzas that they are made of. Additionally, in some cases it appears that you need to at least buy the first level of a Stanza from a prebuilt action.
Team play: From what I have been able to see this game is hugely team based. Even in the tutoral it is impossible to beat all the missions on your own. You simply need team mates. Additionally, many spells are team based, you can heal tons of health and even mana, but not to yourself (although you can get self heals that are fairly effective for a quick bost, but they have a long cool down.) Additionally many spells are channeled, so you can't do anything else as you cast them. You can even turn invincible, but they can't attack like that, so you need someone to do damage as you tank. All in all I heavily suggest you find some friends (of which I am sorta volenteering to be one) or hopefully this will get popular enough on bay12 that I can set up a guild or something so we can get together for harder quests.
Crafting: There is a deep and hugely important crafting system with tons of levels and qualities and complexity that I don't really understand because I have not done the tutorial on it. From what I can see is that everything is made up of materials (such as skin and eyes and rocks) and all the materials have their own quality, which effects how good the item is, level, which effects how it interacts with Stanza and higher level is likely better, and effects. So you might have boots made of like worm skin, cow bones, and horse oil, and it would have different stats not only based on the quality of the things that when into it but would also have different stats and purpose then boots made of worm skin, cow bones, and wolf oil. (Note: All the animals and plants and such in the game have nonsense fantasy games, and I doubt any of them give oil, so this example is not a real example.)
Links: Main siteManualsDownloadAfterword: All in all, I am having a lot of fun playing this game with friends, and was hoping that I could get some more people to have fun and join me. Maybe if enough people get interested I will look into making a Bay12 guild. It's a fairly light download (compared to modern games at least) and its a huge amount of free content, so hopefully some of you will be interested in trying it out.
My character is a Fyros named Zahia who is specializing in magic (although I may turn to tanking soon.) and my friend is a Fyros mage called Melora. We are still going though the massive tutorial area (it is a massive tutorial, probably the equivalent to a zone or more in WoW) And would be happy to meet any of you dudes.
