The Saga of Ryzom

Developer Nevrax has shown devotion to its players with the release of the promised Chapter 1 patch for The Saga of Ryzom. It greatly improves the lackluster initial release, adding harder-hitting mobs and more invasions. The plan is for additional chapters, with an unfolding story… in theory. The reality of today is that you feel you’re playing an incomplete game.
At the start, you choose from four races: Matis, Fyros, Tryker, and Zoraï. You don’t choose a class; instead, you pick three starting skill packs: Fight, Craft, Harvest, and Magic—you can even choose the same one multiple times. You can change your appearance, though altering your character’s breast size doesn’t actually affect your character’s in-game abilities.
When you first log in, you’re teleported to what is affectionately called “Newbie Island.” Each race has its own segregated island that lets you get familiar with the game mechanics before you get ready to rumble on the mainland. And you need that experience, because the manual is waifish, containing little in the way of helpful information. In its defense, though, there isn’t much in the way of gameplay to support a Hulk-sized manual.
The game’s skill tree system—which is somewhat derivative of the one found in Star Wars Galaxies—enables players to literally max out any or all of the four available skill trees. But gameplay all comes down to the same thing: You kill things with either Fight or Magic and quarter them for phat loots, or you harvest for phat loots, or you combine said phat loots with crafting. And that’s the game. There’s no real auction or merchanting system, so there’s no real malleable economy. It’s completely left by the wayside.
Each time you gain a level in one of your four skills, you gain skill points. This is similar to MUDs, but what’s new is the way your new skills work. Stanzas are actions in the game, such as melee attack, or prospecting. Your newly earned skills modify or create new stanzas. Creating magic spells that cost no Sap (magic points) or attack actions that deal five times the damage of your weapon are just some of the ways to improve and customize your style of play.
Ryzom’s most interactive feature currently in place is its RAID engine. Herd animals band together to defeat attackers, Kitin armies invade your homelands, scavenging dogs attack herd animals—it’s all really sophisticated. It would be easy to appreciate this amazing AI if it didn’t gang up and kill you 8-10 times a day. It’s possibly too ingenious, and because of this Ryzom has a “gotcha!” style of aggressive mob kills, when you’re out harvesting and don’t see that pack of Gingo sitting on the hill 500 meters away, and they run you down and own you. These mobs run so incredibly fast that you have no hope of escaping them or surviving.
What’s more, when you die, you have a full two minutes for someone to find and heal you—there are no raise spells, and healing is all it takes to return you to life. Not that it matters, because it’s usually too hard to locate a fallen player and revive them before the timer is out. This is the most frustrating part of the game, netting you a death penalty similar to the debt system in City of Heroes. You die, and have, say, a 15,000-point death penalty. Using one of your skill types will let you work off this debt, and you can eventually begin to gain reasonable experience points again.
Other issues that seem to be improving, like serious lag, sucky quests, and incomplete Guild features, but they’re less of an issue than the supreme, god-like monster AI system. For a game with such amazing art direction, innovative game ideas, and a dedicated developer, it’s a shame that it pimps you down unfairly and destroys your entertainment with double-digit deaths.

This article originally appeared in Computer Games Magazine #171