Posts Tagged Ryzom


The Newb guide to MMORPGs

Introduction

You must think I’m nuts. I downloaded 67 GIGABYTES worth of MMOGs to test. 26 of the suckers, 10 of which I’m focussing on here. As for the other 16? Well, they’re listed at the bottom of the article. If and when I get around to discussing them, they’ll be linked here as well. Let’s just say they weren’t worth my time to review, for one reason or another. Not necessarily because they were bad (although some were beyond bad)… just that I had to choose a sample that would be the games that I’d be most interested in trying out. Besides, it’s not as if one MMO isn’t enough already for most people that actually want a social life. Like you know, a social life that doesn’t involve hitting / or ENTER first.  And I had to pick and choose. So these are the ones I chose:

Dungeon Runners (overview forthcoming)

Guild Wars (overview forthcoming)

Pirates of the Caribbean Online

Everquest II

World of Warcraft (overview forthcoming)

City of Heroes/Villains

Lord of the Rings Online

Runes of Magic

Ryzom

The Chronicles of Spellborn



Happily, I can say that I managed thus far (knock on wood) to avoid severe addiction to any of them. Well, mostly.

The Scope

Before I even get started, I should mention something: I’m a PvEer. I don’t play PvP and it’s not my focus, nor interest. So I didn’t test out any PvP while playing these games. If that’s your thing, these articles may still be of interest to you, but they are talking only in terms of the PvE component of these games. Just thought I’d mention that up front.


I’m not going to be writing hard-core, in-depth reviews of each of these games. If you want reviews of them, the vast majority of these games (perhaps excepting a lot of the free to play ones) have been reviewed ad nauseum elsewhere on the web. What I’m going to do is tell you which ones I think are worth the time downloading and testing. I’ll tell you what I liked, what annoyed me, and what I thought stood out – both in a good and bad way. If you are a newbie, this might be a good place to start before you get your download on.

Just FYI, I don’t really get into that whole ‘role-playing’ business very much. I play these games to get sweet loot. I play to kill monsters.. of some sort or another. I suppose leveling and assign skills or stats has become synonymous with role-playing, which I don’t entirely buy, or take part in. But whatever, that’s for another article.


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Ryzom Review

Ryzom (formerly the Saga of Ryzom)

State: Final (x3… it is the third publisher and re-release for this game)
Website: http://www.ryzom.com
Developer/Publisher: Spiderweb
The Pitch: Ryzom is a wholly original MMORPG fusing science fiction and fantasy. Ryzom Ring (R²), Ryzom’s first and free expansion, evolves the Saga introducing the first ever MMO scenario editor!

Okay, that is pretty cool. I’m way too lazy to bother with editing scenarios, but it’s still cool that some players might do that. I’d probably have to read forums for a week to figure out how to actually enter a player’s scenario though.

 

The Caveat

 

Pay to play outside of the trial zone. Similar to how The Chronicles of Spellborn works, you can download and play the game for free, but only in the trial zone. Which is a reasonably large island, floating in the sky. The ups and downs for this game have been many; it is currently with it’s third publisher, having been shut down and resurrected twice before in the past. The game has been (completely) free for the last little while, as the most recent publisher gets their billing arrangements and such in order. Just a few days ago, the new cost structure was announced on the official forums. Thankfully, it’s nowhere near as complex as TCoS, with the cost being $11 USD, with lowered costs for a longer contract.

 

Performance

 

Ryzom ran great. All settings were at their max. However, I should note that I bought this game at launch.. or shortly thereafter. How could I not? I found it in a bargain bin for $2. A bad omen, to be sure. This was back in 2005 or so. Since that time, I oft tried to hop back into the game. The trouble was, I often couldn’t get it to play. It would load up and that stall on the last bar of the loading screen. Apparently, this was a common issue, but for whatever reason was neverly properly addressed. It continued to dog me – and Ryzom – for several years. You can search for posts by user ‘oliverh72′ on those boards to see what I went through to get the game to run properly. Eventually I gave up completely. Nonetheless, being the obstinate person I am, I tried it again when writing these articles. Somehow in the process, be it my hardware or theirs, the game ran without a hiccup. Not once did I have a problem logging in. I can only hope that your experience is as good.

One other thing. You’ll notice in my screenshots that the camera is much farther away from my character than it allows in game. I found the in-game camera to be claustrophic and constricting. Yuck. So, I learned how to adjust it. FYI, this is against the company’s ToE, I assume for PVP reasons. Whatever. The fix is simple:

- close all instances of Ryzom-related programs
- locate ../Ryzom/client.cfg
- open with your favorite text editor
- append the following line to the bottom of the text file (must have ten trailing zeros!): CameraDistMax = 10.0000000000;
- save the text file and load Ryzom, enjoy!

Hope that helps.

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