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.

NEWB!

First and foremost, the difference between a ‘newbie/newb’ and a ‘noob/n00b’. The Urban Dictionary breaks it down like this: Newbs are those who are new to some task* and are very beginner at it, possibly a little overconfident about it, but they are willing to learn and fix their errors to move out of that stage. n00bs, on the other hand, know little and have no will to learn any more.

Read more here: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=noob.

The Breakdown

The articles are broken up into 3 main categories, as I see them:  Free to play games with cash shops (Part 1), Free to play games with caveats (Part 2), and Pay to play games (Part 3).

For each game, I’ve tried to give it an honest shot. Really. Even if it sucked and I swore at myself for doing this while playing, I pushed on. I put myself through the torture so you wouldn’t have to. For the greater good, right? That’s not to say that I played each of these games up to level 30 or anything. Heck, I doubt I broke level 10 in more than a handful. But that wasn’t really the point of these articles; if you want guides, go elsewhere. These articles are intended to give you first impressions of the games and to summarize whether or not it’s worth your while to wait several days (for anything over 3gb) to download and play.

The System

I’ll be talking a bit about how the games perform, so I should give you some context about what I’m running them all on. It’s not a dream rig, but it isn’t bad. I put it together about 6 months ago for a modest $1700 or so. You should be able to build a similar machine now for much less. Nothing’s overclocked, it’s all running at defaults.

Here’s the specs:

Intel Core 2 Quad 2.83Ghz
4 GB RAM
BFG GTX 260 896MB
Built-in Realtek sound
640 GB HDD
Windows XP SP3
26″ LCD running at 1920×1200

I attempted to run every game at full screen and at my default resolution. If possible, I cranked the graphics to the max. I’ll let you know how each game performed at those settings.

The Games

These overviews focus on three main types of MMORPGs: Free to Play games with Cash Shops, Free to Play games with Caveats, and Pay to Play games.

For the uninitiated, the first type listed are games that are (and this is loudly screamed at you on pretty much EVERY game’s site) – Free to Sign Up (no credit card necessary), Free to Download, and Free to Play. So what’s a Cash Shop? That’s how these games make their money. They offer bits & bobs for you to buy via RMT or MT – short for Real Money Transactions or Micro-Transactions – which allow you to enhance your character or overall playing experience. Whether or not you buy anything is completely up to you. So theoretically, you could play each and every one of the following games without every spending a dime.

The second type are Free to Play, but have caveats that adjust your gameplay experience. So what are the caveats? Well, that’s different for each game. I’ll outline what the limitations are on a game-by-game basis.

The final type are Pay to Play games. Clearly, if you want to play them beyond the trial, you have to pay monthly to do so. In some cases, you’ll also have to pay for the game before you can play them, on top of the monthly fee.

I’ve downloaded and tested the following games:

Free to Play games with Cash Shops
Runes of Magic

Free to Play games with Caveats

The Chronicles of Spellborn
Dungeon Runners
Guild Wars
Pirates of the Caribbean Online
Ryzom (formerly the Saga of Ryzom and Ryzom Ring)

Pay to Play games

City of Heroes/Villains

Everquest II

Lord of the Rings Online

World of Warcraft

All right, enough precursor, click on the links below to read what I thought about these games.

Other games I tried in the name of science:

2 Moons

9 Dragons

Air Rivals

Archlord

Atlantica Online

Ether Saga Online

Florensia

Rohan Online

Perfect World International

Pirates of the Burning Sea

Shaiya

Star Wars Galaxies

Talisman Online (shudder)

Vanguard

Warhammer Online

World of Kung Fu

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.

Unique to Ryzom

Setting. Science-fantasy isn’t something that’s been done much before in games, let alone MMOs. I suppose you could almost call it ‘steampunk’, but it doesn’t quite go that far. Instead, the ‘science’ part is a little more sci-fi than that.
Ryzom Ring. So you like MMOs but figure you can do better than the devs? Well, now’s your chance. As far as I know (and I didn’t look very hard), it’s the only MMO where you can develop your own custom scenarios. This is a great idea, but I have no idea if it’s used very much. Nonetheless, if you’d like to see what sort of questline you can come up with, now’s your chance.
Seasons. This is incredible to witness in game. Well, to me it is. You’ll log in over the course of a few days and the world will slowly transition from fall to winter, with everything covered in snow. Soon, it will be spring again. The weather is realistically portrayed, with ominously advancing storms accompanied by the rumbling sound of  rain or snowfall. On top of that, apparently, this weather affects the in-game crafting. When the seasons are right, you’ll find an abundance of whatever grows during that season.
Creature’s behavior. Another unique little thing to Ryzom.I scoffed when I first heard about this, but it works flawlessly in-game. Different animals and wildlife have different types of behaviour. Some are herd animals, some forage alone. Some are inquisitive, some aggressive. Often, you’ll be running along and an animal will see you (an eye icon appears by their name) and they’ll run up to you to investigate. If they’re pack animals, this will sometimes spur the entire herd to do the same. The same AI is applied to aggro, so if you’re attacking a herd animal that is aggressive, very often, you’ll soon be fighting the whole herd. Many animals in the lower-level areas are non-aggressive, so this isn’t too much of a concern. This behaviour of the animals really sets Ryzom apart from most other games out there.

Crafting. It’s ALL crafting. I’d put this under ‘The Good’ but it’s just so unique, it’s got to go here. You can learn some skills from trainers, much like in all MMO games. However, many things you will learn can be applied to the Modular Action System. So here’s basically how it works: All your skills are made up of components called Stanzas. As you learn more skills, you can ‘dismantle’ your skills to their stanzas.. and then reassemble them as whatever you wish. So for instance, if you’ve learned something that has a healing component and another damage-oriented skill, you could take those parts and create something that does both things at once. The drawback of course, is that it may not be as strong as something that only does damage, or only does healing, but you get the gist. It’s very flexible, but also subsequently more complex than what you might be accustomed to.

In addition to your skills, the majority of the gameplay is oriented around crafting as well. When you kill a creature, you don’t loot it; you quarter it for it’s parts. So I might get some eyes or possibly a leg bone. With those parts you can build things like weapons or possibly gear. If you like crafting in games, try Ryzom.

The Good

Skill-based advancement. I like this style of advancement the best; it works the same as Everquest II or Runes of Magic; the more you use something, be it spells or weapons, the faster you advance in that item’s level. The advantage to this is that if you simply want to become a very adept magician in Ryzom, you simply need to focus on using magic all the time.

Immersive world. Because of the things I mentioned above – the crafting, the weather and seasons, the animal’s behaviour – Ryzom is incredibly immersive. It constantly makes you believe that the world is alive, from the abundance of sap on the ground in the spring, to the flocks of birds flying overhead, or the enormous roots that cover the sky.

The Bad

Hello! Goodbye…..Hello again? Ryzom has been canned and resurrected more times than any other MMO. Be aware of that fact before you purchase a 1-year subscription option. But then, if you don’t, maybe it won’t survive?!

Population. Like a lot of lesser-known MMOs, Ryzom’s population is well, light. At least in the free training area, there was rarely any other players around when I was playing. I don’t mean less than a few dozen, I mean nobody. This is certainly something to think about.

Complexity. Although it’s easy to play – standard-ish UI, comprehensive customization option for gameplay – Ryzom requires some dedication for Joe Player to be able to figure out how they’re supposed to do things that they want to do. From the crafting to the magic, it’s .. well, different. And different is good, right? Yes and no. If it’s a barrier to playing, then no. I don’t believe it’s a barrier here, but if you do end up trying Ryzom, be prepared to read a bit to understand how it all works together.

Pre-mapped WASD? Although it’s not a huge deal, for whatever reason, Ryzom starts with only the arrowkeys mapped to movement. It’s easy enough to change to your control scheme of choice, but nonetheless, it’s worth noting.   I’ve been informed in the comments that this is an option that you choose on character creation. I had created both my characters ages ago and completely forgot that you could do this. Somehow between then and now, my keymappings go reset to default, so I had to set them over again. So scratch this as a negative. Thanks for the tips, posters.

Summary

Ryzom is a gorgeous and unique MMO.Its slightly higher level of complexity and uniqueness may well be its own downfall. It’s definitely worth your download and the time you might invest learning its intricacies.

Download value: [rating:8] (8)