plaguelands.comRyzom is Dying
What the hell is wrong with you people? The fault lies with you, yea, that’s right. You should be ashamed. You want a scifi-mmog but you didn’t even give the free trial a chance. Everyone who didn’t try the trial killed Ryzom and want to throw their money away are murdering bastards! I hope you all eat WoW turds for the rest of your lives!
My friend and I were laughing discussing plans for Ryzom’s funeral when he quipped in with, “I forgot all about it.” My friend is super hardcore mmog megalomaniac, he has played many, actually PLAYED, not the so called expert who got to level 10 and didn’t like the game but still brags like they played it inside and out - but it looks good on my beta app! So, if he hasn’t played the trial, Ryzom failed, it failed to reach us mmog players who don’t obsessively seek out new mmogs to play, just cuz some do that, to do that, which is great, but most don’t. Ryzom failed to generate interest beyond a few news sites that cover anything just to meet a quota so they can afford their early morning Starbucks. Bad Ryzom, no cookie for you.
When was the last time you even thought about Ryzom? I think about mmogs all the time and Ryzom hasn’t crossed my squishy brain nerves in quite some time – sure it’s hard to break into an elf boobie thought, but it is possible; where art thou Warhammer beta invite? See. It’s possible.
The last Ryzom press junket that even made a significant blip on the mmog newsroom radar was Ryzom Ring. I didn’t read about any amazing player created content as a result, but I suspect everyone else was busy playing WoW or pissed off at WoW wanting to play something better to even notice. Look, death knights! Look, voice chat! Patch my broken class or I’ll skull fuck Pardo ten times to Sunday! Fuck WoW and everything it stands for! Fuck you all, I’m playing this mmog called real-life loser and I still troll the forums and rub in my super awesome life in your face! Hay you guys, apples!
Not all is lost, WoW will continue to dominate, more mmogs will flop and die, and the fans may save Ryzom, which is amazing in itself because there must only be a few thousand playing it - wonder what the price tag is? How about a dollar. The Mmog Dollar Store, where the lucky mmogs end up before they die for good. Did you play Ryzom for more than a few hours? I don’t know anyone who did.
About this entry
You’re currently reading “Ryzom is Dying,” an entry on Plaguelands
- Published:
- 10.03.07 / 2pm
- Category:
- Ryzom
Ryzom failed for many reasons, NONE of which can be attributed to the customer / prospective customer base.
I tried Ryzom, I did it relativly recently, it must have been when the Ryzom Ring launched and there was all the hoopla in the press. I wasn’t alone, there were so many people in the noob zones that kill stealing for the “Kill X rats” quests became an issue.
The point is, that despite the “innovatory” nature of some aspects of Ryzom, environment, races, crafting system, etc, it simply did not resonate with most people.
Ryzom failed to capture an audiance.
I have my own opinions as to why.
-Overly complex skill system, difficult for prospective players to grasp, non-intuitive, simply clunky.
-Despite all the innovation the game itself provided more or less the exact type of play style as every other MMO. Kill mob–> harvest/loot –> gain experiance –> “level up”. No matter how you clothed it there was nothing new in the actual game play, or better said there may have been something new, but nothing a new player actually trying the trial would have seen.
-Players could not identify with the seperate races, there was no easily identifiable culture. This is fine for a game that can survive as a niche product, but Ryzom was developed and run like a AAA MMO, a proposition it was apparently supremely unsuited for.
Lets not forget that this was a game that went through a complete Jessica Mulligan revamp and yet still managed to flounder and fail not once, but twice.
Its not the players.
Its the damn game.
-Gooney
Yea, that’s a good point: the people who did play it, even for just few hours and quit right away to never look back - Ryzom failed to captivate and keep them there, I’m sure some of it stemmed from the reasons you listed. Something a smaller AAA mmog can’t afford when they don’t have a floodgate of new players checking out the game, Ryzom needed to keep the players that tried the game there, hook them in, I wouldn’t be surprised if only 1 in 25 stuck around after the free trial.
Not many outside the dev community know who Jessica Mulligan is, but yea, she definitely had more connections than the community manager before her and I did see Ryzom mentioned in the press more often after she took the reigns.
Thanks for commenting, Gooney.
[...] ”Ryzom is Dying” post over at Plaguelands got me thinking about the games apparent imminent demise and its relation to niche MMO [...]
Hmmmmm, I remember playing Ryzom quite a while back. Dont think it was bad, but after trying it for the first few levels I just left the game and never had the urge to try it again ;). Cant even remember what it was about. Not a very impressive game I guess ;).
Why you no good, low-down, no Ryzom playing traitor. I kid. I kid. At least you gave it a shot, I seem to have forgot all about it too. Thanks for stopping by and commenting.
My only regret is that I didn’t hear about Ryzom sooner. I came on board as a paying player only a couple weeks before this recent news. I hope the Free Ryzom campaign, or a good company, wins out. It would be a shame to say good-bye to this game.
A friend read my post and he still didn’t know what Ryzom was. so yea. I failed too spread the word - check out this mmog called Ryzom. Only a few weeks in, that is a bummer. I think it will get picked up, but you never know. What about Ryzom hooked you?
Thanks for taking the time to stop by and post.
I saw Ryzom 1.5 years ago and I have been wanting to try it out ever since.
I’m in South Africa and our Internet connections are pathetic, I pay $60 a month for a Broadband connect with a 356Kbit max speed and a Bandwidth limit of 2GB a month.
I only recent got Broadband a month ago(a few days after the Bankruptcy), and the first thing I played was BF2, obviously.
But after a bit of that I wanted to try a MMORPG, now I’ve been watching the MMORPG scene for a few years now and it looked like fun, so I was very eager, but every MMORPG I looked at was a version of Diablo 2 in an Online format. And that Sucked.
Don’t get me wrong I loved Diablo 2, but come on we are further along now and seriously Diablo 2 style play get’s boring fast.
So I decided to give the Ryzom Trial a run, and I was hooked.
The world was not the same old Humans, Elves and Orcs scene which requires no creativity what so ever.
I wasn’t hooked into a single class from the start, and I didn’t have to plan and power play every minute of my characters development for them to be effective.
The actions structure may be a bit confusing to people at first, but listen to the Tutorial Quest givers and you will pick it up in no time, and if gives characters a way to define themselves & their play style in a MMORPG that I have not seen anywhere else.
Ryzom has also been around awhile, so it feels balanced and polished and every skill is worth while.
And that’s not to mention the friendly and responsive community, even in the currect dark times, they still take time to play with, guide, help and have fun with the Noobs.
I mean I posted a question regarding a certain skill in game and in 5 minutes I had a dozen replies from different people with different perspectives, and that single question even started a debate that lasted half an hour.
I have created 3 characters in the Trial already and leveled them all to the Max level 20 in the Trial and I’m still playing with them, and having fun.
I am, personally keeping my fingers crossed that Ryzom is picked up and continues to live.
If I had had Broadband year ago when Ryzom started, I beleive I would still be playing it now, and as soon as they will let me I will register.
I have never liked the Idea of paying a monthly fee to play a game, but with Ryzom I find no problem justifying it.
Ryzom may be a Niche MMORPG, but if so I say that is just all the more reason to make sure it doesn’t die.