With all the hype about Warhammer Online, Wrath of the Lich King, and other upcoming titles that aren’t quite ready for primetime, another game has returned from beyond the grave – Saga of Ryzom, simply known as Ryzom. And this time, I’m actually quite excited about it, even though I’ve never even played it. And you might wonder why anyone would get excited about an old game with all the hype/excitement about WAR/WOW going around.
It really boils down to providing something different, something totally different. A game without classes or level, racing to endgame so, as the old South Park episode put it when they defeated the bane of their Warcraft game “now we can play the game”. I’m really tired of games coming out with more of the same. Most of them revolve around leveling to max level, getting geared up, then raiding/pvp/etc. Thats it, thats the game. Pretty much if you don’t want to pvp or raid, you are just left to kinda wonder around aimlessly with little to actually do.
With Ryzom (and the OLD pre-NGE/CU Star Wars Galaxies), there are no classes/levels. What you decide to go do increases your skills in one area or another, letting you have something of a completly custom class that pretty much plays the way you want to. Classes in most games now end up being just cookie-cutter molds with little room for variation. Sure, there’s a whole ton of skills they give you, but they there is the set that will give you the most efficiency, the most bang for the buck. And for most people, thats what you pick, or what you pick after you find that your toon isn’t that successful in game.
There is player created content, where the players themselves can design quests/adventures to fill in the blank spots or just provide an alternative to the “kill/fedex” quests that seem to be standard faire. Back in the day, I used to DM D&D games and enjoyed creating adventures for my friends that I gamed with. I’ve run a mud since 1999, and the areas and code I created for it always tended to be on the puzzle/crazy side. Even though I’ve transitioned to being more of a player than a creator with the MMO’s, I still miss being a part of the creation process. Perhaps Ryzom will provide an outlet of that.
I’m hoping that Ryzom will be this jewel of an MMO for those of us out there that really are looking for something different, not just for those who say they are, but then when it isn’t like the MMO they left, they complain. The servers are now up, and old players are getting back into the game – now its just my turn to wait until us “noobs” can join them.
Brad
