The Saga of Ryzom

It seems like the beginning of a friendly, helpful community, and the world is so immense and full of life you'll want to see every inch of it.

Skill-based character development is easy to grasp despite being amazingly complex in combination.

Even tasks as trivial as harvesting can give hours and hours of joy as you tweak your actions to maximize your material take or your experience take. The community is welcoming and player progression gives you a constantly changing group of people around to play with.

Has the potential to turn into a real contender, but not until they smooth out player introduction, get some more players on board (a Catch .22, granted), take care of network lag, and introduce quests to make gameplay more rewarding and better paced overall.

The graphics are really nice and distinctive, the back story intriguing and immersive. The stanza system a superb way of letting each player not only level his char but also create his own set of customised actions. No need to rely only on what the devs thought your char should have. The game has come a long way since the beta that left me unconvinced. Fighting is more exciting and gratifying than it used to be. But the game still feels a bit unpolished, incomplete and the devs would better deliver on all the promised content.

There's virtually no plot, and a lot of the mid-level game seems like a repeat of the novice-level game. [Jan 2005, p.84]

While The Saga of Ryzom is probably more simplistic then most MMORPG's its a lot more approachable to those new to the genre, however this is likely to deter those looking for something to challenge them.

A slow starter. However, it's a huge world which is full of big ideas. Jump in now for a game that promises to be an interesting take on a staid genre - or hold fire a month or two to see how it lives up to its promises. [PC Gamer UK]

The only thing missing from Ryzom's customizable battling, harvesting, and crafting systems is a lack of bothersome bugs. [Jan 2005, p.102]

The latest unfinished massively multiplayer role-playing game to be inflicted upon gamers. Its unrefined gameplay is too simplistic to have enduring appeal and yet, paradoxically, its character-development system is needlessly complex.

Currently it's flawed, and despite glimmers of competence, the imbalanced combat, terrible connection problems, and lack of reason to play leave the score far lower than a properly finished game might have achieved. [Dec 2004, p.97]

There is just so much promise that it's almost unbearably painful to see that potential crippled by a complete and utter lack of content.

Unfortunately the game misses the mark on so many issues that gameplay is behind even the current market leaders which are at least 2 years old.