Ryzom

Hour 2: Stanzas

Region chat quote of the hour:
"Looking for active players to recruit, with no aspirations of grasping any knowledge of any Ryzom mechanics, just powerlevel and quit after 2 weeks. Please contact me."
"Ahaha"

As most reading this will know, every attack in an MMO has its upside and its downside. A powerful move will often have a long cooldown, or have its effects spread over a length of time, or be prone to counter or cancellation. Some moves only become available to you after certain other events - a parry or a critical strike, for example. Balance dictates that potency has to come with a price.

Ryzom dissects this into the Stanza system. On one level, it's a work of gameplay genius; you don't just buy moves, you buy credits and options. Options are the good effects of a spell: fear, slowing down, damage. Credits are the penalties that justify them. Say, a magic spell will generally drain your sap (Ryzom's mana), and a physical attack will drain your stamina.

Once you've levelled up your crafts, you can buy credits and options separately, and use them to make your own moves. You can trade in the cost to stamina for a health penalty. You can trade in the cost to sap for the condition that you can only cast the spell after a critical hit, or take extra damage to the item's durability. You can't afford all of them, so you're forced to specialise, and this is where Ryzom makes up for the otherwise level playing field.

There's a downside to this, and that's transparency. The visual clues that allow you to learn and react to events quickly in more established MMOs are gone. Its easy to tell you're fighting, say, a Shadow Priest in WOW, and WAR has visually distinct classes. Here, you can't tell what options your enemy has, or what their actions might be doing to them. It's unique, impressive, and terrifying. You can see why people who've managed to get their head around it declare their love for this system. You can also see why PVP isn't so popular.

Hour 3: Grouping Up

Region chat quote of the hour:
"The trick with Ryzom is knowing when to hide like a coward and when to run like a sissy."

Combat isn't easy, and creatures have an eBay-style coloured stars system, replacing the more common red-for-hard, green-for-easy. 3 Green Stars will always mean Level 21-30. As a result, you generally discover which creatures are beyond your abilities by getting killed by them, and if no-one resurrects you, there's a substantial penalty on your future experience.

So, you learn quite quickly that it's useful to team up. As I came to the end of my training mission chain, I'd been told to kill some "Goo Heads". These guys roam in teams of four - any attempt I'd made to melee attack them had been met with immediate death. My pleas for a group in the Region channel were answered quickly - more quickly that the fairly slow-paced chat would suggest.

Soon, I was standing with a new friend, and getting taught how to solo groups as a fighter. The taunt ability is the key. Not just a tank device for pulling enemies off a friend, it also gets people to chase you further. My friend ran off, pulled a Goo Head (and this suddenly feels like I'm talking about a clumsy sex act), and we killed him together. So, it was my turn - I snuck up to within 20 metres, taunted my quarry, and ran like a flailing, motorised idiot. Problem: I got killed.

Simply put, it's hard. And a lot of your time will be spent avoiding combat. In response to this, I decide to avoid combat and try my hand at making some boots.

Hour 4: Crafting

Advice of the hour:
"Don't try to learn everything all at once. Some people do that, and they only last two weeks. It's too much."

Checking my levels, I notice that I'm completely lacking in one area - crafting. The manual says it's vital to the game, and yet it's the one thing without any visual clues to draw you into it. Use a dagger, gain Fight. Use acid, gain Magic. Double-click on a glowing mound, and you're Foraging. But Crafting is arcane, tucked away behind a slightly unfriendly menu, and fairly unintuitive.