That's all true, that is what I'm doing. You know, every time I go to E3 it rekindles my respect for the Devs behind these games. Not because they're necessarily awesome, or smart, or whatever (though most of them are), but because when it comes down to it they get their asses in gear, and basically stand up for ten hours a day, answering the same questions over and over again for zillions of seething people.
That's dedication people.
That said, at 1:00 was my Vanguard appointment (I'm skipping talking about it at this exact moment for a reason) and at 2:00, my Saga of Ryzom appointment. The interesting thing about Saga of Ryzom is that the Themis dudes are doing the marketing for it. So I show up at the booth, and bam, there's all these Themis guys milling about. I know some of them read the site, but then, I don't go under the banner of anyuzer.com so while there are people who know this site, read these ramblings, when they meet me, they don't really know they're meeting me.
Sneaky eh?
Either way, they didn't know it was me, or if they did, they didn't care, which is fine. The problem you run into here is that they are hired as a third party to do marketing. They actually do it fairly decently. On the other hand, how do you really get the info out of somebody who in their basest being doesn't really care if the game hits 500,000 thousand subs, or 10,000 subs. I mean, maybe they do, on some level I'm sure they do, the more subs for Ryzom the more clients for Themis.
That said, they aren't about to say: "Well we're shooting for 30k subs for this game to be successful". Either way, I'm on a tangent. Saga of Ryzom looks interesting. Not horrible, interesting. Right away the first thing I don't like about the game is the art direction. It's got that sci-fi/fantasy thing going on. Uh. Not my thing. Not entirely bad, just not my thing.
Personally, as I've explained to some people before, alien worlds built from the ground up are very hard to sell. The writing genre's know this. How often do you see alien type of sci-fi/fantasy mixes in the genre? Not often. Once in a blue moon, but basically what happened was in the 70s there was a lot of this sort of pulp genre weird fiction released (browse your used bookstores shelves) but it didn't sell too well.
What sold well? Tolkienesque based worlds, or more classic Sci-fi stuff (think Star Trek/Star Wars). The completely alien sci-fi/fantasy mix? Meh. I think gamers feel the same way, while we are individuals, a lot of our reactions can be charted through reactions of the past, and on a mass scale we're not as interested in the sci-fi/fantasy mixes. That's just the way she goes.
Unfortunately, Saga of Ryzom is very sci-fi/fantasy and I think it's a big stroke against it from the get go. The Themis guy who was showing me through the stuff went over the kind of vague gameplay. You know. The magic system, and how crafting is very important, etc.
The end result? Magic looks overly complicated but vaguely neat. From what I can tell the game is PvE, but you run into the Horizons problem here. Crafting is the important loot, which takes away some of the fun from pure adventuring. That's just a truism, and it's reflected in many of the games gamers choose to play. In fact, arguably, most successful RPGs are entirely loot dropped motivated. You don't see the Final Fantasy series putting in depth crafting in their games do you? (yes, FFX did have a way to modify weapons).
Fact. Dropped loot is fun. That goes for all MMOGs. I think crafting is an important playstyle and advancement tree to have in, but at the same time you have to realize the mind of the crafter is very different from the mind of the adventurer. Therefore both adventuring should be fun without crafting and crafting should be fun without adventuring. The two shouldn't necessarily depend on each other.
But that's not the Ryzom killer. Want to know what the Ryzom killer is? The Ryzom killer is that advancement is essentially infinite. There are an exceptional number of skill trees to level up in. What there isn't, is any limiter on the skills you can learn. As was told to us, you can learn ALL of the skills if you put enough time in. You can be the uber magic casting warrior of doom who can craft the hell out of muffin pan like you wouldn't believe. That's right, you heard me, craft the hell out of it.
So then I asked: "will players want to advance that much?" the answer: "who knows". And that bothers me. In a good game, especially an MMOG, you basically 'want' to be the very best you can be. MMOGs are all about advancement, so by suggesting that players simply won't max out every single skill possible, doesn't say to me your game is balanced, it says to me at one point it loses the fun and you'll quit because the grind just doesn't interest you anymore.
Maybe I'm wrong, I'll be betaing it when I get back home so we'll see.
What is interesting about Ryzom though is the, uh, I can't remember the exact name. There is some engine where, much like they're trying to do in Warhammer Online, Mobs will get together and attack a city/town whatever. The players will need to defend said city or else the game will dynamically change in some way (from my understanding). I like this idea, to me it makes the game feel a bit more alive. If you're an EQer, the idea you could wake up and find the Orc Pawns having taken over Freeport, or maybe even just taken over the Oasis or something. How kick ass would that be?
I like it. I like it a lot.
Damn, I have more to say but have a Bioware appointment. Got to run, I'll do an addendum later.