Today I realised that I’m stuck in a rut in the MMOs I currently play. I have no idea what skill path to go down in EVE, I generally just train whatever I can stick into the daily queue and then add a longer skill at the end of it, and even though I still enjoy Ryzom and completely adore my guildies there I don’t have a project in it except leveling and trying to make enough dappers to buy an apartment. Having projects is very important to me, it’s a great way to keep my interest up.
I also realised that I have another problem with Ryzom. Even if I do find a project to keep me occupied, I’m not really sure that the game will be around for much longer – I guess the pessimism that’s so rampant in the community finally managed to rub off on me. A few days ago the team behind Shadowbane announced that the game was shutting down and reading the official thread on the subject was quite depressing (I do recommend reading at least a few pages of it though, it’s fascinating while being incredibly sad) and I really don’t want to end up in a similar situation any time soon. Every MMO will, sooner or later, go down the same route, the only question is if I actually want to get 100% involved in a game that is standing on what just might be the brink of disaster.
It’s a tricky situation. If I look at the MMOs that interest me at the moment, almost all of them can be considered dangerous territory – Vanguard has always teetered on the edge of the abyss, Star Wars Galaxies might go the way of the dodo when The Old Republic launches, Ryzom has had a very bumpy ride since launch…I managed to get two of my friends to try out Runes of Magic, but they’ve both gone back to Warhammer Online now (I’m personally holding out until Land of the Dead drops). World of Warcraft is the most stable game on the market, but I have no interest in going back.
What to do, what to do? Should I just bite the bullet, take a chance on Ryzom, hope that everything works out? Or should I try to find a more stable game that might just save me from the general rut I’m in right now? Or should I just give up on MMOs for the time being, spend more time with my Nintendo DS, and just wait for that perfect game to launch?
I’m bored and grumpy.
Here’s what I did; I dropped everything MMO-related and decided to replay old games for the sake of nostalgia. I’ve recently finished Day of the Tentacle and Breath of Fire 1, now playing Breath of Fire 2. Gonna be replaying all the Monkey Island games next, I think, or plowing through a couple of the old Final Fantasy games.
In other news, please rename me to “The Lonely Savage” on your blogroll.
I agree it’s important to have a project in a MMO. Reaching a goal is the biggest threat to my dedication to a game; “what am I supposed to do now?” I wouldn’t mind if they’d add questing to Ryzom.
I wouldn’t be too worried about Ryzom’s future, the Open Source community have been trying to buy the game twice already. If the current publisher decides they can’t save the game (ie get more players) I’m certain they sell it to be open sourced.
I’d be more worried if they let the game continue on life support and no development being made, but it doesn’t seem that way. I just wish they communicate a bit, ppreferably give us a todo list.
Ryzom’s forum has always had this feeling of doom and gloom about it. This is nothing.
I guess you both have a point. The pessimism might’ve run rampant there before, which is quite sad and might actually be harming the community – for a new player it’s quite hard to ignore it. The Free Ryzom-project was a nice initiative, the only problem is what they’d do with it if they actually manage to buy it. Running servers for a MMO ain’t cheap.
A todo list would be great, currently they hardly communicate at all which is quite sad. There has been patches and there has been events, let’s just hope they (whoever “they” really are) can keep it up and be a bit more open while they are doing it.