Ryzom Reboot

What would you do if the devs of a game you’d been playing for years suddenly announced they were doing a massive reboot; merging all servers and deleting all characters? Would you start over again? Quit the game? If a game did do this and you’d never played before, would you consider giving it a try now that you’re on an even footing and there won’t be people around who’ve been developing characters for years? If you’ve been playing Saga of Ryzom, or thinking about trying it, this isn’t a hypothetical question – the team behind Ryzom are doing just that. On September 22, all servers are merging into one multi-regional server, and all characters are being deleted.

Click the jump for more details.

It’s a gutsy move. They’ve cited financial reasons as the motivation behind this reboot. I guess they aren’t earning enough to keep up 3 servers even after their switch to a freemium system, so are hoping that a one server merge will cut hosting costs and lure in new players. Other changes are being put into place as well; a new achievement system to track accomplishments, and incentives for subscribing like double xp to characters on a paying account. They are also making an event out of the whole thing, offering prizes to the first players to reach certain achievement and leveling milestones. But will it be enough?

Ryzom is one of those games that has always existed on the fringes of my attention. I tried it a few years ago during its beta, and continue to consider the crafting and harvesting/environmental systems as the pinnacle of such things across all MMOs. I have yet to see any game match the complexity and appeal of Ryzom‘s crafting. I’d jump on any new game that matched it in a heartbeat, without any hesitation or second thoughts. I may actually give it another try after the reboot. But my suspicion is this is going to cost them the bulk of their existing players.

Honestly, if I were playing I wouldn’t mind a complete skill reset – I absolutely adore creating new characters in games, and a complete reset is just a new character with the same name. Whenever a game I play opens a new server, I have a tendency to move there, abandoning all my characters on the previous servers I was playing on. I usually fill multiple servers with characters and hate games that give you a limited number of character slots no matter how many servers you play on. But the problem for me would be that characters are being outright deleted, not simply reset. So names will be lost. And names are important, just look to the forums of any game and you’ll see it in the vehement arguments about naming systems. I’ve never had a problem finding names, no matter how old the game – but just the idea of losing my names makes me whimper and cry, even when I’m certain I’d be able to get them again.

For more information, read the official announcement.