Ryzom: Ryzom WarCry Interview with Alex Macris and David Cohen

Ryzom at E3
By Whitney "Teleios" Butts

Ryzom. Nevrax. Themis. The three of these factors combined have to be one of the most amazing, promising events that are just getting started. Alexander Macris, Co-founder of Themis Group and David Cohen, CEO of Nevrax sat down with us this morning to discuss Ryzom, Themis, and Nevrax. For 45 minutes, the questions flowed and the answers were given in the most amazing fashion.

Themis Group was co-founded by Alex Macris and Tom Kurz in 2001. Their first client was Anarchy Online and together they helped make Anarchy successful. From then on, Themis became dedicated to working with developers and their games. In January of 2004, Nevrax contacted Themis in order to start expanding worldwide. They were developing a completely new, unique, and different game that was only known to a small population of French gamers. The game needed and deserved to be big, and that is what Themis has set out to do.

With a 10 million dollar budget, Themis became the United States sponsors, customer support and is also heading up all of the service and game master support. They are also working with counterparts in Germany, France and the United Kingdom. Together, Themis and Nevrax are working to make the Saga of Ryzom one of the most amazing games in production.

Alex began by giving us his description of the game. To him, it is "the best game nobody's heard of". It is a type of game that is completely new to the market with massive amounts of content. You are able to customize your characters to a very large extent which is becoming very popular with the fan base. The raid engine and modular action systems add a whole new factor that is just unbelievable and never before seen in a game. In a sense, the game reminds Alex of the Dune primitive people, a messiah. The graphics are just unbelievable and completely different. In fact, it is so different it might be hard to sell.

The game is going to constantly be expanding. There are already planned expansions where new worlds will be revealed. In fact, Atys is just one world of many that will be revealed. We will also find out what a Ryzom is in one of the new expansions.
Currently, there is eight years of content planned for the game. The game has plans and will remain constant and fresh with a lot of new and exciting ideas to come. Each shard might go its own way, though. It all depends upon what the players do and discover within the game. It all depends upon how each shard responds to events within game, the outcome could be completely different.

Creatures in Ryzom are a completely life changing experience. Yubo's can urinate, they move in packs. Some can swim, some can't. Fauna has their own personality, and will constantly be adapting to the areas, meandering on their own accord, blending with the seasons and lands. Fauna isn't all of the creatures coming, angels and demons will be implemented in the future as well.

Trykers will be playable soon. The reason for the delay is that the Tryker lands are by far the most complicated. The water is extremely beautiful and detailed that Nevrax had to work very hard to perfect it. They had to give the AI different abilities to determine who can swim, who can't. Training for the AI was needed to allow creatures to walk around the waterways. Because of this, Tryker lands took a lot of time, but they will be playable soon. Currently, the water looks beautiful, but Nevrax isn't happy about it so they are going to redo it and make it better! How can it possibly even get more beautiful than it already is!!!

The RAID engine was the next topic on the block. Yesterday, they tested out the RAID engine, and it just so happens that the AI won. The servers will all congregate to the player density and plan what will happen based upon server density and usage. Oddly enough, this was almost an "accidental discovery" by Nevrax. Asides from that, game masters will have the power to spawn raids and place unique missions and items. Essentially, the GMs will be able to help with the outcome of missions and items gained at special times.

Guilds. Guilds are going to be extremely important in Ryzom. In fact, that are many missions, items and even powers and abilities that are completely exclusive to only guilds. For example, a Fyros guild might have some specialized fire abilities. Guilds are the focus of all high end game applications. Guilds will also gain abilities based upon their fame. Guilds and guild players is also where the majority of PVP will happen. Guilds events are also very important and will be passed around primarily by word of mouth.

Players are able to compose their own music for the game and upload it to the server to play in their own built in mp3 player within the game. The theme is in the process of being finalized and is a combination of techno/classical aspects.

In an attempt to easy all you ATI fans, we gained some information about the infamous ATI problems. Nevrax just contacted Enzyme (a hardware testing company) to help with testing. There has already been a lot of improvement on the drivers, but they aren't quite perfect yet. Nevrax assures us that ATI is definitely one of their top priorities and has been for quite some time.

As far as all the bad press is concerned, David brought to light that many people have forgotten the true meaning of a beta. A beta is the testing stage, the game is here to be tested. When one signs up to join a beta, they should sign up full well knowing that there are problems with the game that cannot be fixed without their help. If people want to make the game succeed, then they need to beta test it and not beta play it.

In comparison to top games like Lineage II, Ryzom offers a completely different experience. According to Alex, Ryzom brings back "newbie magic" and really can't be compared to other games. Games like Lineage II "have their own fan base while games like Ryzom will be for those looking for a completely new and fresh experience because Ryzom is that new and fresh experience."

Overall, Ryzom is definitely one of the most promising looking games. A lot of new action is coming and a lot of exciting ideas are being implemented. Keep your eyes on this game, it is a volcano just waiting to erupt.