Probably just lack of user-base to support the cost of running the servers, paying the support, energy bill, renewing licences and paying for it's maintenence. Even a skeleton crew requires a few hundred grand per year.
If you're asking why I think the game didn't do well, I'd have to say that it had a very interesting setting, but very little happened and the great foe was a swarm of mindless giant insects which occasionally attacked towns. All in all you didn't feel like you were fighting a evil foe, just pushing back a hill of ants. Ryzom was very interesting and a skill based game I really enjoyed in beta and early on. But I found that a strong lack of quests, a lack of dungeons or varrying environments made the world feel small. The outdoor areas were hunting fields of roaming mobs, but there wasn't a strong sense of progression or character growth.
Plus the four races (or was it 3?) seemed to be at peace with one another. There was a deffinit lack of conflict or foe to overcome. No unique items to seek, no epic content. After a while of walking around the same zones farming animal parts to craft people got bored. The developers couldn't produce enough interesting content to keep the game alive so they made a tool to allow users to create instances and tailor the story (which would have been cool if there was already a large ammount of game content but there was a vast lack, so this felt like a bandaid measure). It was well received but the already dwindling player base was not enought o draw in new players and over time the player base atrophied and they had to shut down the servers.
A company wanted to buy it and make it F2P but another came and payed more for it. I'm betting now that they wish they would have made it F2P. I played it when it was free for a while and I really enjoyed it. I like that the animals roamed, and they looked at you and such. I liked the game play and that there was spontanious things happening. To me it felt more like a living world than any other MMO I've played. Granted I could have thought of other ideas to make it feel more living, but it was going in a good direction. I hope they can make it F2P, and make more content for it. The game does have promise and I think F2P is the only way people are going to give the game a chance, its been around far to long to go back to P2P...and if its totally shut down that would be a sad thing.
This was a great game. My only thoughts on it's demise is the huge outlay of cash the original dev team spent on trying to promote the game before it was really ready for release. They attempted to set CDs in stores and when funds ran out to continue that, they allowed free D/Ls. They seemed to have incurred so much debt that they went bankrupt and the company that bought it never really advertised it either. Most of the decent sized population the servers had came from either word of mouth or from great reviews here on MMORG and other similiar websites.
Lack of advertising cost this game its life and not the game itself.
- It is too oblique, ambiguous, and challenging for the average MMO gamer. Logically, after a stressful day at work/school, many people would want their entertainment to be relatively mindless and ego-stroking. Ryzom doesn't easily fit that desire. It caters to a niche who want a more complex game which does not hold their hand, tell them what to do, or spoonfeed them. Ryzom is to mainstream MMOGs what LEGOs (without instructions), Rubik's Cubes, and chess are to Twister mats, Hopscotch, and checkers.
- It encourages/enforces a degree of interdependence among players that makes it difficult to become powerful in-game under certain circumstances (i.e. living in a timezone that consistently places your logins at a lull on your language's server's activity level, within a population that is low at the best of times). It also makes it difficult for certain types of players.
- Ryzom has never been marketed properly, and for most of its existence, it has not been marketed at all. Of the few people who would enjoy it, far fewer would ever hear about it.
- There were many fantastic features promised at various points in time, particularly during initial development, which never made it into the game. Some players felt disenfranchised about this.
- For a third of its lifetime, Ryzom has been owned by Gameforge, who...dropped the ball. For the other two thirds, it was owned by Nevrax, who weren't good enough at managing and developing the game either.
- On that note, there were several occurrences in Ryzom's history which precluded opportunities to gain players, or alienated existing players.
--- Ryzom was released around the same time as World of Warcraft.
--- First patch after release ("Patch 1") was very problematic and caused many players to leave. Even one, two, and three years later, some people still had a bad taste in their mouth from that and therefore never bothered to give Ryzom another chance.
--- There have been two server merges, one early on (North American shard "Windermeer" into what was formerly the European shard, "Arispotle," to form a single English shard) and one later (secondary English server "Cho," which appealed to old players who wanted a fresh start and new players who worried about being eclipsed in an established community, was reunified with Arispotle not long after being started).
--- Focus on PvP was increased after the community had been accustomed to primarily PvE gameplay for a long time already.
The faction PvP began with an event about fighting for special materials in regions opened specifically for this purpose, to build temples for the two main religions.
It continued with the introduction of outposts, which allow guilds to own small pieces of land where drills can be (and of course, always are) installed to produce consumables (xp doublers, minor and temporary stat increasers, and special crafting materials). Although outposts are not mechanically faction vs. faction, because guilds tend to choose allies of the same faction as themselves the battles to obtain and hold outposts usually consisted of the defenders being mainly one faction and the attackers being mainly another. There were plenty of exceptions and grey areas, though, which created politics I personally found very intriguing...but some others found them tiring and irritating.
Anyway, on at least the Arispotle and Leanon servers some circumstance or other led to numerical imbalance between the factions. On Arispotle the Karavaneers outnumbered the Kamists and thus owned more of the outposts, and on Leanon it was the Kamists who outnumbered the Karavaneers.
Because outposts produce xp-doubling consumables, the faction with more outposts was able to skill up their constituents faster. You can probably extrapolate why this evoked whining and quitting from the underdog faction.
- The Ruins of Silan, with its quest-like tutorial missions and general atmosphere of obvious (a.k.a. contrived) goal orientation, is quite unlike the mainland. The people who liked the former were disappointed by the latter.
Also, RoS did not always exist. It was introduced later on. Before that, new players started on one of four separate islands according to race. The less popular races' islands were usually empty. There were no missions or tutorials, and no Universe channel.
- Gameforge severed the deal with Jolt that provided the volunteer CSR/GM program that had been in place, at least for Arispotle, for a long time. They replaced it with what appears to be a simpler in-house volunteer system, but I'm not sure since I was never a CSR/GM in either. This disturbed some people, who proceeded to leave. It took a while for the new personnel to learn the event tools, and even after they did, there were few events held.
- The first bankruptcy, of Nevrax, may have flipped the switch of "How I Should Perceive Ryzom" in some minds from "Extant" to "Dead."
- The releases of LotRO and Vanguard.
- The small population was a turn-off for some prospective players, which didn't make it easy for the population to increase. Argh, circular logic.
- A lot of the people claiming to want something different from the standard cookie-cutter MMO fare are pansies who got cold feet upon experiencing Ryzom's degree of difference (if they somehow knew of it at all). =P *semi-joking on this point*
----------- In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
Katriell did an excellent job, but if you didn't want to read all of that you could sum it up into one simple statement. The game was always under-funded, and that led to its ultimate demise.
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Probably just lack of user-base to support the cost of running the servers, paying the support, energy bill, renewing licences and paying for it's maintenence. Even a skeleton crew requires a few hundred grand per year.
If you're asking why I think the game didn't do well, I'd have to say that it had a very interesting setting, but very little happened and the great foe was a swarm of mindless giant insects which occasionally attacked towns. All in all you didn't feel like you were fighting a evil foe, just pushing back a hill of ants. Ryzom was very interesting and a skill based game I really enjoyed in beta and early on. But I found that a strong lack of quests, a lack of dungeons or varrying environments made the world feel small. The outdoor areas were hunting fields of roaming mobs, but there wasn't a strong sense of progression or character growth. Plus the four races (or was it 3?) seemed to be at peace with one another. There was a deffinit lack of conflict or foe to overcome. No unique items to seek, no epic content. After a while of walking around the same zones farming animal parts to craft people got bored. The developers couldn't produce enough interesting content to keep the game alive so they made a tool to allow users to create instances and tailor the story (which would have been cool if there was already a large ammount of game content but there was a vast lack, so this felt like a bandaid measure). It was well received but the already dwindling player base was not enought o draw in new players and over time the player base atrophied and they had to shut down the servers.
Ariok, seems u are speaking of WoW, so you are very superficial in your statements.
Telling 'mindless insects' means u didn't seen anything of the game as one of the best part of Ryzom is the mob AI, and their 'living acts'.
It's clear that u never went killing bosses.
Ryzom is 'sandbox' so telling that ther is a lack of quests (guided-quests to be precise as the game is full of quests) simply means you can't play a 'free-minded' game.
Lack of dungeons? You should know that in a single instanced world, dungeons are in the world and not instanced. There are dungeons.
There is no conflict between races but there is a huge conflict between the 2 factions, to conquer/defend Outposts, so your statement is false (or was true during beta).
Unique items? in a game that have as strong part it's crafting items?? lol, it's so banal asking for unique items. Anyway some 'unique' items from npc bosses are in the game.
Even you don't remember the number of races present so, what's the point in speaking of something you absolutely don't know, since the beta finished 3 years ago and you never played?
It's better for you play wow or one of the other quest-based mmo around. You can choose blinded, as they are almost all the same.
What told by Katriell is correct, said from one people that actually *know* the game.
Ryzom is death because people want easy things, ryzom is a hard game to play and needed an open minded mature players.
Ironically, as said by Katriell, a lot of people, just bored of the mindless mmo around (WoW at top list) where back in game in the last days, asking why they never known anything about ryzom, and finding it as a very fresh environment!!
Probably just lack of user-base to support the cost of running the servers, paying the support, energy bill, renewing licences and paying for it's maintenence. Even a skeleton crew requires a few hundred grand per year.
If you're asking why I think the game didn't do well, I'd have to say that it had a very interesting setting, but very little happened and the great foe was a swarm of mindless giant insects which occasionally attacked towns. All in all you didn't feel like you were fighting a evil foe, just pushing back a hill of ants. Ryzom was very interesting and a skill based game I really enjoyed in beta and early on. But I found that a strong lack of quests, a lack of dungeons or varrying environments made the world feel small. The outdoor areas were hunting fields of roaming mobs, but there wasn't a strong sense of progression or character growth. Plus the four races (or was it 3?) seemed to be at peace with one another. There was a deffinit lack of conflict or foe to overcome. No unique items to seek, no epic content. After a while of walking around the same zones farming animal parts to craft people got bored. The developers couldn't produce enough interesting content to keep the game alive so they made a tool to allow users to create instances and tailor the story (which would have been cool if there was already a large ammount of game content but there was a vast lack, so this felt like a bandaid measure). It was well received but the already dwindling player base was not enought o draw in new players and over time the player base atrophied and they had to shut down the servers.
Ariok, seems u are speaking of WoW, so you are very superficial in your statements.
Telling 'mindless insects' means u didn't seen anything of the game as one of the best part of Ryzom is the mob AI, and their 'living acts'.
It's clear that u never went killing bosses.
Ryzom is 'sandbox' so telling that ther is a lack of quests (guided-quests to be precise as the game is full of quests) simply means you can't play a 'free-minded' game.
Lack of dungeons? You should know that in a single instanced world, dungeons are in the world and not instanced. There are dungeons.
There is no conflict between races but there is a huge conflict between the 2 factions, to conquer/defend Outposts, so your statement is false (or was true during beta).
Unique items? in a game that have as strong part it's crafting items?? lol, it's so banal asking for unique items. Anyway some 'unique' items from npc bosses are in the game.
Even you don't remember the number of races present so, what's the point in speaking of something you absolutely don't know, since the beta finished 3 years ago and you never played?
It's better for you play wow or one of the other quest-based mmo around. You can choose blinded, as they are almost all the same.
What told by Katriell is correct, said from one people that actually *know* the game.
Ryzom is death because people want easy things, ryzom is a hard game to play and needed an open minded mature players.
Ironically, as said by Katriell, a lot of people, just bored of the mindless mmo around (WoW at top list) where back in game in the last days, asking why they never known anything about ryzom, and finding it as a very fresh environment!!
Seems too late.
Thanks Katriell and Gilgameesh, I could not have said it better myself.
I truly loved this game until I left the noobie area and found it completely lacking in content of any kind.
There's sandbox and sandbox, and to go from having lots to do to absolutely nothing to do I think that put alot of people off staying longer and making enough social connections to make it worthwhile.
That was the downfall of this game, such a shame because with a bit more content this game would rule all.
And no that doesn't mean I don't have the imagination to 'handle' a sandbox game, I have played Eve for many years and played 2 years of Face of Mankind and created a huge amount of player content.
The community should of done more in this game to actively produce player content and situations for all levels. Sandbox doesn't mean leave people to their own imaginations it means working as a community to inspire peoples imagination and to assist in the success of the world and new players interaction and integration in that world.
So look to each other for the reason this game failed not the lack of imagination of new subscribers.
I truly loved this game until I left the noobie area and found it completely lacking in content of any kind. There's sandbox and sandbox, and to go from having lots to do to absolutely nothing to do I think that put alot of people off staying longer and making enough social connections to make it worthwhile. That was the downfall of this game, such a shame because with a bit more content this game would rule all.
And no that doesn't mean I don't have the imagination to 'handle' a sandbox game, I have played Eve for many years and played 2 years of Face of Mankind and created a huge amount of player content. The community should of done more in this game to actively produce player content and situations for all levels. Sandbox doesn't mean leave people to their own imaginations it means working as a community to inspire peoples imagination and to assist in the success of the world and new players interaction and integration in that world. So look to each other for the reason this game failed not the lack of imagination of new subscribers.
Thta's true. Unfortunately Ryzom suffered a full stop in developing well before the GF takeover and also after that, GF did absolutely nothing to improve the game.
We, as fans of Ryzom, are not saying that Ryzom is the best MMO around. We are saying that Ryzom has an incredible, unique, original environment, with a great skill based system. Of course, during these years, we expected the features that every sandbox need.
Nevrax mistakes were:
they introduced the Faction War, moving the PvP as the main concept, while they should have focused first on completing the PvE content.
they didn't finished the Encyclopedia, a series of 'rites' (lore quests) that gives perks and knowledge of the world (knowledge needed for how the ecosystems are built);
they added apartments and Guild Houses, but didn't added features easy to do and sure needed: customizable stuff.
they didn't added consumables.
Stop of the lore forwarding due the decision to implement the Ring, a great idea, but released too early.
Probably with a well funded dev team, all of these things could have be done easy, before going to the pvp aspect.
The original Ryzom project is much much bigger than what we have seen: 3 planets, more lands, mass invasions (seen only in some event).
And, at the end, last year, with Gameforge management, Ryzom devs were unable to do anything, without funds.
Player events were done in the past, many, but of course, with a situation where nothing move forward, most of them decided just to stop and wait.
That's the end of Ryzom, a game with some great innovation (don't forget, the game was released in 2004):
a customizable skill system, where u can build your actions (and yes, the system could be improved too with new stanzas etc...);
an incredible ecosystem where the rule is not just 'con the mob, then it's ok i just kill it', but instead, requires a knowledge of the fauna. A world where mastered players still needed experience to survive in the high regions.
an incredible AI (well, i know that is scripted, so hard to maintain) where the fauna really seems living, doing their jobs.
an immersive environment, where the world is not just a 'realistic exercise' but it's more a 'magical world' with great sounds, full weather system, day/night, etc...
The only game where i found the harvesting really satisfactory, cause it needs the player actively fight against the source digging, as it can kill you as any other mob.
A crafting where you must discover the best recipes experimenting with the tons of mats at disposal and not just click one or two buttons.
Mounts and packers that are permanent in the world and not just 'summoned' as needed.
(i know some of the previous statement seems going on the opposite direction of the actual MMO market, but Ryzom is not a mindless game as the top scored, it's a hard game)
You are right: there is sandbox and sandbox. But, Ryzom has the full potential to be the best 'sandbox' if only a company would develop it as needed. As you said: more content and Ryzom would rule all.
And you can't blame players for not doing events in last year. The situation was already 'in trouble'.
Unfortunately most Companies now go for the WoW-path, not realizing that WoW's fortune was based on the name 'warcraft', something that already got zillions fans much before 2004.
I don't see any light for now, as Ryzom bankrupcy is in hold due to a french law dispute. It can take up to a year before the french law can complete the liquidation process, so actually no one can buy Ryzom.
I only played for a few months last year. Real life unfortunately tore me away, and I was right bummed when I went to resubscribe only to find it had gone under again.
I'd have to disagree with those who claim the game failed for lack of the standard mmo features - dungeons, raids, uber gear etc. The fact SoR lacked these features was one of the game's key strengths.
I loved the exotic landscapes, the way mobs interacted with - well ok ate - each other, the importance of player crafting, and most of all, the fact that if I got bored doing one thing, I could change my clothes and go 'be' something else entirely without having to start a new character.
If anything, I think they didn't take the sandbox philosophy far enough. Could you imagine if they'd allowed for player-crafted vehicles or structures?
This game still has so much potential and has no real competitors for this style of gameplay.
I played Ryzom for the 16 months leading up to the servers being shut down.
I feel the game has died for the time being because Gameforge wants the game to die.
They are tying the game up in the courts for what apparrently will be a year and a half or so. This is completely unnecessary as there is no good reason an out of court agreement couldn't be reached. The game is not worth what all the attorney fees will add up to probably.
From the rumors it appears the mess has been mainly caused by Gameforge not fully paying the amount they agreed to pay for the game when Nevrax went bankrupt.
I am grateful for the game being supported as long as it was after this bankruptcy started. However I think that was just an easy way for Gameforge to negate the hard feelings that are bound to be directed at them.
The opensource community also tried to buy this, to make it a F2P/F2D game ( free to play, and free to dev). No idea if that would have worked, but reading the Gameforge never payed the money.. is lame.
Why would people kill something with soo much manpower hours behind?.
Why would people kill something with soo much manpower hours behind?.
$$$$
Business is all about making money. Killing a product is acceptable if you can turn a quick profit in the process. How much time/effort/resources others have invested in it is irrelevant.
Not that I'm a fan of this way of thinking, but that's how business works.
Originally posted by Teiman The opensource community also tried to buy this, to make it a F2P/F2D game ( free to play, and free to dev).
The group you're probably thinking of is Virtual Citizenship Association, and their plan is to keep it P2P but at the same time certainly open-source it.
----------- In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
The counterpart to the server application is the billing server. This server, which stores player data and scores and links zones together, is named for its originally intended function (in VIE's Subgame server) to store records of who had paid for the game and, therefore, was allowed to play it. Obviously, once VIE went out of business, this function was no longer necessary. Billing servers now serve many additional functions, such as providing a network-wide ban service superior to the one built into Subgame and allowing players in different arenas or zones to chat with each other over chat channels. There are several large biller networks for SubSpace. By far, the largest is SSC, which is the de facto official biller. It is owned by PriitK, the creator of the Continuum client."
Theres life beyond the dead of the original developers, if a game can jump into the freeware or open source community.
"Thanks to Everyone in the Central Wastelands — 08/31/07
WithAuto Assault closing down tonight, we wanted to thank all of you for creating a tremendously cool and dedicated community of Wastelanders. We just didn’t want to give you guys a wild, crazy event tonight, but something else that may be just as fun. In the coming days those that are eligible will be receiving a “Parting Gift” message in your e-mail inboxes, with opportunities to take a part in some of our other products, including Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes. It’s our way of saying “Thank You” to the diehard Auto Assault fan base and we hope to see you in are other virtual worlds."
I played in past Ryzom and it's very nice mmorpg in many ways. How ever, there are few problems too, at least in my opinion.
1. Combat is pretty boring. It's based very strongly to holy trinity. Your group can stand still and pull one enemy and then the holy trinity gets it down. What is way to passive and repetable way to do combat.
2. Ryzom has PvE side, but PvP side is affecting it way too much. What basicly sooner or later smokes many PvE players out of the game. This is what happen to me.
Other ways, In my opinion SoR had one of best community, interesting enviroment, good harvesting and ecomomy and in many ways nice gameplay.
I think I played a trial of Ryzom for a day or two and thought it was okay.
The 'easy' answer to the OP thought would be WoW. It has a bigger name, popular brand, etc and releasing your game when another possible heavy hitter is coming out doesn't usually work out.
i tried this game, but at the time it was between owners? something like that. there was a lot of server lag. i was VERY disappointed because i was very excited after reading about it to play. i hope it does come back, this seems like my kind of MMO. i couldnt make it through the tutorial because of server lag and disconnects so i just quit. the users there were VERY helpful. seemed like an excellent community
Many players complained about lag but, the servers were based in france so alot of it was due to bad connections. My fix for it was to relog on until I got a lag free connection which was usually most of the time.
Many players complained about lag but, the servers were based in france so alot of it was due to bad connections.
I think it might have been more than that - I think they had some serious technical problems causing that lag which they managed to fix - because between the first and second times I tried it (one year apart) on the same machine, it went from being consistently chronically lagged to being completely lag free.
I never had any problems with lag from the time that I started (Feb 2007) till the end with the exception of a two week period at the start of October.
My only problem was an old video card, and when that went I build a new machine and everything worked just fine even though I am on dial-up.
I never had any problems with lag from the time that I started (Feb 2007) till the end with the exception of a two week period at the start of October.
The first time I tried it and it was a lag-fest was mid 06. It was mid 07 when I tried it again and it was lag free.
Played mostly on Arispotle, but on Leanon towards the end, and finally on Aniro after Leanon went down, from May '05 to the day before Aniro went down in February '08. I don't remember any periods of significant lag except for the aforementioned two-week thing in October '07. Either you were unlucky enough to stumble into a temporary server issue that would've been remedied within the day, or there was an issue somewhere between you and the server, or my memory fails.
I live on the west coast of North America, so sheer distance between NA players and the servers, which were first in France under Nevrax then in Germany under Gameforge, can't be an absolute issue.
----------- In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
Comments
I believe the matter is before the French Courts. There are a lot of rumors floating about, but few actual facts.
The servers have been shutdown, but the community is still alive, hurting but still alive.
You can still log onto Klients and www.Ryzom.com
There has been a little bit of news:
www.ryzom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=6238#6238
Moonlightmist
Moonlightmist
Probably just lack of user-base to support the cost of running the servers, paying the support, energy bill, renewing licences and paying for it's maintenence. Even a skeleton crew requires a few hundred grand per year.
If you're asking why I think the game didn't do well, I'd have to say that it had a very interesting setting, but very little happened and the great foe was a swarm of mindless giant insects which occasionally attacked towns. All in all you didn't feel like you were fighting a evil foe, just pushing back a hill of ants. Ryzom was very interesting and a skill based game I really enjoyed in beta and early on. But I found that a strong lack of quests, a lack of dungeons or varrying environments made the world feel small. The outdoor areas were hunting fields of roaming mobs, but there wasn't a strong sense of progression or character growth.
Plus the four races (or was it 3?) seemed to be at peace with one another. There was a deffinit lack of conflict or foe to overcome. No unique items to seek, no epic content. After a while of walking around the same zones farming animal parts to craft people got bored. The developers couldn't produce enough interesting content to keep the game alive so they made a tool to allow users to create instances and tailor the story (which would have been cool if there was already a large ammount of game content but there was a vast lack, so this felt like a bandaid measure). It was well received but the already dwindling player base was not enought o draw in new players and over time the player base atrophied and they had to shut down the servers.
Arioc Murkwood
Environment Artist
Sad but true.
A company wanted to buy it and make it F2P but another came and payed more for it. I'm betting now that they wish they would have made it F2P. I played it when it was free for a while and I really enjoyed it. I like that the animals roamed, and they looked at you and such. I liked the game play and that there was spontanious things happening. To me it felt more like a living world than any other MMO I've played. Granted I could have thought of other ideas to make it feel more living, but it was going in a good direction. I hope they can make it F2P, and make more content for it. The game does have promise and I think F2P is the only way people are going to give the game a chance, its been around far to long to go back to P2P...and if its totally shut down that would be a sad thing.
This was a great game. My only thoughts on it's demise is the huge outlay of cash the original dev team spent on trying to promote the game before it was really ready for release. They attempted to set CDs in stores and when funds ran out to continue that, they allowed free D/Ls. They seemed to have incurred so much debt that they went bankrupt and the company that bought it never really advertised it either. Most of the decent sized population the servers had came from either word of mouth or from great reviews here on MMORG and other similiar websites.
Lack of advertising cost this game its life and not the game itself.
- It is too oblique, ambiguous, and challenging for the average MMO gamer. Logically, after a stressful day at work/school, many people would want their entertainment to be relatively mindless and ego-stroking. Ryzom doesn't easily fit that desire. It caters to a niche who want a more complex game which does not hold their hand, tell them what to do, or spoonfeed them. Ryzom is to mainstream MMOGs what LEGOs (without instructions), Rubik's Cubes, and chess are to Twister mats, Hopscotch, and checkers.
- It encourages/enforces a degree of interdependence among players that makes it difficult to become powerful in-game under certain circumstances (i.e. living in a timezone that consistently places your logins at a lull on your language's server's activity level, within a population that is low at the best of times). It also makes it difficult for certain types of players.
- Ryzom has never been marketed properly, and for most of its existence, it has not been marketed at all. Of the few people who would enjoy it, far fewer would ever hear about it.
- There were many fantastic features promised at various points in time, particularly during initial development, which never made it into the game. Some players felt disenfranchised about this.
- For a third of its lifetime, Ryzom has been owned by Gameforge, who...dropped the ball. For the other two thirds, it was owned by Nevrax, who weren't good enough at managing and developing the game either.
- On that note, there were several occurrences in Ryzom's history which precluded opportunities to gain players, or alienated existing players.
--- Ryzom was released around the same time as World of Warcraft.
--- First patch after release ("Patch 1") was very problematic and caused many players to leave. Even one, two, and three years later, some people still had a bad taste in their mouth from that and therefore never bothered to give Ryzom another chance.
--- There have been two server merges, one early on (North American shard "Windermeer" into what was formerly the European shard, "Arispotle," to form a single English shard) and one later (secondary English server "Cho," which appealed to old players who wanted a fresh start and new players who worried about being eclipsed in an established community, was reunified with Arispotle not long after being started).
--- Focus on PvP was increased after the community had been accustomed to primarily PvE gameplay for a long time already.
The faction PvP began with an event about fighting for special materials in regions opened specifically for this purpose, to build temples for the two main religions.
It continued with the introduction of outposts, which allow guilds to own small pieces of land where drills can be (and of course, always are) installed to produce consumables (xp doublers, minor and temporary stat increasers, and special crafting materials). Although outposts are not mechanically faction vs. faction, because guilds tend to choose allies of the same faction as themselves the battles to obtain and hold outposts usually consisted of the defenders being mainly one faction and the attackers being mainly another. There were plenty of exceptions and grey areas, though, which created politics I personally found very intriguing...but some others found them tiring and irritating.
Anyway, on at least the Arispotle and Leanon servers some circumstance or other led to numerical imbalance between the factions. On Arispotle the Karavaneers outnumbered the Kamists and thus owned more of the outposts, and on Leanon it was the Kamists who outnumbered the Karavaneers.
Because outposts produce xp-doubling consumables, the faction with more outposts was able to skill up their constituents faster. You can probably extrapolate why this evoked whining and quitting from the underdog faction.
- The Ruins of Silan, with its quest-like tutorial missions and general atmosphere of obvious (a.k.a. contrived) goal orientation, is quite unlike the mainland. The people who liked the former were disappointed by the latter.
Also, RoS did not always exist. It was introduced later on. Before that, new players started on one of four separate islands according to race. The less popular races' islands were usually empty. There were no missions or tutorials, and no Universe channel.
- Gameforge severed the deal with Jolt that provided the volunteer CSR/GM program that had been in place, at least for Arispotle, for a long time. They replaced it with what appears to be a simpler in-house volunteer system, but I'm not sure since I was never a CSR/GM in either. This disturbed some people, who proceeded to leave. It took a while for the new personnel to learn the event tools, and even after they did, there were few events held.
- The first bankruptcy, of Nevrax, may have flipped the switch of "How I Should Perceive Ryzom" in some minds from "Extant" to "Dead."
- The releases of LotRO and Vanguard.
- The small population was a turn-off for some prospective players, which didn't make it easy for the population to increase. Argh, circular logic.
- A lot of the people claiming to want something different from the standard cookie-cutter MMO fare are pansies who got cold feet upon experiencing Ryzom's degree of difference (if they somehow knew of it at all). =P *semi-joking on this point*
-----------
In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
Katriell did an excellent job, but if you didn't want to read all of that you could sum it up into one simple statement. The game was always under-funded, and that led to its ultimate demise.
"True friends stab you in the front." | Oscar Wilde
"I need to finish" - Christian Wolff: The Accountant
Just trying to live long enough to play a new, released MMORPG, playing New Worlds atm
Fools find no pleasure in understanding but delight in airing their own opinions. Pvbs 18:2, NIV
Don't just play games, inhabit virtual worlds™
"This is the most intelligent, well qualified and articulate response to a post I have ever seen on these forums. It's a shame most people here won't have the attention span to read past the second line." - Anon
Ariok, seems u are speaking of WoW, so you are very superficial in your statements.
Telling 'mindless insects' means u didn't seen anything of the game as one of the best part of Ryzom is the mob AI, and their 'living acts'.
It's clear that u never went killing bosses.
Ryzom is 'sandbox' so telling that ther is a lack of quests (guided-quests to be precise as the game is full of quests) simply means you can't play a 'free-minded' game.
Lack of dungeons? You should know that in a single instanced world, dungeons are in the world and not instanced. There are dungeons.
There is no conflict between races but there is a huge conflict between the 2 factions, to conquer/defend Outposts, so your statement is false (or was true during beta).
Unique items? in a game that have as strong part it's crafting items?? lol, it's so banal asking for unique items. Anyway some 'unique' items from npc bosses are in the game.
Even you don't remember the number of races present so, what's the point in speaking of something you absolutely don't know, since the beta finished 3 years ago and you never played?
It's better for you play wow or one of the other quest-based mmo around. You can choose blinded, as they are almost all the same.
What told by Katriell is correct, said from one people that actually *know* the game.
Ryzom is death because people want easy things, ryzom is a hard game to play and needed an open minded mature players.
Ironically, as said by Katriell, a lot of people, just bored of the mindless mmo around (WoW at top list) where back in game in the last days, asking why they never known anything about ryzom, and finding it as a very fresh environment!!
Seems too late.
Nickname registered on www.mynickname.org
Ariok, seems u are speaking of WoW, so you are very superficial in your statements.
Telling 'mindless insects' means u didn't seen anything of the game as one of the best part of Ryzom is the mob AI, and their 'living acts'.
It's clear that u never went killing bosses.
Ryzom is 'sandbox' so telling that ther is a lack of quests (guided-quests to be precise as the game is full of quests) simply means you can't play a 'free-minded' game.
Lack of dungeons? You should know that in a single instanced world, dungeons are in the world and not instanced. There are dungeons.
There is no conflict between races but there is a huge conflict between the 2 factions, to conquer/defend Outposts, so your statement is false (or was true during beta).
Unique items? in a game that have as strong part it's crafting items?? lol, it's so banal asking for unique items. Anyway some 'unique' items from npc bosses are in the game.
Even you don't remember the number of races present so, what's the point in speaking of something you absolutely don't know, since the beta finished 3 years ago and you never played?
It's better for you play wow or one of the other quest-based mmo around. You can choose blinded, as they are almost all the same.
What told by Katriell is correct, said from one people that actually *know* the game.
Ryzom is death because people want easy things, ryzom is a hard game to play and needed an open minded mature players.
Ironically, as said by Katriell, a lot of people, just bored of the mindless mmo around (WoW at top list) where back in game in the last days, asking why they never known anything about ryzom, and finding it as a very fresh environment!!
Seems too late.
Thanks Katriell and Gilgameesh, I could not have said it better myself.
Moonlightmist
Moonlightmist
I truly loved this game until I left the noobie area and found it completely lacking in content of any kind.
There's sandbox and sandbox, and to go from having lots to do to absolutely nothing to do I think that put alot of people off staying longer and making enough social connections to make it worthwhile.
That was the downfall of this game, such a shame because with a bit more content this game would rule all.
And no that doesn't mean I don't have the imagination to 'handle' a sandbox game, I have played Eve for many years and played 2 years of Face of Mankind and created a huge amount of player content.
The community should of done more in this game to actively produce player content and situations for all levels. Sandbox doesn't mean leave people to their own imaginations it means working as a community to inspire peoples imagination and to assist in the success of the world and new players interaction and integration in that world.
So look to each other for the reason this game failed not the lack of imagination of new subscribers.
Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.
Thta's true. Unfortunately Ryzom suffered a full stop in developing well before the GF takeover and also after that, GF did absolutely nothing to improve the game.
We, as fans of Ryzom, are not saying that Ryzom is the best MMO around. We are saying that Ryzom has an incredible, unique, original environment, with a great skill based system. Of course, during these years, we expected the features that every sandbox need.
Nevrax mistakes were:
they introduced the Faction War, moving the PvP as the main concept, while they should have focused first on completing the PvE content.
they didn't finished the Encyclopedia, a series of 'rites' (lore quests) that gives perks and knowledge of the world (knowledge needed for how the ecosystems are built);
they added apartments and Guild Houses, but didn't added features easy to do and sure needed: customizable stuff.
they didn't added consumables.
Stop of the lore forwarding due the decision to implement the Ring, a great idea, but released too early.
Probably with a well funded dev team, all of these things could have be done easy, before going to the pvp aspect.
The original Ryzom project is much much bigger than what we have seen: 3 planets, more lands, mass invasions (seen only in some event).
And, at the end, last year, with Gameforge management, Ryzom devs were unable to do anything, without funds.
Player events were done in the past, many, but of course, with a situation where nothing move forward, most of them decided just to stop and wait.
That's the end of Ryzom, a game with some great innovation (don't forget, the game was released in 2004):
a customizable skill system, where u can build your actions (and yes, the system could be improved too with new stanzas etc...);
an incredible ecosystem where the rule is not just 'con the mob, then it's ok i just kill it', but instead, requires a knowledge of the fauna. A world where mastered players still needed experience to survive in the high regions.
an incredible AI (well, i know that is scripted, so hard to maintain) where the fauna really seems living, doing their jobs.
an immersive environment, where the world is not just a 'realistic exercise' but it's more a 'magical world' with great sounds, full weather system, day/night, etc...
The only game where i found the harvesting really satisfactory, cause it needs the player actively fight against the source digging, as it can kill you as any other mob.
A crafting where you must discover the best recipes experimenting with the tons of mats at disposal and not just click one or two buttons.
Mounts and packers that are permanent in the world and not just 'summoned' as needed.
(i know some of the previous statement seems going on the opposite direction of the actual MMO market, but Ryzom is not a mindless game as the top scored, it's a hard game)
You are right: there is sandbox and sandbox. But, Ryzom has the full potential to be the best 'sandbox' if only a company would develop it as needed. As you said: more content and Ryzom would rule all.
And you can't blame players for not doing events in last year. The situation was already 'in trouble'.
Unfortunately most Companies now go for the WoW-path, not realizing that WoW's fortune was based on the name 'warcraft', something that already got zillions fans much before 2004.
I don't see any light for now, as Ryzom bankrupcy is in hold due to a french law dispute. It can take up to a year before the french law can complete the liquidation process, so actually no one can buy Ryzom.
Nickname registered on www.mynickname.org
I only played for a few months last year. Real life unfortunately tore me away, and I was right bummed when I went to resubscribe only to find it had gone under again.
I'd have to disagree with those who claim the game failed for lack of the standard mmo features - dungeons, raids, uber gear etc. The fact SoR lacked these features was one of the game's key strengths.
I loved the exotic landscapes, the way mobs interacted with - well ok ate - each other, the importance of player crafting, and most of all, the fact that if I got bored doing one thing, I could change my clothes and go 'be' something else entirely without having to start a new character.
If anything, I think they didn't take the sandbox philosophy far enough. Could you imagine if they'd allowed for player-crafted vehicles or structures?
This game still has so much potential and has no real competitors for this style of gameplay.
SoR - don't go into the light! Come back!!!!
I played Ryzom for the 16 months leading up to the servers being shut down.
I feel the game has died for the time being because Gameforge wants the game to die.
They are tying the game up in the courts for what apparrently will be a year and a half or so. This is completely unnecessary as there is no good reason an out of court agreement couldn't be reached. The game is not worth what all the attorney fees will add up to probably.
From the rumors it appears the mess has been mainly caused by Gameforge not fully paying the amount they agreed to pay for the game when Nevrax went bankrupt.
I am grateful for the game being supported as long as it was after this bankruptcy started. However I think that was just an easy way for Gameforge to negate the hard feelings that are bound to be directed at them.
There are buyers for Ryzom!!!!
Sad.
The opensource community also tried to buy this, to make it a F2P/F2D game ( free to play, and free to dev). No idea if that would have worked, but reading the Gameforge never payed the money.. is lame.
Why would people kill something with soo much manpower hours behind?.
Business is all about making money. Killing a product is acceptable if you can turn a quick profit in the process. How much time/effort/resources others have invested in it is irrelevant.
Not that I'm a fan of this way of thinking, but that's how business works.
-----------
In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.
I don't know.
But seems that link is related:
http://www.ryzom.org/donation/new
195,220 $ where collected with donations.
But seemed not enough to open source it. Or maybe this will end on the recyle bin, like auto assault.
Having a open source MMORPG was a interesting step for the open source community. Anyway theres already something like this ... Continuum.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SubSpace_(computer_game)
http://subspace.legendzones.com/
I will quote the wikipedia:
"
Billing
The counterpart to the server application is the billing server. This server, which stores player data and scores and links zones together, is named for its originally intended function (in VIE's Subgame server) to store records of who had paid for the game and, therefore, was allowed to play it. Obviously, once VIE went out of business, this function was no longer necessary. Billing servers now serve many additional functions, such as providing a network-wide ban service superior to the one built into Subgame and allowing players in different arenas or zones to chat with each other over chat channels. There are several large biller networks for SubSpace. By far, the largest is SSC, which is the de facto official biller. It is owned by PriitK, the creator of the Continuum client."
Theres life beyond the dead of the original developers, if a game can jump into the freeware or open source community.
Else..
http://www.autoassault.com/news/
"Thanks to Everyone in the Central Wastelands — 08/31/07
With Auto Assault closing down tonight, we wanted to thank all of you for creating a tremendously cool and dedicated community of Wastelanders. We just didn’t want to give you guys a wild, crazy event tonight, but something else that may be just as fun. In the coming days those that are eligible will be receiving a “Parting Gift” message in your e-mail inboxes, with opportunities to take a part in some of our other products, including Richard Garriott’s Tabula Rasa and City of Heroes. It’s our way of saying “Thank You” to the diehard Auto Assault fan base and we hope to see you in are other virtual worlds."
Ryzom was incomplete, in a lot of ways.
Releasing more content, like Ring made it alot worse too.
Nevrax bailing, Jolt getting fired, Ryzom was dying and unless stuff gets fixed like it should be, it won't come back.
scientology
I played in past Ryzom and it's very nice mmorpg in many ways. How ever, there are few problems too, at least in my opinion.
1. Combat is pretty boring. It's based very strongly to holy trinity. Your group can stand still and pull one enemy and then the holy trinity gets it down. What is way to passive and repetable way to do combat.
2. Ryzom has PvE side, but PvP side is affecting it way too much. What basicly sooner or later smokes many PvE players out of the game. This is what happen to me.
Other ways, In my opinion SoR had one of best community, interesting enviroment, good harvesting and ecomomy and in many ways nice gameplay.
MMORPG.COM has worst forum editor ever exists
I think I played a trial of Ryzom for a day or two and thought it was okay.
The 'easy' answer to the OP thought would be WoW. It has a bigger name, popular brand, etc and releasing your game when another possible heavy hitter is coming out doesn't usually work out.
i tried this game, but at the time it was between owners? something like that. there was a lot of server lag. i was VERY disappointed because i was very excited after reading about it to play. i hope it does come back, this seems like my kind of MMO. i couldnt make it through the tutorial because of server lag and disconnects so i just quit. the users there were VERY helpful. seemed like an excellent community
Many players complained about lag but, the servers were based in france so alot of it was due to bad connections. My fix for it was to relog on until I got a lag free connection which was usually most of the time.
I think it might have been more than that - I think they had some serious technical problems causing that lag which they managed to fix - because between the first and second times I tried it (one year apart) on the same machine, it went from being consistently chronically lagged to being completely lag free.
I never had any problems with lag from the time that I started (Feb 2007) till the end with the exception of a two week period at the start of October.
My only problem was an old video card, and when that went I build a new machine and everything worked just fine even though I am on dial-up.
Moonlightmist
Moonlightmist
The first time I tried it and it was a lag-fest was mid 06. It was mid 07 when I tried it again and it was lag free.
Played mostly on Arispotle, but on Leanon towards the end, and finally on Aniro after Leanon went down, from May '05 to the day before Aniro went down in February '08. I don't remember any periods of significant lag except for the aforementioned two-week thing in October '07. Either you were unlucky enough to stumble into a temporary server issue that would've been remedied within the day, or there was an issue somewhere between you and the server, or my memory fails.
I live on the west coast of North America, so sheer distance between NA players and the servers, which were first in France under Nevrax then in Germany under Gameforge, can't be an absolute issue.
-----------
In memory of Laura "Taera" Genender. Passed away on August 13, 2008.