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Nevrax = wet behind the ear.
'The Saga of Ryzom' is Nevrax first project, and they made quite a few rookie mistakes, as I see it. Their first patch nearly killed the game, there're still a few game-balancing issues, and they failed to launch a successful North America champaign. To be fair, they were unlucky with their launch with the 2 big mmorpg giants right on their heels (WoW and EQ2). And now 3 with the release of Guildwars. Being so new and unknown, how can they possibly compete in the NA market? Pulling out of NA was a good decision, I think. A lot of the players are happier now with the European English and North American population merge.
Another thing that they fell preyed to is the failure to deliver and meet the deadlines of some major features and contents release (classic developers optimism curse right there).
But with all that being said, this is not to say that SoR is a bad game nor Nevrax is a bad company. They are not. You can tell that Nevrax has a lot of passion about this project, and truly care about their playerbase. They are fighting on tooth and nails 
Being inexperience isn't necessary a bad thing. If we automatically reject a game company on the basis of lack of experience, then no new and fresh contenders will ever emerge, and that would be a very bad thing. Experience in the industry will come in time, they have to start somewhere. So I chose to ignore that bit and gave them a little more leeway in their mistakes.
I can also tell that they're learning from their mistakes, which is pretty much all that is necessary, imo. Mistakes are forgivable as long as they are able to recognized them and learn from it. They have reorganized their patch, testing, and release cycle, they are having more open communication with the playerbase, and they just recently hired Jessica Mulligan as an on-trial consultant to bring in some experienced industry insights. Hopefully, they also have something up their sleeves for the big E3 event coming up.
The sad side of the story is that they had to downsize their company and "restructure their company" ... and file a French version of Chapter 11 because of financial problem (they didn't hit their projected subcriptions is my guess). Although that's pretty scary, lots of people have voiced that with them proactively filing for the court review, they stand a good chance of surviving, and that the French version of chapter 11 is not as harsh as the American version, though this remains to be seen.
SoR has a pretty loyal following at the moment, although small, and most of the players agree that SoR has a mystifying quality that they can't put their finger on. That just keep drawing them back and make them not want to leave. There is just something special about the world of Atys. I hear the phrase "has great potential" quite often, from both fans and non-fans.
I think the thing that will make or break this company will be what they do in the next few months. If they are able to make a splash at E3, and if they're able to release an eagerly awaited feature: "Outposts", which allows player guilds to own, operate, and defend (and also serve the story as that of rebuilding the planet). The players of SoR can be quite patience and forgiving, but I have a feeling that a lot of the one with one foot out the door is waiting to be draw back in with Outposts as a justification, because they really want to stay, but won't if the game remains the same for the next few months.
Myself, I have became a casual player of SoR, and only been playing one or two nights a week for very short period of time. This is mainly because of real life commitments, but yet I still kept my subs active, and I know of a lot of players who are not even playing at all but still kept their subs active, to support Nevrax. I mean WOW! Can you imagine people doing that for EQ or WoW? So kudos to those players, you know who you are.
Heh, you can see how passionate *I* am about the game, to write out a post like this. This post started out as a few sentences abou the pro's and con's of the game and Nevrax as a whole, but turned into a novel :P
Anyhow, I really hope that SoR and Nevrax live long enough to realize their potentials, because if they do, they will have something amazing on their hand and the mmorpg community will have an amazing game to play with.
Comments
I would have to agree, this is a very fair representation of the game, we have been waiting for some time for some new features in the game and some key fixes to troublesome (not limiting) bugs.
I enjoy it bunches, and I am not really sure why myself. There is a tremendous amount of depth that if you get into it is unbelievable.
On the whole I would have to agree that that is a fair review. Ryzom has so much potential, and I am sticking with it so long as they keep working on it. I think they can easily survive this chapter 11 business, as it doesnt sound so bad from what I hear, especially as they applied early for it.
All Ryzom really needs is publicity, it has the potential to go all the way and be a serious thorn in the side of the "big" MMOs perhaps even becomming one.
-Kibs
-----------------
Kibs
Avatar by Ema
Playing: The Saga of Ryzom since march 2004
--Ryuun--
On the whole I would have to agree that that is a fair review. Ryzom has so much potential, and I am sticking with it so long as they keep working on it. I think they can easily survive this chapter 11 business, as it doesnt sound so bad from what I hear, especially as they applied early for it.
All Ryzom really needs is publicity, it has the potential to go all the way and be a serious thorn in the side of the "big" MMOs perhaps even becomming one.
-Kibs
yes indeed i agree ive been playing since the first day of release and im still there though i dont play too often its easy to see the changes that have been thought of and planned ingame i love the depth of the game and a lot of the things about it the main one being im free to do what i want where i want the community is great too if this game gets more publicity it will be big i agree but with the new things coming up in the game its going to be a lot of fun i have just subscribed for 12 months happily and intend on staying for longer than that
Rivendell
"Actually, NA had more subscribers than any other community..."
I don't think that's true, and, if you'll forgive the gross overgeneralisation, its not a very 'American' game. It always felt like the yank subs were killing time for WoW and EQ2.
The yank players also seem the most likely to whinge and complain, endlessly, at the slightest problem, to threaten and to throw their toys out of the pram.
More commercially minded, less reserved and less willing to make an 'effort'. Most of the complaints have been from US players who don't seem to want to produce any creativity of their own (the exceptions make up for the difference though).
Being spoonfed isn't my cup of tea ta.
Postmortem Studios
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After playing on most other international servers, reading and tracking the boards, and observing fan sites from all nations, I can safely assume that North America had a predominent share in the community playerbase.
hmmm... if that's the case, why did they shutdown the NA server?
Wait, I see, you are thinking that NA has the largest pop, but it still aint enough to make the numbers?
How can anybody other than a Nevrax employee know how many people play in either community? You guys set these statements but how do you come up with your numbers? Who knows? I mean it's not like the companys financial information is posted anywhere... or is it? It's funny reading these posts though...people arguing about what they think the numbers are. Hmmm...I wanna pick some numbers... lets see... Arispotle has 8,954 members, NA had 4,321.... no wait... the German server kicks all their butts 10,483 members! YEAH!
Orion is right as there is really no way to know for sure the exact server populations at this point and time. Even trying to judge it by the number of subscribers to the official Ryzom forums is not accurate as there are some people that post on the forums that don't currently play Ryzom. The only way that we would be able to know for sure is if Nevrax came out and said that there are xxxx amount of subscribers in Ryzom for this month and then break it down for each server. Like he said, unless someone knows where there is legit information being posted that can be trusted on the server pops because as of yet I haven't found a site nor do I know of anyone else who has.
As far as the comment about the NA Windermeer server having the highest subscriber base, I do know that that was not true or at least hasn't been the case for several months before the english based servers Windermeer and Arispotle were merged. Again, there is really no way to tell exact numbers, but from everything I read on the forums, of the english speaking servers and before the merger, Arispotle was more populated than the NA Windermeer.
That being said. Part of the problem with Nevrax is what vqly stated, Nevrax is a new company and very "wet behind the ear." The really didn't do that good of job of getting Ryzom marketed properly in North America, and in addition, Nevrax did not do a good job in getting their product to the stores in the North America market for people to buy. It was really difficult to find a Ryzom box at a gaming or electronics store here in the US. They have taken steps in the last couple of months to correct this, but it has definitely set Ryzom back a few months. With the hiring of mmorpg industry veteran of Jessica Mulligan as Executive Producer, restructuring of the company to cut cost and become more effecient, and they are in the process of hiring more customer service and developement personel, Nevrax and Ryzom all seem to be headed in a positive direction. I for one look forward to see what transpires in the next few months and what Nevrax unveils at E3.
They did not remove the NA server. They merged the European - English server with the North American server because it was the Euro server that was struggling with population numbers.
Completely unfounded. Windermeer was a ghost town towards the end, at one GM event a total of 15 players showed up. While on Arispotle I was reading about over a 100 people showing up to the same exact event. Hell I could go into a high lvl hunting region and find a total of 3 people there on Windermeer at peak times. On Arispotle forums I heard complaints of not having enough spots to hunt at! I can without a doubt say that the closure was for the benefit of the Windermeer servers, our population was really crappy. Since the merge it's been fantastic, I wish there was still more players but at the moment the population is very playable. My numbers aren't very accurate either, I'm just relating my experiences.
Edit: Also it was the NA server that was actually shut down. All of us are now on a server based in the UK, ontop of that the server kept the UK name...
Having great potential doesn't make it a gd game!
SWG,EQ2 and PS we're in the same boat but all 3 left to die
True, agree with you there.
But having a great settings/unique universe, great community, customer support, classless system, customizable skills, and a dedicated devs team sorta tipped it over
I hope they do show us something we can look forward to and that 'women from OU' strengthens that hope