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Saga of Ryzom, Free and Open Source Software?
chew827 writes "Nevrax has been suffering bankruptcy and is in the process of liquidation and are trying to sell the Saga of Ryzom, the #3 rated MMORPG on mmorpg.com, to any prospective buyers. A group has assembled to try and raise enough funds to buy the intellectual property and open it under the GPL license — something Ton Roosendaal did for Blender."
I have several friends playing this game and do actually have it installed but only have internet in the office right now. However this is one cause I think I will be getting out the cheque book for - from what I saw of it looks a rather nice game that I would certainly like to play!
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
Blizzard buys it and then shuts it down to eliminate the competition. It is evil, but hey, it has been done before and they have cash-a-plenty.
Horizons has gone through some owners, as well, and even got Peter S. Beagle to take over some of the story writing. I'm not surprised that Ryzom is hitting the skids, though, as WoW pretty much has every moron in the world ponying up for the pleasure.
Can't stand WoW myself. Not too fond of Ryzom, either, come to think of it.
What's fascinating to me is that City of Heroes and City of Villains continue to do well in spite of the WoW-ed world. I guess it's just the fantasy genre that's too crowded.
All you fantasy MMORPG developers that haven't made it to market yet, take heed, sez I.
Making a project Free and/or Open Source doesn't automatically makes it better no matter what some zealots may say. In this case, a MMORPG project may or may not be suitable to such a change. The advantage of MMORPGs in the form that we all know is that one or several servers are run by an entity/company by its rules and the server rules are stricytly controlled by them.
Open Source almost always equalös division and we will see millions of variations of modifications that will be incompatible with each other and that will bring down the quality of the game.
It's time to realise that Abble's products are the biggest abomination these days. Just say NO to the dumb iAbble way!!
Learn to count for fuck sake !
From the website: !
Highest Ranked MMORPGs
EVE Online Rating: 8.3
Guild Wars Rating: 8.3
EverQuest II Rating: 8.3
Dark Age of Camelot Rating: 8.2
Ryzom Rating: 8.2
Looks like number 5 to me
It sure isn't quality. A friend of mine downloaded the free trial they have. He played for an hour or two then uninstalled it because it was that bad. I hit it back in open beta and concluded I wouldn't be buying it.
Slashdot Patriotism: We Support our Dupes!
I played this game when it was back in beta. It wasn't horrible, but it didn't have that much that set it out from all the other generic MMORPGs I've seen.
Never underestimate the stupidity inherent in all human beings.
Link seems slashdotted, so here's the mirrordot.
While I personally hate MMORPGs, I wish these fans the best of luck in acquiring the game. Something as large and mainstream as the #3 MMO going FOSS can only mean good things for open-source in general.
What I wonder, though, is who would actually run the game. A perusal of your fandom of choice's lower levels of fanfic will raise questions of the ability of even the most enthusiastic and well-meaning fans to actually run the canon.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Of course there will be "millions of variations" (heh, dream on.. :P .. hundred(s) at the most i guess), but all the bad ones will die out or just be played by the gangs that cooked them together. The good ones will attract more players and developers and thus - evolve. Also, open source software being used on a server doesn't mean that a server admin can not be BOFH:ish and impose strict rules.
Cheers..
$HOME is where the
-- silver_p
Ryzom is rough, the graphics could use a touch of work, and it's nonetheless a bit quirky in the movement. All the downsides considered, Ryzom has interesting features like stanzas, supposed always moving roots in the sky, and a pretty decent looking enviroment. Open source doesn't always mean free however, and providing the means for thousands of people to connect and play would be a problem. However, it seems like enough people not unlike myself would be happy to host a server for a few hundred people minimum, or more for no charge. For being crowded in the fantasy mmorpg sector, http://multiverse.net/ is gonna have some problems unless some really new games hit the market.
... I haven't exactly seen an explosion of free MMORPG's hit the scene despite the core engine of Ryzom having been GPL'd for as long as I can recall.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
I think the biggest problem with Ryzom is that it's an also-ran in the fantasy MMO market. Frankly, I can't think of many reasons to play this over WoW (and I don't even play WoW). I'm also not sure how the whole "community owned" aspect is going to work. I mean someone has to pay for the bandwidth and servers to host it (it's an MMO after all), so it seems likely that they're going to have to have a monthly fee still. I'm really not convinced that these people have though this all of the way through.
Admittedly it could be pretty cool to have a few dedicated teams on the internet building new content for the game, but I'm not sure it's going to be compelling when compared to WoW.
I read the internet for the articles.
Assuming that link worked when this was posted, has it ever occurred to any of you that the Slashdot effect is a very irresponsible way to kill websites that either aren't hosted on powerful servers or can't afford high-throughput hosting?
For this kind of thing, I would say it'd have been a much better idea to either let people do their own legwork or host a temporary mirror of the relevant article rather than bringing down the little guy without even thinking about it.
It seems like people are criticizing the effort because they've only considered the code that will be saved, or that the game itself wasn't very good, or that nobody will be able to run it with commercial success. But what about the various other assets like art (models, textures) and music that would be saved?
I think it would kick ass for smaller dev groups to have a production-ready (well, it's been used in production, anyway...) library of (L?)GPL-ed art to pick from, even if it was just to have available at production time and not polishing/shipping time. All that stuff sucks up resources and gets in the way of little shops producing anything commercially viable.
Granted, it ain't Oblivion but it's sure better than looking at a blank page to start with.
C
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
Open Source if done right can be good for projects where access to data and source code, community contributions and decisions by community consent are good things. That is clearly not the case for mmorpgs due to data security and balance decisions that clearly cannot be done by public.
Data Security: Assuming that potential cheating issues are somehow resolved, even that all mmorpgs out there use security by obscurity approach due to non-trusted client AND need to offload large chunk of computations client-side at all times, simple access to formulas will take min-maxing to the extreme and will make balancing nearly impossible.
Balance Decisions: What community of players would ever agree on balancing changes? For any mmorpg player your class/type/template is underpowered and class/type/template of anybody that beat you is overpowered by definition. Good luck getting anyone to agree how to balance the game.
As to mmorpg.com ranking - it is irrelevant and biased data. Subjectively - no way obscure vaporware like SoR can be ranked #3 when even in North America when there are more than 3 mmorpgs that are NOT going bankrupt right now. Objectively - you should look into available subscription data, mmogchart.com is a good place to start.
Paging Doctor Freud!
If you look at the list of most popular MMORPGs, you get the following:
1. World of Warcraft
2. Lineage
3. Lineage II
4. Runescape
5. Final Fantasy XI
None of those are on the list of highest rated MMORPGs. (Although FF11 comes the closest, being just one place shy of appearing on the list. WoW comes close, too, just after FF11.)
But the others just aren't there.
Makes you wonder just how accurate those MMORPG ratings really are. Given that I've heard FF11 is essentially an uninspired EverQuest rip-off, and almost everyone loves WoW, I'm thinking the MMORPG.com ratings may not be all that accurate. It's probably more of a reflection of how many fans of a given MMORPG inflate the rate vote on the site than anything else.
Don't believe the ratings you see at MMORPG.COM. That site is full of hardcore gamers and most of these hardcore players branches off to become hardcore supporter of certain games. Last year's MMO winner was EVE online. give me a break. nobody plays that game (250,000 is nothing compared to 7.5 million). I noticed that at the time votes were being tallied, EVE supporters flooded the voting booth. These aren't your average MMO players we're talking about here, these are people who has a stake in the community. They'll do whatever it takes to draw people into favorite game (a fansite forums), so dont mistake these people for casual players. Next time, I hope slashdot would stop holding MMORPG to such a high standard. Just check the MMORPG.com forums and you'll see rants about MMOs and extreme anti-WOW comments. Mention WOW and you will have your arse (ass) handed to you.
I mean this in the literal sense as I can't find mention of what license they want to release it under on the main page - and the site is too slashdotted to access it other than via the mirrordot posted above
I'd like to donate - but first I'd like to know what license they plan to offer it under... if its the GPL then I'm interested - if its the GPL and an option for them to sell commercial licenses for the game engine and tools to smaller game developers then I am even more interested (as it would give smaller games companies the chance to hit the market as well as offering another revenue stream for a central game server network in addition to donations)
However if the GPL isn't going to come into it at all and its going to be some custom license of their own then I probably wont donate...
$_="Slashdotter";$syn="OTT";s;..;;;sub _{print shift||$_};s!ash!Perl !;s=$syn=ack=i;tr+LLEd+BLAH+;_"Just Another ";_
I find it immensely sad that it has come to this.
When I started Nevrax it was with the idea that all the code would be GPL both on the client and the server side. Following a dispute over corporate strategy with the VCs funding the company, a good chunk of the core team left (myself included).
From that point on, the remaining managment and shareholders slowly closed more and more of the code - destroying in the process the spirit and the vision over which the company had been founded. In the end, destroying the company itself.
If Xavier Antoviaque and the folks behind this initiative think they can bring the ideas underlying Ryzom back to life , I sincerly wish them the best of luck.
Planeshift anyone? http://www.planeshift.it/
I could see some other, dumber, companies doing this, but Ryzom is a niche game, there's no way they'd waste money to but it just to shut it down.
I find it interesting to note that Saga of Ryzom's parent company already GPLed the engine -- but offers a non-GPLed version for a fee:
http://www.nevrax.org/tikiwiki/tiki-index.php
So it should be trivial to get the end product.
Reminded me of Wes Mantooth.
Spinning off of what others have already said I think this will only be successful if they modify the code to allow individuals to run a single server with a piece of a world and a somewhat standard ruleset. Without that, you're dependant on another business (or a very generous individual) to run multiple servers to host the game. A peer-to-peer MMORPG would be a major step forward.
It seems to me that this group is going to be as successful as the Star Trek nerds that tried to keep Star Trek: Enterprise on the aire.
The attempt to hit OSS is really a recognition that the game needs a LOT of work in a short period of time, more than anyone is likely to put into it ($).
g ames
The market is pretty much saturated with EverQuest and WoW. There is huge money and tons of time behind polishing these apps. Even lesser crud like GuildWars.
You can't do A1 titles on a shoestring budget, and if you build it they don't always come because you need to support it. (So capital and operating costs...) So they're looking for a buyer; and one buyer is suggesting an OSS because its sisyphysian in nature.
There are other open alternatives around. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_
The story of some of them is the same; source company can't keep the burner going without income so does whatever it can to keep the dream alive.
Software development is almost pure labor. Labor is the most expensive part of any endeavor. You can't take from the huge pot of $ without an equal amount of $ comming in. And there is a boatload of competition.
/\/\icro/\/\uncher
Wow, Slashdot can always be relied upon to come up with amazingly great business models for tech companies!
Take this game, for example. The Slashdotters claim that someone should buy out an MMOG which is in bankruptcy because it can't make enough money. Then, their recipe for success is to make the game free and open source the software so anyone can alter it.
So you will take a money losing proposition and ensure it never makes money (since you never charge the customers anything)... then give the users the ability to easily cheat... or even start up their own free cheat zone servers!
It's too bad that evil old "reality based community" never listens to the Slashdot. Why can't we bring back the "dot-bomb" days, when everyone realized companies never have to generate money?
I remember text based MUDs that you could log into the world over. There were several means you could take to becoming an admin (god) on that realm, but what it really let you do was program your own series of encounters or quests in an area set aside for you.
Granted, a graphical MMO is in an entirely different class, but I think that having a core continent or two for the core developers, and outlying areas / dungeons / instances for people that want to sign on and develop would be a great idea.
Problems :
- You are pretty much throwing your storyline out the window, as add-on areas will reflect the individual programmers interpretation of the main storyline. This could be overcome with a manifesto being made for add-on content, and a review process before it would be allowed live. (much like the linux kernal, I'm guessing.)
- Continuity, related level of difficulty, rewards, etc..etc.. In these seperate areas, the core devs would need to control the drop tables, and ensure that it relates well to the core areas. Possibly having a dictionary of mobs that satellite developers could use / modify for use in their areas. Lots of ways you could work with this.
- Compatibility. There is a lot more work to be done in this regard than most think. If you have flying mounts or characters, there is a whole additional pane of the area that has to be textured, made solid, etc. Model sizing. (nuff said)
In short, it's a lot harder to make something like this work with a large group of unrelated programmers than with straight code, IMHO.
I'd love to see it done, though.
The game itself is not. The content, storyline, etc. is owned by Neverax and Ryzom itself
would have to be "bought" from them to GPL or Creative Commons license it unless the
receivers from the bankruptcy allow it (Which is usually unlikely...)
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
What good does it do to open source the software when the real cost of running the game is the servers? Somebody's got to buy and babysit the hardware and pay for all that bandwidth! Unless you can come up with some sort of distributed computing model where the player's machines themselves act as the servers, but that is frought with all sorts problems such as cheating, viruses, and recovery from dropped nodes.
For the people who are misreading it, it's the #3 RATED GAME at MMORPG.com. It's entirely a popular vote, as can be seen by EVE Online, Guild Wars and EverQuest II being tied for the top spot.
The top three MMORPGs in the world are still World of Warcraft, Lineage and Lineage II. Runescape and Final Fantasy XI round out the top 5.
Nevrax went under because the game itself wasn't successful, and introducing "Ryzom Ring" didn't help them. Players creating your content can be a good thing, but in this case it was the last gasp of a dying company.
I played Ryzom for more than 9 months, roughly from the introduction of the encylopaedia missions to shortly after the introduction of the PvP outposts, and for the most part, I loveed it, and made many friends there, some of whom I am still in contact with on a daily basis. One of the tings I liked most about it was the fact that it was so different to the other games around.
One of the high points in my eyes were the crafting system, which was, Shock! Horror!, more complex than 3a + 2b -> Sword No 5. Enough that best crafters gained a reputation for crafting better items than anyone else, and their items were highly sought after.
Other things that made it nice were the classless system (get bored of tanking? fine, heal instead), and the community that generally took in new players and guided them, with a remarkable lack of "FFS! Noob!".
Even though I've stopped playing, I used to pop my head in from time to time, and it is sad to see it get to this state, especially with the relatively recent addition of player created content (sort of player made instances) but hopefully there is an opportunity here for it to be reborn anew.
If that were to happen, I think it's likely we'd see different pricing structures from different suppliers... for me, a per-hour fee might be ideal, while serious grinders would enjoy unlimited access for a monthly fee. Either way, I don't think I'd end up spending $200-300 per year to play the game a couple hours a week, which is reason enough not to play WoW, IMO.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
There are plenty of (illegally) user-run servers for many popular MMORPGs, I don't think there'll be much difficulty in finding someone willing to run a server.
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
The life blood of any MMORPG is adding new content. Look at the original EverQuest; seems like they pump out an expansion every 6 months so there is some new quest to solve or item to gain.
Now you want to trust the content to programming geeks? Have you SEEN the state of the average fan fic?
Talk about Dork Ex Machina.
Every quest will involve having to visit the 99th level Wizard/Paladin/Thief in their trans-dimensional fortress who is surrounded with topless wenches while he watches a death match between Picard and Kirk. Oh, and Sam and Frodo are "doing it" in the next room.
Those servers only host a few dozen people at a time though (at most), they can easily be run from a home DSL or Cable connection. These guys are talking about taking over the playerbase from the game, which even for a third rate MMO like this is thousands of players. You need a real server somewhere to handle that kind of traffic, and real servers aren't free.
I read the internet for the articles.
I have played the game, and I like it. I get not lag and seems a very good implementation of the MPORPG idea. Good work boys!.
Also the open souce is a interesting thing. I am open source game enginer myself and I admit that the Catedrall works very well. Is hard for a open source proyect to have soo good medias that Ryzon have because art-talented people are mosly not-FOSS friendly, are other culture.
Again, THANKS for your contribution!!!!.
-Woof woof woof!
I enjoyed this game during beta.
I made a toon that looked like (and was named after) Lion-o from thundercats. haha
I'd put a couple bucks towards making the content GPL.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
As one of the guys who translates some of the stuff there to languages other than french: At the time of writing the game was #3 in the rankings, that was on thursday evening i think. There also was a time when the game was #2, the rankings shift very fast. One thing has remained true though: Despite having a tiny userbase compared to other games, it has remained in or near the top 7 for over a year./ 388/page/1/from/
And even if it's true that it's only a popularity contest, think about what it means for a game with barely 5000 paying accounts and a userbase that is mainly mature and laid-back players, to manage this on a site with 500k+ accounts: To stay ahead or at least head-to-head with games that have 5 million subscribers globally or that can sport an almost rabid fanbase to the point of securing them several awards in the last year's reader's choice votes. http://www.mmorpg.com/showFeature.cfm/loadFeature
Think of the possibilities! With an MMORPG codebase, groups of interested users could fork off their own distros with whatever featureset/gameplay they want! The same could be said for graphics and art. This could spawn an industry, imagine developing your own game based on the OSS codebase and simply charging for access to your large servers/persistant worlds, by providing value added services like full time authors writing plotlines/quests.
There is one significant area where Linux and OSS are lacking behind, it's Video Games.
Sure, the PS3 running Linux on top of a gaming box helps a bit, but i still don't see my siblings installing it on their PC.
What can we gain from buying a dying game which(as some have pointed out) isn't even among the top 5?
1. A lot of code to hack on, use for other projects/games.
2. ART ART ART! Seriously, how bored are you of seeing almost the same creatures in most OSS games?
3. Mature (gaming) tools which were used (figuratively speaking) in real life and have proven successful.
4. Another piece of software to add to the glorious OSS stack.
Hey the thing IS worth, even if the game dies a few month after it's GPLed, there is still the huge amount of Artwork which can be reused for so many other projects that direly need them.
By the way sites get slashdotted(god damn it the article was posted yesterday and i'm STILL having trouble viewing the site) it seems that if every nerd/geek here contributed 20 euros we'd get the game in no time.
The donation amount seems to be soaring, from the look at it we're well over the 15K, only 85K more to go.
By that same logic, sitting in front of a TV beats doing anything. People aren't solely motivated by cost... there is enjoyment to consider as well.