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."

Comments

Time to dust off the chequebook

[simm1701]

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!

Re:Time to dust off the chequebook

[Vintermann]

Question: what happens to your money if they don't reach the sum it takes to buy it? Now, if those folks had heard about fundable.org you wouldn't have to worry about that.

Re:Time to dust off the chequebook

[Vintermann]

Duh, I see now that they're just solicting pledges for now. Still, using fundable could save them from unpleasant suprises when the pledges are to be collected.

Evil Plan

[PsyQo]

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.

Re:Evil Plan

[Nos.]

Definitely something they might consider, but I'm hoping they wouldn't sell it like that. This is obviously a fairly one sided crowd, but wouldn't you rather take less money to see your creation go on, evolve, and continue to be appreciated, rather than buried by the competition, even if you had no further involvement?

Re:Evil Plan

[Stregone]

From what I've read about this, it isn't up to them. A 3rd party is in charge of doing whatever it takes to get as much money back to the investors.

Obviously there's no benefit...

[Rinzai]

...in being #3.

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.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Kyokugenryu]

The reason I play WoW is the massive community, the insane amount of content to cover, and most of all, the PVP. When I played CoH, there was no PVP, so I wanted nothing to do with it. City of Villains added it, but I can't be arsed trying it out. NCSoft has a far superior game in Lineage II, which is the best PVP game I've ever played. Guild Wars has decent PVP as well. WoW's PVP is fun, but it's nothing compared to L2. PVP is the main reason I keep a sub for L2 AND WoW.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[The Living Fractal]

I'm not surprised that you don't like WoW. A lot of people don't like it merely because it's popular. Maybe you're one of them, I don't know. A lot of people don't like WoW because they can't stand how long it takes to get the best gear. Perhaps those people should see the changes Blizzard is making with 2.0 and the expansion. And even more people think that in WoW if you don't raid with 40 people you can never compete. So that is the whole casual vs. hard-core debate. Again, I offer that these people take a look at the changes Blizzard is making regarding this issue.

I'm not surprised you decided to use the word 'moron' to describe people who play WoW. Given your previous statements you are obviously highly opinionated about your MMORPGs.

But you are simply wrong IMHO. The Fantasy genre may be crowded... But the reason these other games aren't making a strong profit or even staying afloat has less to do with crowding as the fact that World of Warcraft is just that good. You can argue against it all you want, but the numbers will prove you wrong. Money talks and you apparently choose not to listen. That's your choice.

People choose WoW because they like it. They don't choose other games because they choose WoW. And guess what, someday WoW will get trumped by something new.

Your argument is like saying when DVD overtook VHS that the recording medium market was 'too crowded' for VHS to survive. Wrong. DVD (WoW) is just that much better. Or are you going to argue that VHS is better now?

TLF

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Bieeanda]

Cities of X have the mixed benefit of being dead fucking simple. There's very little traditional loot (almost all of which can actually be bought in the in-game stores) and most of the gameplay is based around instanced maps. What world-map hunting there is consists mostly of 'Defeat X of Y Faction' or hunting specific critter types to earn kills toward badges... which, by and large, have no in-game effect. With the exception of the very sparse end-game content, it's focused almost entirely on casual play and very accommodating to solo heroes. On the other hand, it's only slightly deeper than the average petri dish.

Another thing to consider is that almost all of the Korean-developed MMOGs and a sad proportion of North American developed ones are... well, crap. Horizons failed because they began with an utterly insane design document that kept having increasingly unlikely features added; by the time they actually had a functional engine, there was precious little content. Asheron's Call 2 failed for largely the same reason: it had a decent engine and pretty landscapes, but a lack of towns, vendors or life beyond monsters to whack meant that there was precious little content to keep the players interested and occupied. Unless there's story being doled out in bite-sized pieces (like what City of X does, and like the original Asheron's Call did), or a steadily changing menagerie of things to hit and loot to show off, you're going to lose all but the worst fanboys and the most abjectly obsessive-compulsive players.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[GuyWithLag]

I've played WoW, and switched over to Eve Online several months back. While WoW's PvP didn't win me over, I find that in Eve it actually means something, and it's far, far more integral to the player experience than the simple Alliance-Horde split in WoW.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Kyokugenryu]

I've heard a lot of good things about Eve. Wow's PVP gets boring after a while, I'm hoping Burning Crusade makes it a little more balanced and fun.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[The Living Fractal]

As a WoW player from release (well beta, but beta doesn't count really for various reasons when talking about skill) I have a few things to say about the challenge level in WoW.

If you're into PvP skill becomes a factor immediately. Two equally skilled players will often have good, hard-fought, battles. It's very obvious when you encounter someone in PvP who isn't skilled -- you steamroll them almost effortlessly.

What about PvE (or player versus world/environment, i.e. single player)?

Well yes, less skill is required to grind single mobs outside in the open world. But you aren't limited to just that. What I do is play two characters at one time (alt-tabbing between them). I play a warrior/priest combo. Talk about a challenge controlling two at once. If you get it down you can take out monsters that no solo player ever could. You can solo parts of instances that no solo player ever could and use it to make money. You can twink out your low level players.. There are many entertaining options (if you're willing to pay the extra $15/mo that is)

TLF

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Anonymous Coward]

I, personally, don't like WoW or EQ for several reasons (I don't know about the parent's reasons for not liking it):
1.) Monthly subscription fees.
2.) Programs that try to detect cheating. I don't cheat in games, but I don't need my computer clogged with programs that examine the memory space of all other programs. It burns my CPU time, and reportedly breaks Cedega/Wine...
3.) EULA that changes in middle of subscription cycle, so that you've already paid for one licnese when your forced to agree to a new license. I've already payed you for this subscription term, under one set of polcies -- if you change them midstream I should be able to decline and either:
  - get my money back the rest of the current cycle and leave the game
  - continue to be able to play under the old EULA until my subscription comes due again, at which point I either agree to the new terms and poney up more cash or leave the game.

That said... I play GW. No sub-fees, new content and events on a regular basis and they fund through PVP upgrades and new expantion packs. That means, until GW goes under or switches to a Eula I don't like, I keep playing for the initial cost only.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[GuyWithLag]

Eve offers a free 14-day trial, it certainly won't hurt to check it out. Two notes only: the tutorial takes about 2-3 hours to play through (and it really does pay to follow it), and don't try it on tuesday - a new content patch is arriving. Otherwise, have fun! If possible, do try to find a corporation that is willing to take you in despite the fact that you are on a trial account, it does make a difference.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[araemo]

"Unless there's story being doled out in bite-sized pieces (like what City of X does, and like the original Asheron's Call did), or a steadily changing menagerie of things to hit and loot to show off, you're going to lose all but the worst fanboys and the most abjectly obsessive-compulsive players."

Interesting way to put it. I've played a few MMO's(all during the beta stages, very few of them kept the fun when they started 'fixing' things for release - like how long it took to level, and the cost of items and balance/time sink stuff like that)

I definitely prefer the latter - having a story that is uncovered bit by bit as time goes on, compared to the pokemon-esque "Gotta catch em all, but about the same time you do, we add more to catch!"

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Rinzai]

It's not that good. I played it. Too much "been there, done that" in it for me. Played Asheron's Call for 4.5 years before looking into WoW. It was simply too darned shallow. I have no use for PVP (what, exactly, is the point of PVP, in anything but an FPS?), so that aspect didn't grab me, but PVP aside, there simply isn't enough to do beyond whack 'n slash. True, there are grand enough vistas to be viewed, and clever bits like the undersea train, but once you get past that, the next thing is the same thing as the current thing--just painted a different color.

Disagree all you like. I tried it. I found it lacking in areas I found critical. That's enough to make me move on--end of story.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[QuantaStarFire]

I would actually surmise that people play WoW because it's made by Blizzard, so it's gotta be good.

I'll admit that WoW is a well-made game, but like most MMOs that have come before it, it gets really boring REALLY fast because all there is to do is grind mobs, grind quests, grind rep, grind resources, grind honor...just grind, grind, and grind some more. Then maybe after you finish that, you can do a bit of grinding, take your mind off the grind for a bit while you prepare for your next grind.

It seems that the only time you can really get some GOOD, non-grind-related entertainment is if you're one of those rare creatures that actually plays MMORPGs to roleplay your character, and even then you're only a mere drop in a bucket full of inbred assholes who hate you for doing something other than grinding. The GMs won't do anything because their job isn't to hold events anymore, but to do what every other company has the people at the bottom of the company do--provide shitty customer service, even to people with legitimate problems.

What makes this even sadder is that WoW actually made some attempt to add roleplay elements to the game with interactive objects, like chairs to sit on or books to read, and even alcohol to consume. Yet when the players themselves have to expand the interface to add RP elements that should have been there by default, and won't add those elements to the standard UI, then are you really playing a role-playing game anymore?

This is only a small bit of the things I feel are wrong with MMOs, though the central theme of all of them is that roleplaying and worthwhile events get the shaft in favor of static worlds because 1) No company wants to write up a contract that allows them to avoid lawsuits from volunteers, and 2) They don't want to piss people off by "always having events when I'm offline and its not fair" and having people quit in a childish manner. And honestly, I'm not expecting any company to move forward with such things in the near future.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Bieeanda]

I'm definitely in for the lore and exploration in these games; if there's a way that I can avoid whacking the monsters, I'll take it. What had me hooked on CoX for over a straight year was that just about everything moving had a bit of back-story. If it's a quest-giver, you can click and see their background. If it's a monster, you can click a couple of times to see a textual description. Lots of mission objectives give you little clues that you can bring up in a window, and when you finish a story arc you're left with a souvenir synopsis of the whole escapade. Some of the stories are one-shots, but others reveal the methods and drives of signature villains and their minions.

Warcraft does things similarly, in that their quest givers usually have some degree of personality, but the rewards that they grant are ultimately disposable and there is nothing like a traditional CRPG quest log. It seems to rely more on outside knowledge of the Warcraft canon, like from the tie-in novels or the earlier RTS games, which limited my appreciation of the storylines.

Games like Ryzom rarely have a real story, and when it is there it's usually poorly translated. Instead they go for the Pokemon grind: level up killing green crabs, then move on to red crabs, and then try your hand at killing slugs.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[fitten]

WOW's "massive community" is simply numbers. The actual "community experience", in my opinion, is much less than that of other games. EQ, for example, when I played didn't have instancing. You had to share all the content with everyone and multiple groups simultaneously. Sebilis, for example, was full of people and, while annoying in that everything was always dead, tended to get people interacting with each other, even if a bit silly. Late nights in Sebilis were typically filled with local chat and all kinds of silliness as players waited for NPCs to spawn. On our server, our guild (and anyone's guild) interacted constantly with other guilds so that you most likely knew 100s of toons who weren't in your guild and probably many who were in "rival" guilds. If nothing else, you had to deal with other guilds as you raced to spawns. Contact with many players outside of your guild and "in the wild" was unavoidable in EQ.

In WOW, by contrast, you know those in your guild and maybe a select few from other guilds. The local chat in The Barrens, for example, is mostly ignored because, like almost all open areas, your time there is fairly limited. You're just going through The Barrens either on your way to somewhere else or even if you are leveling through it, you're only there for an afternoon before you leave it. When you go to any of the instances, you're there by yourself and isolated from everyone else. Even in PvP, the only way to 'do' the various games is to group up with regulars you know because pickup groups aren't usually competitive. The only "community experience" in WOW is on message boards, at most. There just isn't any reason to be much of a community in WoW other than guild association.

I'm not saying that WoW isn't a good game, because it is. It's just that I would never claim it is that much of a 'community experience' game, coming from other games that had much more of what I'd consider 'community experience' than WoW.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[smbarbour]

I'm not entirely sure where the #3 ranking came from...

Looking at MMORPG.com's game list sorted by ranking descending (highest ranking first), Ryzom is ranked #6.

For perspective though... World of Warcraft is #14, and FlyFF (a free-to-play MMORPG) is #11.

I've never played WoW myself, so I can't attest to the ratings system, but I'd guess its based on fanboyism and the quality of the game (The #1 game, EVE Online, would be well worth the money to play in my opinion. But until I start paying for EVE, I'll be playing FlyFF (which looks like Dark Cloud 2 as an MMO).

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[toriver]

1.) Monthly subscription fees.

Yeah, I hate newspapers for the same reason. In fact Blizzard et al should run the servers, provide the GMs, support et al pro bono. Like Game Servers Sans Frontières or whatever.

2.) Programs that try to detect cheating.

Yeah, I know the feeling: The same goes for sports, where those stupid referees don't let people win by poking the opponent in the eye.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Cheesy Fool]

> If you're into PvP skill becomes a factor immediately. Two equally skilled players will often have good, hard-fought, battles.

Of course you mean two equally skilled players who are playing the same class and have approximately the same level of gear. A skilled Druid with epic gear would find it nearly impossibly to beat a mostly blue geared Warlock who has even a little bit of skill.

Class > Gear > Skill

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[drinkypoo]

Programs that try to detect cheating.

Yeah, I know the feeling: The same goes for sports, where those stupid referees don't let people win by poking the opponent in the eye.

the difference is that you can play football and basketball at the same time on your PC, but the referees from both sports hang around and fuck up the other game you're playing.

99% of the metaphors people try to use to explain the behavior of computers are complete nonsense and yours is no exception as it has no relation to anything whatsofuckingever. It's more like if you played american football, then you quit playing american football and started playing real football, but the american football referee stuck around and told you that since you kicked the ball, you had to take a ten yard penalty.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[drinkypoo]

It seems that the only time you can really get some GOOD, non-grind-related entertainment is if you're one of those rare creatures that actually plays MMORPGs to roleplay your character, and even then you're only a mere drop in a bucket full of inbred assholes who hate you for doing something other than grinding.

You know, if you want to roleplay, why play a MMORPG? Why not just connect to a MU* of some sort? Some of them, like AmberMUSH, are all about roleplaying. And on top of that, they tend to be free.

MMORPGs are for grinding and bragging about grinding. Kind of like college. So are most MUDs. But there's a bunch of MUCKs and MUSHes and MOOs and MUSEs and whatnot that provide a primarily-roleplaying environment. You don't need pretty graphics if you want to roleplay - So go roleplay!

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Salmar]

Isn't that what market crowding is? Only in the case of WoW, it's a morbidly obese hog taking up six rows in the theater. It's all a matter of proportion. Also, your response is irrelevant to Rinzai's post. He was talking about his experience with the current version of WoW, not what changes they'll have made in a few months. Save the punishment 'till then.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Salmar]

Yeah, mmorpg.com's ratings are pretty volatile, and subject to the opinion of those with no life, clicking away on the VOTE button.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[QuantaStarFire]

You know, if you want to grind, why play a MMORPG? Why not just connect to a MU* of some sort? Some of them, like AmberMUSH, are all about grinding. And on top of that, they tend to be free. MMORPGs are for roleplaying and bragging about roleplaying. Kind of like college. So are most MUDs. But there's a bunch of MUCKs and MUSHes and MOOs and MUSEs and whatnot that provide a primarily-grinding environment. You don't need pretty graphics if you want to grind - So go grind!

Now obviously the AmberMUSH example wouldn't apply if it's not a grinding MUSH, but you can see that a little word substitution makes wanting to grind in MMOs as silly as wanting to roleplay. You could as easily have said "play D&D if you want to roleplay", but that doesn't really solve anything either. I mean, sure, it gives the mindless hordes that defend the genre's current state peace of mind, because now they don't have to deal with the guys who want to masquerade as elves speaking ye Olde English, but where does that leave the guys who want to masquerade as elves speaking ye Olde English, or their friends who can roleplay without sounding like they're from 11th-century England?

Honestly, I think that if this is how these games are going to continue to be developed, they need to drop the RP moniker completely, because as it stands right now, it's very misleading. Massively Multiplayer Online Fantasy Setting Game would be a more accurate description for so-called MMORPGs, don't you think?

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Shadow99_1]

As for MU*'s... Personally I used to love them... But they lack one big thing that draws people in: Graphics. No ASCII graphics don't count. Not for long at least... I spent 5 years using MU*'s of various sorts and that lack of graphics is what killed it for me in the end...

It's funny though if you want to compare MU*'s to MMO's... MU*'s allow object creation and manipulation to allow the user to expand their experience and MMO's don't (Second Life being an exception, though it also has no theme). Also object manipulation allows lasting user contributions, aka people can 'leave their mark on the world'. MU*'s and MMO's both have themes to give a background or context in which to play (except Second Life). Most of the concepts used in MMO's to develop characters via stats has been done before in MU*'s (leveling, skill use development, skill trees, etc). MU*'s also give MMO's their chat systems (local, faction/guild/etc, area wide, system wide). MMO's have graphical and physics based systems that incorporate distance, size, speed, and other such information which MU*'s can't.

I've found most of my biggest complaints with past and current MMO's are the things that MU*'s have and MMO's still lack... Second life did fix some of these, but did so while causing other issues... Developers need to find a happy medium to continue to grow MMO's...

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[TeraCo]

the difference is that you can play football and basketball at the same time on your PC, but the referees from both sports hang around and fuck up the other game you're playing.

What? That's not how warden works at all. You run warcraft, it does checksums of the various things you have running and compares them to a list of bad checksums, then reports back home. When you close warcraft, the 'referee' goes away and doesn't come back until next time you run warcraft.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I played MUDs from about 1991 till 1994; WoW is simply a MUD with a pretty front-end. Other than 3d graphics, I don't really see anything that WoW does that I haven't seen before, a decade ago.

I'm sorry, but WoW is not "just that good". I've got a fairly sizable collection of games (several hundred for all of the major consoles) and WoW doesn't even make it into the top fifty. The social aspects aside, it's not a very good RPG.

I did play WoW for about fifteen hours using a friend's account, but I just didn't see any point in continuing to play. My friend on the other hand has several level sixty players and spends hours every evening farming felcloth instead of joining his friends for dinner, at the bar, at a concert etc.

I hate crying addict, but I really don't see the allure.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[symbolic]

Lineage 2 - I know this sounds weird, but despite the farmers, the griefing, the endless walking, and the insane amounts of grinding required to level, I kind of miss it. I didn't get too far (only a 40 dwarf and a 30 archer), but it still had some kind of obscure appeal. I was never a strong PvP player, but I still think the environment is kind of cool.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[murdocj]

Can't stand WoW myself. Not too fond of Ryzom, either, come to think of it.

Yeah, having fun in a well designed, well maintained virtual world with great atmosphere is a real drag, I can't imagine why anyone would do that.

whups, gotta go, raid coming up...

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[murdocj]

I'll admit that WoW is a well-made game, but like most MMOs that have come before it, it gets really boring REALLY fast because all there is to do is grind mobs, grind quests, grind rep

I baffled by the people who talk about the "grind" in WoW. Basically, you are continually questing... exploring new areas, seeking out some poor NPC who is stranded in a cave somewhere, finding a desperately needed cure to a rare disease... Unlike NeverQuest, where you really do spend weeks sitting in the optimal spot and killing the same mob over and over, in WoW you are pretty much always on the move. Of course, you can choose to grind... but that's your choice. You don't have to do that.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[murdocj]

Except that newspapers don't make you pony up $50 for the privelige of subscribing.

Yeah, mine charges way more than $50 :(

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[QuantaStarFire]

Well, it's like this:

I start in Northshire, and the guard has asked me to kill the Defias who have taken over the vineyard to the east.

Now, being a guard, you'd think that it would be HIS job to do that, seeing as he's the law in that region. But I humor him and do it anyways; I kill a bunch of bandits, get their masks as proof, kill their leader and bring his head to the guard, who congratulates me and rewards me for doing his job.

So now it's time to move on. I head to Goldshire, and from there to Stormwind, and I run a couple of errands for people, which is no big deal; I'm a good guy, after all. So I do that and head back to Goldshire.

In Goldshire, I help a couple of civilians in gathering things they need, which are carried by kobolds, and I also help the captain of the guard here with some scouting missions. Now, the civilians at least have a decent excuse; I mean, they're weak and can't possibly stand up to a gang of walking rats. But the Captain of the fucking Guard?! It's not like the kobolds are going to be that much of a problem for a single level 20 guard to go out and beat the shit out of them, at either mine.

In any case, I complete these tasks, and I get a modest reward from the civilians while the captain of the guard pays me a fraction of his daily wage to sit around on his ass and make sure the bunnies don't get too close to town. Glad to see that you're keeping the good people safe, Captain Jackass!

In any event, I move on.

And so it repeats, for every area of the game. Help the head of the People's Militia (level 30 Elite) by going into the Deadmines and killing the Defias Kingpin, Van Cleef--a task that nobody, not even him or his militia, is able to accomplish, yet 5 misfits who don't know their asses from their feet fuck this guy up good and then steal his valuables before leaving him for dead.

And as you continue to do these repetitive tasks for these incompetent assholes every time you enter a new area, it begins to dawn upon you that all you're doing is grinding after reading some flavor text to spice things up, and it's this text that's supposed to somehow make WoW superior to all other MMO offerings? Talk about simple things for simple minds. Shit, why didn't anybody think of this sooner?

Wait, I forgot; I played Ragnarok Online, a game that would have you collect 100 of at least 3 different items from mobs with a less than 1% drop rate just to get a hat, and it had all kinds of flavor text for these tasks. Sure, it was in the most horrible broken English ever conceived by a localization team, but it was flavor text nonetheless.

Here's the kicker though; it only takes 20 people to accomplish tasks that not even the great armies of the Alliance and Horde are able to accomplish. 20. That's it. At least. Some tasks take 40 people, instead of 20, and yet, still, these mythical armies (which don't seem to exist. At all. Anywhere in Azeroth) can't spare a single soldier to go out and defeat a threat that could very well destroy the entire bloody world. I'd say that the nuts are in control of the asylum in this regard if your armies are fighting on distant battlefields that nobody has ever been able to find in the last 3 years.

So to summarize, flavor text and accomplishing tasks for the incompetent denizens of Azeroth does not remove the grind, nor does it soften its impact; it merely hides it behind a wall of irrelevance that is easily dispelled when you stop killing Twilights for a second and ask yourself "Why am I killing these cultists over and over again?".

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[murdocj]

Well, in ANY RPG that I've ever played, you venture out into the world and encounter situations where you have to perform some task that someone wants you to do. Other than changing WoW to be pure PvP so you are constantly battling other players instead of helping NPCs, or being a virtual storekeeper in a virtual economy (neither of these appeal to me), just what do you think you're going to do?

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[drinkypoo]

Personally, I have been known to run other things while I'm running games, especially now that I have a dual-core system.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[QuantaStarFire]

Add those options anyways. Some people will go for them (can you imagine being able to spend your entire in-game career as a blacksmith or a tailor selling your creations instead of having to go out and kill things in order to "earn the right" to make them?), but I imagine most would take the more conservative route and be adventurers.

I mean, the adventurer angle is fun for a time, but as I've illustrated, it gets old when you realize that it's all you really do in the game, and by the end it barely exists; it essentially boils down to grinding mobs to gain rep so that you can grind more mobs and gain rep, hoping that eventually you'll reach a level of prestige in that group where they'll give you nice stuff. Somehow, this is supposed to be so much fun that over 7 million people are doing it. I just don't get it.

To be honest, I don't really know what I'm looking for anymore when I pick up these kinds of games, 'cuz each one I've played I've had such high expectations ("Oh, I hope they have housing! And an alignment system! Maybe I can be a tailor and spend my time making the best clothing ever! and blah blah blah") and had them dashed because the developers feel that such things aren't important enough to include, even though they've been in the genre since Ultima Online, or ever since P&P came into existence. Maybe I'm asking for too much, but then again, if we've seen it before, it's downright stupid to never see it again.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[jurik]

Wow. What a bunch of one-sided WoW Zealot crap.
</flamebait>

Don't get me wrong WoW looks nice, have a nice amount of content, and (from a programmer's point of view) has a really nice customiseability with LUA. However when you dig down below the nice graphics what you are left with is a child that only a WoW zealot could really love. And before you throw the you don't know what your talking about card I would like to mention that I have also played WoW since release and only stopped playing 6 or so months ago.

Why?
The short answer: The game SUCKS!

The long answer:

• Quality of support: Blizzard is about one thing making money and screwing over the players. With a player base of what? 4.000.000? There where annoying bugs that where unfixed for over 8 months - Harvesting bug anyone? And the support is a matter of you receiving a mail in you mailbox 1-2 days after submitting the bug with an automated reply saying yeah yeah we know it is there, go get an icecream for a month or two. One of the MMORPGs I have tried had a max 5 min. personal chat with a techie trying to find the cause of the problem and that was a MMORPG with a player base of maybe 40k-50k
• Quality WoW servers: WoW what a bunch of crappy servers. Come on! What company would accept a web server that would have to be taken offline for 6 hours once every week to maintain? - answer NONE, but Blizzard/WoW zealots accept it (Just to get my Karma up: They are definately not running Linux :-) ).
• Bad class design: The classes are way to specialised with almost no customisability. This results in "perfect" groups and classes that extremely unwanted in certain areas of the game. This is opposed to many games that have a certain overlap between classes thus enabling very different groups to handle the same task, but with different tactics.
• "End" content: The content of the game is solely based (post 60, maxed faction relations) are based solely on Zealots. There is absolutely no content except instances for 60+, and those intsances are extremely hard (don't get me wrong that is a good thing), so you have to be member of a guild. Not only that but you need to collect the "perfect" group so you have to plan for a certain time to get all those together. And not only that (yeah yeah it's a long list :-) ) if you have a job (in RL) and have to leave at say 1 o'clock in the night lo and behold, you have a whole guild pissed that you are such a quitter. I only have one comment: I have one job I (that is pay cash) I don't need another (the cost cash). It's all about fun and instances are only fun if your a WoW Zealot that get adrenaline kicks and don't have a RL to worry about.
• Player base: And size does not matter (at least not as much as you are trying to make it). The main reason for the 4 Mil players are a combination of a game that is really nice (sub 60) and which is the continuation of Diablo 2. A large part of the player base are simply players of Diablo 2 that continued to Blizzards new game. This is also a negative in WoW as I see it because you end up with a player base that consists of a large amount of 13-15 year old wannabes. Anyone remember all those annoying PK'ers in D2, well guess what they moved to WoW. This means that as opposed to most other MMORPGs there are absolutely no community in WoW compared to other MMORPGs, there are simply kill groups where some gets to do a lot of work (to get respect?) for setting up the next world boss/instance kill and a whole bunch of Zealots following orders. WoW is the first MMORPG where I would never trust walking up to someone and asking him to hold something valueable for a sec.
• Equipment is everything: Last but not least, skill/build is nothing, equipment is everything. Because classes are so a like with very little customisation it really

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[Raenex]

Why don't you play on Second Life then? Not that I've played it or WoW, but from what I've heard it sounds more to your liking.

I do understand what you're saying. I recently started playing Oblivion, but stopped after about two weeks in. It's interesting to explore initially, but it gets old.

Re:Obviously there's no benefit...

[murdocj]

mean, the adventurer angle is fun for a time, but as I've illustrated, it gets old when you realize that it's all you really do in the game, and by the end it barely exists; it essentially boils down to grinding mobs to gain rep so that you can grind more mobs and gain rep, hoping that eventually you'll reach a level of prestige in that group where they'll give you nice stuff. Somehow, this is supposed to be so much fun that over 7 million people are doing it. I just don't get it.

You're right, you don't get it. If that was ALL you were doing, yeah, what fun would it be? A couple of weeks ago my guild took down Hakkar (chief boss of ZG). We had been working up to this for months, learning how to kill the sub-bosses. The final kill required intense concentration from 20 people, working together very closely, making split second decisions, talking, fighting, healing. It was an extremely intense experience. It was great fun. It was not the "sit in one place and kill the same mob over and over and over again to level" experience.

Completely different fun event: sometimes folks in IronForge just decide to hold a parade. Folks get on their horses, you jump into line and follow the guy in front of you, guy at the front walks his horse along the parade path. It sounds goofy, but it is just plain fun. Completely spontaneous, certainly never planned for by Blizzard. It's folks getting together in the a virtual world to have a good time.

So yeah, you don't get it.

Not a guarantee

[El Lobo]

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.

Re:Not a guarantee

[swillden]

Making a project Free and/or Open Source doesn't automatically makes it better no matter what some zealots may say.

Who said it would make it better? What it will do is make it Free, so lots of people who want to can run their own servers and play with their own virtual worlds.

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.

Some will be much worse than the original, probably few will add high-quality content, but some may become very good indeed. I think the biggest attraction for those who want to play the games, though (as opposed to those who find it more fun to hack on them) is the ability to run your own server. I was a big EQ fan a few years ago, and I think it would be great fun to explore Norrath with a small group of friends. I probably wouldn't change the content at all, either, except to dramatically reduce spawn rates in many areas so a strategy of exploration could be successful.

It's entirely possible that an open source MMORPG could even spark some more competition in the genre by lowering the barrier to entry. There's no reason multiple companies couldn't be founded who charge for access to their Ryzom-based worlds, perhaps collaborating on engine features while competing on content.

All in all, I'd say we have no idea what might result from the availability of a high-quality Free MMORPG. I pledged 20 euros because I'd like to find out.

Re:Not a guarantee

[simm1701]

Actually there are a couple of groups which provides such servers

One I played on for a while is http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/

Its free but they accept donations and is several versions of the game behind (ie lots of the new content is not there) but I prefer that. The storyline for the world has also been largely rewritten - its not the same game at all - just using a lot of the same engine and zones.

They also heavily enforce role play which was my main apeal in playing it. (and they enforce it consistantly and sensibly - e.g. they won't let you grief and say you were just playing your character - they will just ban you - probably the other advantage of being fre, they have no obligatino to keep you on the server)

About the only downside I found is neriak is gone and that was my favorite zone - and was proably the most unique of the home towns in the old world....

Alas I dont have the time to play it at the moment - but I'd definitely recomend it

Re:Not a guarantee

[gigne]

No, it doesn't necessarily make it better, but someone with time and inspiration could do so.
I play text based MUD's (yes, still), and most of those are forks from the original (open Source) DikuMUD code. This then led to the more widely forked MERC engine. Some forks are good, some are bad.

It's the choice that matters.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Drey]

It's not correct to call DIKU open source; DIKU has a profit prohibition in its license which is incompatible with most open source licenses.

Your comment about the DIKU code base is misleading as well, since the "original DikuMUD" comment makes it sound as if that's where MUDs began when DIKU itself was not in the first generation.

Re:Not a guarantee

[gigne]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for filling me in on the info.

I only mentioned Diku as it was (in my limited experience) the most widely used codebase.

Correct me if I am wrong.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Huff]

The earliest mud was written at Colchester University back in 1979. Check out http://www.mud.co.uk/ for a history.

It's modern day versions are still running at www.mud2.co.uk and www.mud2.com

Re:Not a guarantee

[earnest murderer]

Sure, this is true. But no one was asking for a guarantee or expecting one. Fact is, it will not likely improve, and it's optimistic to think someone out there will maintain the current level of quality/service. But it will still be there in some fashion.

What I think will improve are the development tools. An area where pretty much all companies skimp on (skimp is probably a generous term) even when the tools are part of the released product.

As an asside...
You ever meet someone who spends hours and hours rolling and customizing D&D characters? You may know a few that wrote their own lousy stories too. Well now they have a whole damn ready to go content complete MMORPG. This is exciting!
I made my own shitty game back in the day. Had a few people that were polite enough to play through it, as lousy as it was. But I made it, and that was awesome.

Re:Not a guarantee

[archen]

I was a big EQ fan a few years ago, and I think it would be great fun to explore Norrath with a small group of friends.

Heh, I never thought of that. You know many of these MMORPGs I tend to hate because of the traffic and people, but letting you on a server with a bunch of friends really does sound like an all out blast. I wonder if World of Warcraft would survive one day in this manner.

Re:Not a guarantee

[ImTheDarkcyde]

making something Open Source does not make it free- look at quake 1, 2, and 3. Source Code freely downloadable, but not the game content.

Re:Not a guarantee

[swillden]

True, but in this case, there wouldn't seem to be any reason the liquidator would sell the engine and content separately. About the only way I could see that happening would be if the content was actually licensed from a third party and the liquidator didn't have a right to sell it. It seems more likely that components of the game engine would fall into that category, actually.

Re:Not a guarantee

[dieth]

Knowing Blizzard they will fight a Free WoW server to the death just like they killed bnetd.

Re:Not a guarantee

[drinkypoo]

It's not correct to call DIKU open source; DIKU has a profit prohibition in its license which is incompatible with most open source licenses.

Open Source is a design methodology. You mean "Free Software". Diku is indeed Open Source. It is not Free (as per the Stallman definition.)

Re:Not a guarantee

[dosius]

There is no one single definition of open source.

Some define it as the source is available.
Some define it as the source is available and can be freely modified.
I define it as the license is GPL-compliant.

-uso.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Drey]

That was the definition I was applying, as well, and the DIKU license is not GPL-compliant.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Drey]

Well, mudconnector.com has between 1581 and 1648 total MUDs in their listing (they say 1648 on the site, but a search for 'any codebase' turns up 1581). Of these, 97 claim to be DikuMUD; 28, Envy (DIKU derivative); 38, Merc (another DIKU derivative). There are probably more DIKU offshoots, I didn't check for them. A check on LP MUD, a non-DIKU, had 181 listings. It's probably fair to say there are many forks of DIKU but not that most MUDs are forks.

Re:Not a guarantee

[llefler]

Of course they would. Blizzard makes their money from subscriptions on WoW. I wouldn't be surprised to see them start making the client available for free download soon.

Bnetd was a completely different situation. Blizzard made their money from the boxed games and provided Battlenet for free.

By the time WoW subscriptions fall enough that Blizzard would consider shutting it down (thus the need for a 3rd party server), very few people will have any interest in playing it. Looking at other MMORPGs as a reference, that will be at least 10 years from now.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Derosian]

Even though it really wasn't meant to be open source, the Ragnarok Online free servers was where I ended up playing. A few in particular were very fun and I played for a long time on them. There were hundreds of variations but I loved the server I was on also because it was unique, I knew the GM's by name, and I would wave to them and stuff when I saw them. One of the big things I hate about WoW, is the fact I never see any GM's playing, different policy I know, but I would rather have someone I know watching out for everything rather then some nameless person on the other side of a line. These mini-servers end up doing something right. Like Dairy Queen setting up shops in small towns, it just works sometimes.

Re:Not a guarantee

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

Making a project Free and/or Open Source doesn't automatically makes it better no matter what some zealots may say.

Actually, yes it does. Being Free/Open source is a feature. Your argument is like saying "adding support for other platforms doesn't make it better." Sure it does, although the end result of such additions will not necessarily be positive.

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.

I think it is debatable as to whether that is an advantage or disadvantage, but how does open sourcing this project stop some company from running a game using it on their own servers with their own rules?

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.

Actually, I think the gaming market is ready for open source, but not following the same business model as Tux Racer, rather more along the lines of Apache. I'd like to see several companies contribute to an open source gaming engine and system and each of them build commercial games on top of them, including copyrighted artwork and trademarked settings. That way both commercial enterprises and community games can collaborate and improve the base engine and everyone wins. Ideally, I'd like to see a gaming environment with an engine that takes plug in game modules that anyone can create and which can be downloaded or purchased from a network built into the game engine. For the most part it is not the engine or the graphics even that need improvement in games. It is the story and game play. If one or a consortium of companies maintained this base system we could have numerous game modules developed faster for less cost and with more shared code. Really, how many slightly modified copies of the unreal engine does the average person need on their computer?

Re:Not a guarantee

[deathy_epl ccs]

But that is inconcievable to you long haired spit-spewing zealots

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait... when did longhairs become equated with closed source zealots? I thought long haired hippy freaks were Open Source nuts? Did I miss a memo or something?

Re:Not a guarantee

[KDR_11k]

The engine is opensource already, what they're trying to buy is the rest.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Aladrin]

http://www.genecys.org/
http://www.planeshift.it/

There's a couple open source MMORPG's for you to tinker with. Go ahead.

Oh wait, THEY SUCK.

Gamers are willing to pay for a game because it produces better results!

I love open source products, and use them wherever it's worthwhile. When it's not, out comes the pocketbook.

Re:Not a guarantee

[paitre]

Actually, Envy is a direct Merc derivative, done by some of the same folks that did Merc.

There's also ROM, a derivative of Merc that was done by Alander about 12 years ago (or so).

Wow. we're down under 1600 total MUDs now? I remember when mudconnector had 5k+... Hell, I remember Mudding -before- mudconnector (or any other directly related searchable database) existed... lol I wonder if any of the ones I worked on are still listed, too...
Hell, I remember when there were that many total LP MUDs...let alone derivatives... wow...

That said, LP (and further, Aber, which is where Alan Cox got HIS name out in the late 80s) also have a number of engine derivatives. I've never really been much of a fan of LP, but then, it's been probably a decade since I last -really- spent any time with that codebase...I last touched a DIKU derivative a couple years ago...

Re:Not a guarantee

[kshade]

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.Like Ultima Online? There are plenty of nice Shards out there.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Drey]

I couldn't remember if it was Diku -> Merc -> Envy or Diku -> Envy -> Merc when I posted, so I went for the simple "Diku is this an ancestor" approach in my reply. ;-)

When I began mudding you signed up to a mailing list to find out each week which MUDs were still up or which ones were new; mudconnector was a welcome addition to the scene.

The total number of MUDs is down, yes, but so many MUDs were "download the code, setup a stock world" and that was it. I think we're better off having less of those running around.

I didn't get into the history of MUDs until several years ago so when I first heard of Alan Cox, it was "Alan Cox, kernel hacker." My first MUDs to play and run were Aber so it was quite a thrill when I found out where he got his roots.

I'm still running a MUD, I still get players. It's an Envy derivative, and I even have one of the Merc team (Kith) stopping in once in a while. As long as kids can't install WoW at school, we'll have MUDs. ;-)

Re:Not a guarantee

[drinkypoo]

Stallman refers to the GPL as a Free Software License, as well as anything compatible with it (if it's not Free by his definition, it's not compatible either.) Thus if the GPL is your basis for comparison you should be using the term "Free Software" to describe such software. Open Source only means you can get your hands on the source, that's all it means, but it HAS meant that for quite a while. "Open" in the computer industry in general has meant that you can get access to the resources you need to interoperate. BTW I am not a Stallman drone, but I do think that we need to try to be precise. If you meant "Compatible with the GPL" then you might as well have simply said "Free Software" which would have meant what you said... whereas, as you say, Open Source has no one fixed meaning and prompted my response.

Re:Not a guarantee

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

I'm sorry, but if the software is released under the GPL it is anything but free; the GPL is all about restricting your rights.

Re:Not a guarantee

[MarkJenkins]

Really.

Imagine person A is a copyright holder of a computer program, and A hands you a copy of their program. The program runs without asking you to agree to anything, and there is no COPYING or license file. What rights can you assume you have?

List them.

Later A gives you a new copy under the GNU General Public License. What rights do you have now?

List them.

By comparing these two lists, we will be able to evaluate your claim that the GNU GPL takes away your rights.

Re:Not a guarantee

[h4ck7h3p14n37]

JFC, read my comment again. I didn't say the GPL takes away your rights, I said it restricts your rights. I wanted to avoid this discussion, but compare the BSD license to the GPL and tell me the GPL is about freedom.

Re:Not a guarantee

[cheesybagel]

DIKU has a non-commercial, gotta e-mail the authors license, with an obnoxious author on the main intro screen name clause. But the source code is available and most people just ignore some of the license terms. Most people keep the author names in the intro screen out of respect though. The most bandied around example of license infringement is probably Medievia. They basically pissed on the license by making a commercial MUD out of it and ripping out the author credits.

DIKU is however an awesome hack'n'slash engine which provides for hours of fun, as I can attest.

Re:Not a guarantee

[swillden]

I'm sorry, but if the software is released under the GPL it is anything but free

I didn't say "free", I said "Free", as in "Free Software". There's an important difference, and the GPL is original Free Software license. Not only that, it's far superior in many cases to the pansy-ass BSD license that is only as free as the current holder of the software wants it to be. The GPL makes sure that the software is not only Free now, but that it stays Free in perpetuity.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Drey]

I almost began a derivative for release but couldn't decide which deadly sin I wanted to name it after. :)

Re:Not a guarantee

[Karyuu]

With all due respect - as a member of PlaneShift's development team, the reason it "sucks" is because we're not professionals (most of us are students), we volunteer everything, and we don't have all the time in the world :P It has nothing at all to do with being an open-source project. With a professional development team that does not have a billion other things going on in real life, an open-source game can come to top any list.

Re:Not a guarantee

[Aladrin]

Indeed, I -am- comparing Planeshift to the BEST of the works created by paid professionals with no other jobs at the time. And I realize it's a little unfair to say it 'sucks', but my time is limited. I have extra money, and would prefer to spend some of it and enjoy my time more.

If I'd remained jobless a little longer, I would have continued to contribute to another open source game project that, er, "isn't the best at what it does." ;)

And another thing...

[OneSmartFellow]

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

Re:And another thing...

[GooberToo]

Learn to count for fuck sake !
Dark Age of Camelot Rating: 8.2
Ryzom Rating: 8.2

Looks like number 5 to me

LOL. Looks like it is tied for number four to me! LOL!

Re:And another thing...

[HugePedlar]

The first three are joint-first.

Re:And another thing...

[Lostconfused]

Faulty logic, tied for first place followed by two losers deciding second and third place between themselves. So it is 4th or 5th place for it.

Re:And another thing...

[mutube]

If its tied, it would be tied for 2nd place.... as the first three in the list are then tied for 1st place....

Um no.

1st: EVE Online Rating: 8.3
1st: Guild Wars Rating: 8.3
1st: EverQuest II Rating: 8.3

4th: Dark Age of Camelot Rating: 8.2
4th: Ryzom Rating: 8.2

When one or more places are tied, the following position starts counting from where it would have been (ie. you don't just ignore you've had 3 people in front of you).

Re:And another thing...

[Azarael]

In sports it doesn't work that way. If there is a tie in the Olympics for example, then places that follow the tie are eliminated from the standings.
For this list, the places would be:
1.EVE
1.Guild Wars
1.Everquest
4.Dark Age
6.*next game on the list*

Re:And another thing...

[iainl]

Unless the numbers on the web are rounded, of course. Which would explain why the otherwise joint-first holders aren't in alphabetical, or any other obvious order.

Re:And another thing...

[Aceticon]

I've played EVE Online in the past and although it's interesting at first, sooner or later one figures out that it overwelmingly consists of time sinks (eg travelling, mining, missions).

I find it highly suspicious that it has 1st place. I seem to remember a "Vote for EVE Online at mmorpg.com" campaign (i still receive EVE Online newsleter e-mails).

If the 1st place is suspect i reckon the rest of the list is suspect too.

Re:And another thing...

[Saffaya]

In my tongue, it would be told as follows :

EVE Online & Guild Wars & EverQuest II, First place ex-aequo with a Rating of 8.3
Dark Age of Camelot & Ryzom , Second place ex-aequo with a rating of 8.2

Yes, yes, I know.
There is no room for the Ex-Aequo concept in the US culture. Every competion MUST have a WINNER and a LOSER, right ?

Re:And another thing...

[elbenito69]

The solo content in EVE is overwhelmingly boring. What makes EVE worth playing for me is the PVP side of things. Unlike WoW, dying actually has consequences, and it's the higher stakes that make it so enjoyable.

Re:And another thing...

[Twelvefinger]

Just 2 days ago Ryzom was at a shared first place with a vote of 8,3. Someone changed their votes or something.

Re:And another thing...

[*s.panzer*]

Since the first three are tied for first, it could be argued they are tied for second...

Rated for what?

[Rhys]

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.

Re:Rated for what?

[Aladrin]

Sadly, open beta was just after they destroyed the skill system. Prior to that, it was FUN. There were ways to use healers that could keep the whole team healed, if everyone worked together. You could go on long rampages and have a TON of fun. Nevrax had a 'it should take 6 months to max a character' policy and it could be done in 2 weeks with that skill system. So they didn't just nerf it, they completely reworked it.

I quit open beta, and I played the free trial several times, and you're right. It STUNK.

I just pledged 15 EU ($20 US) because of the fun I had in Beta, in the hopes that it can be that much fun again.

Wasn't that bad...

[Phydeaux314]

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.

Best of luck!

[Rob T Firefly]

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.

Re:Best of luck!

[jandrese]

I wonder who's bright idea it was to make the donation meter Penis Shaped. I can see where they were maybe trying for the thermometer look, but the proportions are all wrong.

Re:Best of luck!

[LWATCDR]

"Something as large and mainstream as the #3 MMO going FOSS can only mean good things for open-source in general."
Not really.
It could be a disaster. In fact I am betting that it will.
Who is going to pay to run the servers? Bandwidth costs, and servers cost.
How are you going to control cheating?
It could be a great example of how FOSS can fail. So not it could also mean bad things for open-source in general.

Re:Best of luck!

[Rob T Firefly]

Who is going to pay to run the servers? Bandwidth costs, and servers cost. How are you going to control cheating?

Now that I think about it, I guess if the game goes FOSS anyone willing to agree to the license and donate the work and bandwidth will be able to start up their own Ryzom server, thus taking on the responsibility for maintainance and rules-enforcement individually. There won't just be one Ryzom game, there will be good and not-so-good private and public servers just as with other games out there.

Re:Best of luck!

[Harker]

Who is going to pay to run the servers? Bandwidth costs, and servers cost.
How are you going to control cheating?
It could be a great example of how FOSS can fail. So not it could also mean bad things for open-source in general.

FOSS does not necessarily (have to) mean free to play. If they can keep the game up and running, with a reasonable player base who pays their monthly dues, the game can at least break even and keep going.

Most MMO's are priced so the company can make a (huge) profit off of it. It's when they don't realize that profit that they get shut down. However, if those who purchase it for nothing more than the desire to keep the game going, they can charge less to only cover the costs.

Mind you, getting the whole thing up and running to begin with is going to be the toughest part, since not only will they have to buy the servers needed, and acquire hosting, bandwidth, power, etc, etc... It's an ambitious project to be certain.

H.

Re:Best of luck!

[LWATCDR]

I didn't say impossible I just said that it has the potential to be not good for FOSS.

The really big problem I see is how to you police cheating? It is hard enough with closed source but how would you do it with an FOSS client?

Re:Best of luck!

[Drgnkght]

Easiest way would be to operate with the assumption that the client software is untrustworthy and verify anything that it sends to the server. This would of course require additional code on the server. But this is well know in game design (at least in the few books I've read on the subject).

As long as you don't distribute the modified server binaries you wouldn't be required by the GPL to distribute the servers' new source code. The cheaters wouldn't be able to know what you were checking until you started banning them.

Re:Best of luck!

[LWATCDR]

"The cheaters wouldn't be able to know what you were checking until you started banning them."
You see that so goes counter to the idea of FOSS. Suppose the change that gets my banned is a bug fix?

Re:Best of luck!

[Drgnkght]

Be serious, if you have a legitimate bugfix you would submit it to the maintainer of the particular game for inclusion in the offical client software. It's not like every game using this server would be using the same version of the client installed from a single source. Each would most likely customize it to their particular taste.

That said, there's a difference between fixing a memory leak, and telling the server that you're now two zones away from your previous location. It would be your client software's interactions with the server that would get you banned, not what you did locally. In other words, your version of the client might display a radar-style map of hostiles where the "official" client doesn't and this would be fine. No one but you would know, however attacking a hostile mob on the other side of a wall at twice maximum range would probably get you banned. See the difference?

Re:Best of luck!

[LWATCDR]

I see that a small cheat would get by while a large cheat might get you caught. I am just pointing out a list of potential problems. More to show that yes this could be something besides good for FOSS. If could be a failure. Frankly I think it probably will be a failure but don't let that stop you.

Re:Best of luck!

[Drgnkght]

I think we are definitely in agreement on the potential problems. This means a lot of defensive programming on the server side of things because the client must be considered to be compromised. You can't institute any sort of client-side solution (PunkBuster) because the client source must be made available. My example of a radar display shows that you can't send anything secret to the client. So if the player isn't supposed to know something the server can not send the information to the client software at all. The client is basically forced into the role of a graphical dumb terminal.

To be honest I'd have to say that I'm not convinced the FOSS is the best model here either. It's not a project that I'd want for my own. But if you were determined it might be doable. You'd probably need some fairly hefty servers though.

I beg to differ..

[CptnHarlock]

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..

Played the trial for the last 3 months

[phreaki]

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.

NeL is already open source

[nuzak]

... 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.

Re:NeL is already open source

[chew827]

The NeL engine is a very powerful engine and could have been the framework behind a lot of open-source MMORPGs. The problem is that it is only meagerly documented. Nevrax nearly abandoned the community (with a couple exceptions of developers from within helping us in their spare time) so none of this documentation was ever updated and completed. Recently they converted to a wiki and some of us have been putting together documentation ourselves. One of the big issues, that opening Ryzom up would help with, is that there is a lot of code that makes no sense without context. An example that I use frequently is the NLLIGO module. Nevrax refers to this as "legos for landscape." Ligoscape is a module for rapid development of landscape/levels. Only about 10% of this module is really documented (and only self-documented through code and examples of usages in the NLSOUND library) and the pieces that make this module shine - notably the pieces that take the "legos" and generate the landscape you as a player see - are contained in the closed source tools. Opening these tools up would empower existing (and new) NeL projects as well as encourage the ongoing improvement and development of the tools.

Re:NeL is already open source

[grimwell]

You might be interested in Torque. It is an open-source engine but not free.

There is a fair collection of how-to articles and one author has put together an "add-on" product for the engine.

I've played with the Torque engine a bit and it's interesting. The thing I like the most is the server-side can be linux and the client side can be both windows & linux. I haven't played with the MyDreamRPG products, so I can't comment on them but they look interesting.

Re:NeL is already open source

[Generic Player]

Torque is not open source. And its barely an engine. Its horribly outdated, runs like shit on modern hardware, and is a horrible mess. If you just want to make a crappy tribes rip off torque is a good choice. But its useless as a generic game engine. The code ranges from terrible to simply broken, and nobody at garagegames is capable of fixing it. Community members have done more to fix it than garagegames has, which is very sad for a commercial product.

Whee, another fantasy MMO? Where do I sign up?

[jandrese]

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.

Slashdot... good work.

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Not just code assets!

[CompSci101]

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

Re:Not just code assets!

[Mirar]

That's a good idea. Having a library of ready-made skeletal animations and models would be really good!
What a boost in any free project wanting to play with 3d... ...would that be included?

OS is not for mmorpgs

[sinij]

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.

Re:OS is not for mmorpgs

[Xugumad]

Personally, I think it would be good to see SoR open sourced so budding MMO designers could look through what the Ryzom developers did, and learn from it. However, I seem to remember large parts of the core engine are already OS, and I also wouldn't suggest it's worth the sums it's likely to cost to get the source.

Re:OS is not for mmorpgs

[Saffaya]

"simple access to formulas will take min-maxing to the extreme and will make balancing nearly impossible."

umh .. no. At all.
A properly designed game has absolutely no problems with that. Only shoddy crafted ones do.

"Good luck getting anyone to agree how to balance the game"

You are missing the point entirely.
MMORPG as free software means ... Freedom to compete.
You don't like the balance on this particular server ? Then go to another ! The choice is yours.

Commercial RPGs lock you into a monopolistic micro market where you have absolutely no choice.
If the GM, events, hotfixes, balance, design, etc ... sucks, then tough luck.
But if the game is free software, you can still enjoy the game on a server that you agree more with.

Re:OS is not for mmorpgs

[jandrese]

All games have min-maxing, however giving players access to the formulas directly doesn't affect that much. In fact all hiding the formulas does is make it take slightly longer for the players to start min-maxing. City of Heroes showed this quite well I think. Cryptic Studios were extremely tight lipped about the formulas and tables used, but in the end the playerbase reverse engineered the whole thing and still min-maxed.

In fact, it is easy to argue that the min-maxing was good for the game in the end. Without the players constantly beating on your system it can be very difficult to determine which combos are overly powerful (or overly gimped for that matter). CoH was badly unbalanced for well over a year before the developers finally got a handle on the balance. Granted, it wasn't popular with the players who were used to their old demi-god status (Invulnerability Tankers used to live up to their name, there was almost nothing in the game that could kill them once they reached level 30 or so, and even moreso when they hit 38. Unfortunatly, they were kinda boring to play because you could herd up an entire instanced mission and still not be in any real danger). WoW gives out their numbers quite freely and the min-max situation isn't exactly a catastrophe over there.

As Nevrax's former CEO & founder

[Lejade]

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.

Re:As Nevrax's former CEO & founder

[Jestrzcap]

I was very sad we never saw a linux client for Ryzom (if there was, they forgot to email me to tell me to re-activate my account). I had a lot of fun and I liked what it *appeared* to have going for it at the time.

It's great that you were able to accomplish as much as you did. I hope your next project is even more successful.

Re:As Nevrax's former CEO & founder

[chew827]

As a member of the NeL community this effort signifies great hope for me and my project. We've been in the NeL community and contributing bugfixes and updates to the engine that runs Ryzom for over 3 years. The community has supplied the engine more than 1k bugfixes in the 6 year lifespan of the GPL'd version of the engine and all of this with dwindling interest in the community from the company, as Olivier Lejade stated. For more than 2 full years we were next to ignored by the company (except for the wonderful support and help from Vianney Lecroart and Olivier Cado) but we continued. Between this thread and the threads raging on the ryzom.com forums I'm surprised at the treatment this idea has been getting from the user community and others considering the numerous contributions we, the open-source movement, have already made towards this game. Whether Xavier's group can maintain a viable commercial entity doesn't matter. By contributing funds to his group you're not helping him buy Ryzom - you're helping everyone buy Ryzom. Any person here, with some expertise and financial backing, could run their own commercial version of Ryzom if it were GPL'd. A lot of comments have been made about the "chaos" of opening up Ryzom. Hundreds of players contributing code and compromising the integrity of the codebase, etc. A lot of projects do very well if they have a strong maintainer, a bright core team and very well founded peer-review practices. We submitted over 1k patches (as I stated earlier) to Nevrax and we never once compromised the integrity of the end-product. Dozens, if not hundreds, of people contribute to the OGRE but it still remains a strong, viable open-source project which is being used extensively in the commercial arena because Steve (Sinbad) is a good maintainer. Likewise with Linux and Linus. As far as the financial probability of Xavier's group managing servers - I can't say whether he has put a lot of thought into that or not. But by pledging and helping Xavier's group buy and open Ryzom you won't have to rely on Xavier alone to run a Ryzom shard. If Xavier cannot manage to do this Ryzom does not die with him (much like it may die with Nevrax) - anyone will be fully able to take up the torch, commercial or free. Olivier, thank you for your post, it means a lot to us in the community that you started so many years ago.

Re:As Nevrax's former CEO & founder

[Abcd1234]

Welcome to the process of "growing" from a startup to a venture-funded firm. This is, unfortunately, the way of things. After all, those who control the purse strings ultimately control the way things are operated.

'course, different funds have different policies regarding the companies they finance. So, in part, you can blame management for not doing their homework and working with a fund that was more hands off. *shrug*

Re:As Nevrax's former CEO & founder

[Aladrin]

I don't know when you quit Nevrax, but I'm hoping that it's around the time in Beta when they totally changed the skill system. Ryzom was SO MUCH FUN at that time. Yes, you could 'exploit' the healing system if your group was willing to work together, and yes, that made levelling quicker than it you wanted. But it was FUN! After that, levelling was so slow that I didn't care anymore. It was obviously that Ryzom was about stretching out the grind so you couldn't max your character within 6 months. (Nevrax's number, not mine!) There was a whole rebirth system planned that I was anxiously waiting to see.

But then you made it not fun. I didn't play for the rest of Beta.

At launch, I tried the free trial. Still boring.

A few months later, free trial... Still boring...

A few months later... etc etc.

Now I see that the whole game has indeed failed. I have to say: Is it because it wasn't enough fun!?

I sincerely hope you didn't approve of this change, and that anything you do in the future WILL be aimed towards fun, instead of a money-machine.

Re:As Nevrax's former CEO & founder

[Raenex]

You're telling the founder and CEO to "blame management"? Is this a bad joke or what?

It's already GPLed

[_KiTA_]

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.

Ton Roosendaal

[Ingolfke]

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 nature of software development

[micromuncher]

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 ($).

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_g ames

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.

Re:the nature of software development

[Patoski]

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.

A couple of points... You don't need huge budgets to create quality software. Just look at what Apache, Linux and even Blender did with little or no budget. If people are willing to donate their time, then you have just taken the most expensive component of software development, and you have driven it to virtually zero. The largest part of work in Ryzom has already been completed, since Ryzom already functions in a production environment. There's an artwork pipeline, production-worthy server, and a functioning client. Sure, things need improving, but regular, small, incremental improvements is what the Free Software / Open Source software model does best, in my opinion.

About money... The organization behind this effort would be a non-profit. They would only need to break even on their infrastructure costs to keep development going. Lots of people and organizations are even willing to donate infrastructure to Free Software / Open Source projects, so they might not even have to pay for infrastructure.

Re:the nature of software development

[micromuncher]

You don't need huge budgets to create quality software. Just look at what Apache, Linux and even Blender did with little or no budget. If people are willing to donate their time, then you have just taken the most expensive component of software development, and you have driven it to virtually zero.

And here is the flaw of open source software. It works great for things like Apache and Linux that have broad horizontal application. But... you take it to a vertical, whether it be a game, a simulator, or anything like that - you're pool of resources drops as does their incentive for contributing.

Here is a case; Sim42 (http://www.virtualmaterials.com/sim42/whatsopen.h tml) was an open source chemical process simulator. OSS solution to replace a big, expensive piece of software used by anyone that does chemical engineering. With the huge price tag of commercial versions, that made it difficult for developing world or small engineering companies, to afford such software, you'd think that they'd have people who can program beating down the door, right? Wrong. Virtually no participation (pun). People who found it useful did not contribute. In fact, some companies used it to bolster/improve commercial applications (blant violation of license!) Not even from education! So why didn't the project get enough participation to stay alive?

Because the consumers of technology are not always producers of technology. I guy who uses linux or apache to build something might in turn help build linux or apache. Those two are not the end consumable. The incentive is that by helping build that software, you are in turn helping yourself by building your own stuff on top of it.

VM thought the same applied to simulation. But it didn't. The simulator was a final stop. A canned application (even though arguably it could be embedded in something.) The people using it probably were not capable of contributing to its programming.

So, its a question of reusability, and incentive. Unless the game engine is revolutionary and can get reused in a different context, does a marginal fan base have the ability to move the software forward? Hell no. Its a dead end vertical.

Note, Bungie opened up Marathon and Myth after moving to Microsoft. This somewhat worked because they already had a big fan base, of which there were programmers. You can't do the same thing for a product that hasn't been released yet.

Remember the MUD?

[einnar2000]

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.

Re:Remember the MUD?

[QuimRovira]

I have played MUDs... specially remember one named The Two Towers, which was really amazing. But now MMORPG have become their legitimate successors, and regarding this, Nevrax developed a player-zone creation tool integrated into the game, so everyone can create new zones and quests, as well as adding content, history and culture to the fabulous world that Ryzom is. This tool is part of the code people at www.ryzom.org are trying to set free. This zones become temporal at first, and with time they can become permanent zones integrated into the world.

Re:Remember the MUD?

[james_orr]

Ryzom already supports player created content.

The ENGINE is GPLed...

[Svartalf]

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...)

Not "#3 MMORPG"

[RasputinAXP]

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.

Regret & hope from an ex-player

[BandoMcHando]

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.

Re:Whee, another fantasy MMO? Where do I sign up?

[Red Flayer]

Frankly, I can't think of many reasons to play this over WoW (and I don't even play WoW).

Well, if the content (& source) gets GPL'd and some of the servers turn out to be free-as-in-beer, that can be a pretty compelling reason to play this over WoW.

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.

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.

Re:Whee, another fantasy MMO? Where do I sign up?

[KDR_11k]

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.

User created content?

[cyberfunkr]

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.

Re:Great business model!!

[KDR_11k]

This isn't supposed to generate money, this is purely for fun and the learning experience (and the pride of providing fun to others). Users cheating? Other opensource games do online without that problem (and really, how are you planning to cheat in an MMORPG anyway? There may be exploits but the point of opensource is that those can be fixed immediately when someone spots them instead of waiting for developers to react to constant complaints on some forum). Cheat servers? Why not, their right to play it the way they like and you can't get the cheats from one server to another without the consent of the operator.

They aren't trying to save the company, they're trying to buy the IP and put it under the GPL so everyone can have their fun with it. Profit? Well, you could make a profit if you run a server that provides a service that's so much better than what the free servers offer that you cancharge money to play on it.

Re:Whee, another fantasy MMO? Where do I sign up?

[jandrese]

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.

Thanks.

[Tei]

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!!!!.

My first mmo game

[Mustang Matt]

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.

Even if you hate the game, support this move!

[sylvainsf]

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.

Re:Whee, another fantasy MMO? Where do I sign up?

[murdocj]

Well, if the content (& source) gets GPL'd and some of the servers turn out to be free-as-in-beer, that can be a pretty compelling reason to play this over WoW.

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.