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Saga of Ryzom, Free and Open Source Software?
chew827 writes "Nevrax has been suffering bankruptcy and is in the process of liquidation and are trying to sell the Saga of Ryzom, the #3 rated MMORPG on mmorpg.com, to any prospective buyers. A group has assembled to try and raise enough funds to buy the intellectual property and open it under the GPL license — something Ton Roosendaal did for Blender."
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.
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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.
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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.
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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).
Python coder | PyQt Applications | Writer
It seems like people are criticizing the effort because they've only considered the code that will be saved, or that the game itself wasn't very good, or that nobody will be able to run it with commercial success. But what about the various other assets like art (models, textures) and music that would be saved?
I think it would kick ass for smaller dev groups to have a production-ready (well, it's been used in production, anyway...) library of (L?)GPL-ed art to pick from, even if it was just to have available at production time and not polishing/shipping time. All that stuff sucks up resources and gets in the way of little shops producing anything commercially viable.
Granted, it ain't Oblivion but it's sure better than looking at a blank page to start with.
C
The Sun is proof that we can't even do fire properly.
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.