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Saga of Ryzom, Free and Open Source Software?
Posted by
Hemos
on Mon Nov 27, 2006 11:30 AM
from the i-call-on-the-community dept.
from the i-call-on-the-community dept.
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."
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Evil Plan (Score:2, Insightful)
It's already GPLed (Score:3, Insightful)
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 [nevrax.org]
So it should be trivial to get the end product.
The ENGINE is GPLed... (Score:2)
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...)
Obviously there's no benefit... (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
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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 i
Not a guarantee (Score:3, Insightful)
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.
I beg to differ.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Cheers..
Re:Not a guarantee (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Parent
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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 referenc
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I play text based MUD's (yes, still), and most of those are forks from the original (open Source) DikuMUD [wikipedia.org] code. This then led to the more widely forked MERC engine. Some forks are good, some are bad.
It's the choice that matters.
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I only mentioned Diku as it was (in my limited experience) the most widely used codebase.
Correct me if I am wrong.
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Open Source is a design methodology. You mean "Free Software". Diku is indeed Open Source. It is not Free (as per the Stallman definition.)
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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 ro
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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.
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 s
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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?
And another thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
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... (Score:4, Informative)
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!
Parent
Re:And another thing... (Score:4, Informative)
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).
Parent
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For this list, the places would be:
1.EVE
1.Guild Wars
1.Everquest
4.Dark Age
6.*next game on the list*
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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.
Rated for what? (Score:5, Informative)
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I quit open beta, and I played the free trial several times, and you're right. It ST
Best of luck! (Score:5, Informative)
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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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.
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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
NeL is already open source (Score:3, Informative)
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Whee, another fantasy MMO? Where do I sign up? (Score:2)
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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.
If that were to happen, I think it's likely we'd see different pricing structures from diff
Not just code assets! (Score:5, Interesting)
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
OS is not for mmorpgs (Score:2, Interesting)
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-
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umh
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
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 mar
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In fact, it is easy to argue that the min-maxing was good for the game in the end
As Nevrax's former CEO & founder (Score:5, Informative)
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 (Score:2)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:As Nevrax's former CEO & founder (Score:2)
'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*
Ton Roosendaal (Score:2)
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
the nature of software development (Score:3, Insightful)
The market is pretty much saturated with EverQuest and WoW. There is huge money and tons of time behind polishing these apps. Even lesser crud like GuildWars.
You can't do A1 titles on a shoestring budget, and if you build it they don't always come because you need to support it. (So capital and operating costs...) So they're looking for a buyer; and one buyer is suggesting an OSS because its sisyphysian in nature.
There are other open alternatives around. Check out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_open_source_
The story of some of them is the same; source company can't keep the burner going without income so does whatever it can to keep the dream alive.
Software development is almost pure labor. Labor is the most expensive part of any endeavor. You can't take from the huge pot of $ without an equal amount of $ comming in. And there is a boatload of competition.
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A couple of points... You don't need huge budgets to create quality software. Just look at what Apache, Linux and even Blender [blender.org] 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 drive
Regret & hope from an ex-player (Score:2, Interesting)
One of the high points in my eyes were the crafting system, which was, Shock! Horror!, more complex than 3a + 2b -> Sword No 5. En