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."

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: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!

Best of luck!

[Rob T Firefly]

Link seems slashdotted, so here's the mirrordot. [mirrordot.org]

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.

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: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*

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: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:Not a guarantee

[KDR_11k]

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