Saga of Ryzom, Free and Open Source Software? 164
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."
Time to dust off the chequebook (Score:1, Interesting)
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.
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: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.
Re:Not a guarantee (Score:1, Interesting)
One I played on for a while is http://www.shardsofdalaya.com/ [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
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-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:And another thing... (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Obviously there's no benefit... (Score:3, Interesting)
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
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. 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:Not a guarantee (Score:3, Interesting)
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:Rated for what? (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:Obviously there's no benefit... (Score:2, Interesting)
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 [onlinegamers.org].
Re:Obviously there's no benefit... (Score:2, Interesting)
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?