Yalbadoath I love your post and enthusiasm for a world I have called home since 2004. You see what all of us that love Atys see. A place where you actually live. Not so much a game but another life you slip into. An alternate reality.A true second life. There are a few reasons I believe that has led to it being hidden gem. It was realesed within weeks of the powerhouse mmorpg that all modern mmos tries to copy,WoW. Next Neverax was a small French company with wonderful vision but little experience and by the time they finished had not enough money left to market the game. They prolly were cash strapped and just couldn't compete with Blizzard's advertising budget.Patch 1 for the game was a disaster. I personally was hooked and was patient while they scrambled to fix things but many left in droves and very few returned. Compared to WoW Ryzom has a steep learning curve. The things you and I love about the stanza system and customazation confuses many. Still at this point I think Ryzom had a strong chance to flourish but they started to scramble. They brought in(sorry I forget her name) someone to "fix" Ryzom to attract more subs. She shifted the original concept of the game to a more PvP approach. She failed to understand that the existing sub base were a tight cadre of ppl who absolutely thrived on community and helping each other(Ryzom at launch was a signifgantly harder game). The player base was so tight because we all needed each other to survive at launch.PvP caused major drama and many more left in droves because the Atys they loved was a place where we all stood together to face the kitin threat and fight to regain our history and culture(on a side note I always felt it was stupid for ppl to be fighting each other in the face of the kitin threat and not be uniting as we were).As the company was scrambling trying to stave off bankruptcy they merged the US server Windermeer and the English speaking rest of the world server. This in itself was fun for many of us but showed the game was financially shakey. Some ppl don't want to invest effort into a game that may close. Meanwhile WoW is a runaway hit drawing the interest of many. Neverax then started putting development money into the Ring. Ryzom was the first game ever to venture into player made content.The problem being they never finished it to where you could pay and they would keep your scenario up on their servers.It seemed mgmt would have great ideas but never finish. Eventually it was bankrupt.Game Forge bought them only to also go belly up. Two bankruptcies really doesn't help attract players as well with limited funds the game stagnated few patches little story.Luckily with 63 skills to Master to 250 there is alot to keep you busy:) It came down to great vision to little dapper not enough marketing.For those of us who have lived here it has some shortcomings but it also has been a way to have a mature community that thrives on helping ppl and self polices itself to keep out the some of the immature potty mouthed slack jawed mouth breathers that seem to flourish in other games as well as Gold Farmers and spammers that live in the dark underbelly of many games.
---