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Or after wining enough achievement points... this will promote the new achievement system and allow to spread the restoration requests out over time.

or you could get over it and accept were all going to have to start new chars

Effex, it is no wonder that such a situation is luring the trolls and supermachos out of their holes. Yet you are making a fool out of yourself by deriding others' concerns.

The problem is not that i cannot go over it. I shall surely be there Sep 25 no matter whether stats will come back or be lost like mats, app, meks and, much worse, RP, the guild of mobile traders at FH and other things that make me cry (yes, you may deride about).

The problem rather is that quite a number of players will not bear it but simply go elsewhere. And if the decision to shut down the servers was taken out of economic problems, it is likely to worsen instead of alleviate them.

I merely doubt that server operation, maintenance, networking and other hard- and software related cost make more than 20% of overall cost. Assuming same traffic, they may at best shrink by half when reducing the number of servers from 3 to 1. That means saving 10% of overall cost. Take other 10% due to simplified programming and software maintenance when serving only one system (I doubt it is so much) you still do not have more than 20% cost reduction. I fear it is much less.

I have no numbers about the paying accounts, but I can take some estimates (which I'm not willing to publish here). Anyway, if only part of the players expressing their determination to leave actually do so, that will most probably cause an income reduction which dwarfs any savings. Together with the additional cost the migration will cause (after all, it is one more server in the first place, or are you naive enough to believe it won't be in place already now?) this means that the economic situation will deteriorate instead to improve.

Thus, I am quite skeptical whether Ryzom will see the year 2013. I shall not be the cause for. The cause of my suggestions is mitigating such a development.

It doesn't make sense to pay while not playing and stop paying because they wipe the servers. The reason of paying is keeping this world alive. Wiped or not wiped the world will be here for whoever wants to keep it alive.

I don't like the minimal resistance solution of not allowing the active players to reserve by request one or two character names, but can't do anything against it. .. after all it's their toy.

I would be happier to pay a little more if they hired a real programmer (you know the kind of guy who actually codes in C/C++ etc), or at least payed for some advertising, more than all fantasies with web development, events, marauders, and other fluff.

With the entire history gone, there's no world kept alive.

Indeed. I'm not angry ... I'm just very, very sad.

I wish the game every luck it needs. I'm not giving up on Atys ; Atys gave up on me.

Where are you keeping that history? In your appartment? In your armor? In your mektoub? The history of a MMO is inside the people's minds imho.

If you keep it just in your mind, in private, it doesn't matter to the world, just to you. But the histories on three servers differ. Who won the temple wars? Is Dexton alive or not? Was there a war between Matis and Fyros? Who saw Muang, and where? What has Salazar done, if he did anything at all, as a Filiria? Who the hell is Salazar, by the way? We wrote the history of three worlds to have it thrown away, for it does not fit in one.

The RP history in a persistant world is kept in the course of events and developments. These developments were always allowed to differ slightly among the shards. On Leanon, the conflicts between Fyros and Matis were reconciled short before a war, on Ari and Ani, war broke out with victory/defeat for different sides as I recall. On Ari, Imperator Dexton died, on Leanon, I still hold an axe handed to me by Dexton for contributing to save his life, on Aniro, I don't know. My apartment holds a memorial plate granted by the Imperial Family and Senate for my actions in this case.

All that will be gone and wiped out, surviving only in a couple of screenshots. Damn sad, but I don't see a way to preserve it. When RPing with former Aniro and Ari players, I shall have to learn their views, histories, styles of RP. This will be a challenge, but I am willing to take it. But it would be foolish to deny what we have lost.

Additionally: While frantically digging in order to save Dexton's life, I learnt better ways of harvesting and completed my lvl 200 in desert and 190 in prime roots. Sure I shall never forget that.

Agree, I stand corrected. But ever since Still Wyller died and the voting was bent to "developing needs" this part died pretty much for me.

By the way... at what point in histroy is the new server starting?

I, like many who have posted, felt angry and betrayed by this decision. I will probably give the wiped server a chance. But, getting my wife to come back with me may be impossible.

But, I do feel like despite being called a mature community we are being treated like children who should be seen (most especially through our money) and not heard. I think this diverse community could have and would have helped financially or as free labor to save the massive amount of work put into our character's progression.

If the decision was to help new players by leveling the playing field, I think you are trading a small benefit for a major loss. At least on the server I played on, new players that showed they were more than immature little brats were helped and mentored by the veteren community a tremendous amount.

I am unsure if enough of the mature parts of the community that supported and helped this game survive as long as it has will return to help it restart. If not enough veterens do stick through this, this action will just delay the death of Ryzom, not prevent it.

It would be nice for a developer response to many of the questions/clarifications mentioned in this thread.

I may not have a lot of years invested in Ryzom, but I have 11 years invested in another game, and I can understand the frustration of existing players, who are losing so much of their time and work. I also understand the excitement of a few, for being able to start over and relive "the old days", with all players on semi-equal footing. I don't know how much equal footing comes into play in Ryzom - where I'm from, there is a HUGE class discrepancy between newer and older players. That game is over 15 years old, but I expect this is true of any long-standing game.

When I first heard about the merge, I was a bit upset. Afterall, we hadn't had much time to grow, but we did have our little accomplishments, and these might as well not exist. For a while, I didn't see any point in playing other than to hang out and chat. Then I remembered something. There is... no difference, in the long term, whether I advance my character or not, REGARDLESS of whether the servers merge tomorrow. This is because it's not real life. Nothing I do here will carry forward into my real future. It's a pastime. It's fun. So... if I can enjoy it once, why not enjoy it twice? In the end, it's all illusion anyway. Unreal accomplishments in an unreal universe, providing a real sense of accomplishment - which I could've gotten from real life deeds. I'm choosing to pass (waste?) my time in a virtual world. I mean, really - once you accept that truth, how much does the rest really matter? Accept it and move on. Or don't.

I searched for this game for 10 years. That's how long ago I first started searching for a replacement game. Over the years, I searched several times, browsing, researching, sampling other games - and I never even found the name Ryzom until a few weeks ago. There's really nothing else like this game. There are a few other games that have unique "claims to fame", but Ryzom, like them, is special in the MMORPG universe. And it just so happens that what makes Ryzom special, is one of the dealbreakers in my ongoing search for a new home.

So I'll still be here after the merge, and hopefully for a long time to come. I'm also trying to bring friends in, to enjoy what really is a special place.

Lei

I think the biggest issue people face is not so much the fact of starting over from scratch, but the fact that if things are so dire as to need such a desperate action then the future looks very bleak and it would seem a waste of time starting over if it's unlikely to have much of a future

That and the fact that many long term players simply don't have the time they used to have years ago so have no hope of regaining what they lost anyway

I see the point that the community is what makes the game special and some of that community may remain for whatever time Ryzom has left, but that doesn't provide any incentive to invest any serious grinding time into a game who's days seem to be numbered, and it's not much of a game if you're just bumbling around aimlessly with no real commitment.

In fact I think the community aspect will be damaged somewhat by the merger - playing on a server with people you have no way of communticating with produces its own set of issues which I'm only too familiar with having played a primarily Korean MMO in the past

It's a sad state of affairs, but I believe Ryzom's glory days are long gone if this is the only way forward

Hello from Aniro !

Be sure that we also are very concerned about this very very very bad news. Upset, sad, mad, we all feel the same.

We hope we shall find a solution even though it seams to be a sweet dream :(

The only positive thing is that we will have the great pleasure to meet you all guys ! It will probably be a super mess and I hope we will have a lot of fun.

I'm pretty sure it won't last a lot (*), so be ready to enjoy !!!!

See you soon !

(*) I won't pay for that of course, I'm not that dumb ^^

I think if you are gonna do this, the least you can do is make all currently unsubbed accounts active until the wipe, At least then we can go and take screen shots and things of our characters and say good bye to our friends before they are erased forever. In other words if you are going to skrew us at least give us something in return.

Just sayin'.