OFFICIAL NEWS

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1) What prompted this switch to one server? Hasn't the switch to a freemium model helped the game?

There were a very large number of reasons behind our decision to merge servers. While the "freemium" model helped a lot by introducing new players to the game it was still unfortunately not enough to achieve the goals we had set. We had to make this difficult decision to ensure the continuity of the game. Merging the servers provides a number of positive benefits, however:
- Fewer servers means a lot less expenses.
- Less management overhead.
- More players playing together makes the world feel more alive and entertaining!
- Multilingual server.
- The combined events team will be able to do more frequent and better quality events.
- The combined customer support team will be able to provide better customer service.
- It provides an excellent opportunity to do some rebalancing of the game.

2) How do you think the players will take the news?

We are sure that there will be a number of people that will not like it and hopefully a lot will like what the reset will bring to the game! While a number of veteran players will be set back a large number of new players have had a hard time to competing with these established players due to the large differences in equipment and skills.

When it was clear that we had to choose between a server merge or no Ryzom at all, the choice was easy. We hope and trust that our players will understand and support our decision.

3) It will be very hard for a long time player to re-roll his or her character after years of writing stories and playing the game. Is it not possible to merge the server while keeping all of the characters as they are now?

We investigated the possibilities of keeping the characters, but we encountered some very difficult technical issues that make this impossible.

Our players have invested many many hours in their characters, their armor and their guild. It will not be easy to say goodbye to those things.

However some other things, like craft recipes, friendships and the knowledge of how to play the game are permanent. This will help with the transition. Furthermore a new start can often give new insights and lead you to new and unexpected directions.

One of the problems we will have the opportunity to address with resetting the servers is the problem with the value of "dappers" - the money in Ryzom. Ever since the start of Ryzom in 2004 there have been some issues in the economy that make the dappers effectively worthless. There are some settings related to the economy make the dappers too easy to obtain and he only way to fix this is to reset everything. Since we are merging the server there is no better time to do this too.

So yes - it will be difficult for our long-time players but you have to keep in mind that the role-playing will continue and that the re-roll of a character will mean a renewing experience that can be shared with all the newcomers...

All our players will have a really unique opportunity to re-experience Ryzom at the same level as their friends and to create the future together.

4) Have you considered other forms of monetization like microtransactions or a cash-shop? After all, specially designed mounts would probably sell very well!

Real free-to-play games are designed from scratch with specific strategies and gameplay systems to make players want to buy things. Ryzom was never developed for this and we don't want to do follow this direction.

Actually the game is free to play, the only limitation will be when you reach the level 125 you won't gain any xp anymore but you still will be able to play undefinitely. To lift that limitation there is the subscription of 7.95 EUR (or 10.95 USD) per month which is one of the lowest on the market!

5) Won't the consolidation of international communities lead to customer service issues? For example, what will the official server langage be now?

It's the contrary we'll have more CSR people in the game and often our CSRs can speak more than one language so they'll be able to help people faster and handle more problems.

There will be no single official langage on the new server. Players will be able to request support in the same way they did before.

There will universe channels for English, French, German, Spanish and Russian so people can ask for help from other players in their own language. For the local channels all languages will be mixed.

Some adjustment will be needed for sure but we are confident that our CSR team will be able to handle the transition. There will be more of them online at one time then is the case now.

6) Why doesn't a game like Ryzom get more attention? Do you think the playerbase has changed over the years or does the game need to be modernized or made easier?

The MMORPG industry is very tough. New MMO's are released every month. There is a lot of money is spent on advertising when an MMO is released and unfortunately we don't have the means to compete with them.

What we do know is that when we ask our players what they all love more than other MMORPGs they tell us it is the unique Ryzom community. Our players are perhaps more mature than average and make the game very friendly and nice to play.

We really think our community will accept this move to help us achieve an even better and more fun Ryzom world.

source : http://massively.joystiq.com/2012/09/07/exclusive-ryzom-interview -details-player-wipes-and-server-merges/

They could save characters if they wanted to i guess they dont though.. i mean if you can "copy" characters to test realms why cud u not "copy" a character to another realm!

Makes no sense except they want a reset clearly! It will be good anyway :)

Windermeer and Cho were both merged into Arispotle, no toons reset in either merger. Yes, that was a long time ago and wasn't WinchGate but it's clear that mergers can be done without resets.

Final's suggestion is a great one, if two toons have the same name simply number them—Gorran1, Gorran2, etc—and the first one to request the "real" name gets it.

Ryzom is about freedom to be what you want to be; so, why FORCE your players into something they don't want via a reset? Is there a legitimate reason for this or is it just because someone decided it was best?

Gorran, who does not see a reason to get in game at all until after the server reset now, what's the point?

Well, good luck with your New Beginning!

I was looking forward to my return to Ryzom, but not anymore. I'm as outraged as everyone else by this decision, but a part of me still hopes Ryzom manages to survive and succeed. I just won't be there as I'm cancelling my account now.

Hey, at least now I can go try some other MMO's =)

See ya all!

Things can be replaced, it's the skills that most are so concerned about. Skills represent hours, days, YEARS of investment by the player. Those are so much more valuable than mere THINGS.

I want to know what technical difficulties you found that PREVENT maintaining skill level.

As a programmer and DBA (who's also run private MMO servers in the past) I don't see why there should be unresolvable technical issues with regards a merge, sure it would take time and resources and it's down to yourselves to decide whether the expense involved is worth it for the sake of saving a large percentage of long term subscriptions, personally I think the decision not to merge and keep the characters as they are is somewhat short-sighted and you'll lose out big time in the long run as a result.

With regards making it easier for newer players - I was a relatively new player having restarted Ryzom with a new character about 18 months ago (previously I was a guild member within the opposite faction), and I would much rather start the game with the help of established high level guild members, it's the fact that everyone starts from square one that primarily puts me off re-subbing because I can't face a hard tough grind with only similar level players around to assist and no higher level players available to run treks for newbies. My other reason for not re-subbing is that I just can't see the game surviving this in the long term with the number of long-term players you're going to lose and I don't fancy putting any more time and effort into something that may well be in its last days.

I really think you ought to reconsider investing into a merge that will keep the existing characters intact if you want the game to survive

Wow, it's so sad to see so many names I fondly remember from over the years speak out for such tragic news. Unfortunately I never had the opportunity to play Ryzom much due to RL issues, but I have followed it since open beta days and occasionally put in some time (Sui, Valeriana, Xarae, Guisenlin, Odran), always glad Atys still existed and always hoping to return on a more permanent basis. The only MMO that mattered.

I hope Atys weathers this change, but I fear for the outcome. I will still follow you all and I will still hope to return.
Thank you everyone, for 8 years of wonderful stories, ideas, and roleplay.

-Sui

so what we gonna do till 22nd? im sure as hell that im not leveling any of my skills.. infact what can i do? except for log in and complain about starting again?.... common we need some kinda excitment till this merging takes place.. im so close to just downloading another mmorpg simply cause i cant wait till 22nd. i should also point out that since im pretty new in this game it doesnt really bother me much that i have to start again..

also one thing i cant figure out..

ok say you have merged all the servers and everyone is starting again. players doesnt have to pay for their account untill lvl 125!! and from what i know.. every1 would like to get all their skills to lvl 125 before they pay. now leveling 1 skill to 125 could take up to a month.. then another 2-3 months for the others skills.. now if this is the case.. doesnt that mean that your company (ryzom) wont be seeing any money from us (players) for a good 4-6 months...? can your company survive for that long with no money coming in?

Will i keep elder of atys title as that saved to accounts not characters ?

If you're going to wipe everything, wipe EVERYTHING is my vote.

double post deleted

This Interview of VL opens more questions than it answers.

- There was not a single reason given why to wipe character levels. A lot of previous posts agree that there have been serious issues with the economy. But no reason to delete toons. If there is a serious reason, at least tell us about it now. Character transfers have been done before, and yes, there might be some work for support and devs involved. It's not about loosing some recent additions like occupations too (if they don't meet the standards of former ryzom development), it's about loosing the core of our characters.

- Rebalancing of the game... i'm really afraid about that one. Current Information and communication policy brings back worst nightmares of past rebalancings. This will be no good.

- It's not about difficult. It's about the mature community that held ryzom together. Most of us don't have the time to start fresh anymore. The question will be to keep RL up as good as it is now or continue with Ryzom.

- You contradict yourself about free to play. You say real ftp up to 125 is a unique feature (true) and you keep it that way (clearly wrong, read yourself about cats + ftp). Today it's a downside not to have sufficient space to be a crafter. But it can be explained. You will turn ryzom into one of those ftp games where non-paying players got a huge disadvantage. 2x Exp all the time for premium accounts is even more than most ftp games do, making ryzom a below average ftp game.

- You said it's not about RP. How do you explain one tryker cannot understand another when they want to chit-chat at stables or a bar? Governments cannot continue the way they were, most likely they will close down or held in one language only.

If you learned anything about this community in the past 8 years... don't do something like this without us.

Ulykus, while I agree to most you wrote, I fail to see why killing the occupation achievements is any better than killing skills. At best it is less catastrophic, but still nullifies efforts of roughly half a year of intense and often painful playing for a player who achieved grade 6 in basic occ and 250/250, 300/300 in extended.

I simply do not see for what we are being punished. Taking away our apts, beasts, guilds, all our items, ok, I can see some point. Merging the servers, painful, but probably promising anyway, and understandable. If money is lacking urgently, why not try some crowdfunding instead of abusing players who love their game?

Well I know what this server needs.

http://tinyurl.com/ryzomfate