English

Good day everyone, I have been thinking about this for quite sometime now and have come to a realization that Ryzom as I once knew it has died and at the current state it is in, will die soon.

I have spoken with several toons since the merger and the main reason why they have left is because people are taking the game to serious and to crazy extremes. Last time I checked this is just that, a game and the nature of this game yes is Faction vs Faction and Player vs Player but the actions of a few have driven off the many. It may appear that there are plenty of people playing but not as many as one would think and not nearly as subscriptions as pre-merger for those who remember the game before.

A new time and era is coming soon and will be upon us faster than we think. The first indicator should have been the combination of all servers into 1. The next should have been the new hosting company as you can see it is not stable and several more "Please Waits" than I can ever remember (daily actually) and now with the latest patch to prevent or curb the argo attacks and death pulls for boss stealing. This tells me that the company is losing money hand-over-fist and cannot afford to ban paying toons so this latest action (patch) is an attempt to help with ticketing and as a last ditch effort or absolute worst case scenario, ban someone who is paying for a game that helps pay their monthly fees. You may not agree with me but unless something drastic happens, Ryzom will not last another 10 yrs as previously and in all honestly, probably will not last another 2-3yrs.

I have said enough and could go on with more, but honestly doubt many care and this will probably fall on deaf-ears anyway.

Zatarga

I can't count how often I have heard that song, or music very similar to it, in the last ten years, going through a much bigger state of instability and "Please Wait"'s, not to count crawling in the speed of a drunk slug over Atys' surface. It's a little bit like having Nostradamus with Alzheimer's on board: Every few weeks he thinks that he forgot to tell us "The end has come! It has awakened against you; behold, it has come!" - and completely overseeing that, even if it were true, it would makes not the slightest bit of sense at all in telling us about it.

I have read things like that in the Beta of Ryzom 2003/2004 already :D

I have experienced the dwindling of players even during Beta-times and then shortly after release with disappointment about "promises (expectations) not fulfilled" and because of complaining about "not enough features" and horrible bugs.
I have seen tons of players (who I still miss) leaving Ryzom with patch 1 and during the years afterwards, losing motivation to play on, after having waited for a long time for more or for specific features that have once been announced.

I have experienced the friendly people from former support-businesses being replaced because of money-issues.
I have seen "The Saga of Ryzom" changing into "Ryzom", thinking that this is a sign of resignation, and that reality has obviously beaten the once gigantic visions of David Cohen Corval.

I have seen Nevrax going down.
I have seen Ryzom changing owners for the first time (Gameforge), and how badly they failed at making this game significantly "better" nor more popular with their ideas.

I have experienced the death of Ryzom in 2008.
I have watched over its sleep.

I have experienced Winch Gate reviving the corpse of Ryzom, but without any of the changes or features so many have hoped for.
I have seen the transformation of Ryzom into partly "open source".
I have seen the struggling-on with the help of now unpaid support-members and much less players than ever before, but at least with some new features and even more events than ever.

I have experienced the merging of the servers.
I have seen the loss of nice features like alchemy and the sanctuaries/temples in the process of the server-merge.
Once again I have experienced an exodus of dozens of players originating from many countries because of arguments among the communities and problems with all the different languages.

But during all these long years I have also seen countless lovers of this game supporting it in any ways possible.
I still see new patches once in a while, new additions to the game here and there, events with new ideas being introduced or old ideas revived, and also new visions being formed: http://app.ryzom.com/app_forum/index.php?page=topic/view/22302

I have learned from all of this that there is no death without the option of resurrection for Ryzom ;) And even if Ryzom should ever die for good, it will live on in our memories and dreams.

Uh if Ryzom dies then the future of mankind is screwed. We all know the game is just an accurate prediction of future events.

Zatarga --

A prediction like that can be self fulfilling, nor is it particularly useful unless you have some implementable ideas for reversing the process.

In fact, even as we chat here, there are people working in Ryzom Forge to make new things in game, people in the Event Team and "Level development" who are making new concepts and new missions. Yes, Ryzom may die, so many things do. However, it will not die without a struggle, nor will it go gently into that good night.

((I also disagree with your categorization of the game. In my opinion Ryzom is almost completely PvE with a few PvP addons.))

Not deaf ears, just don't agree and heard it before. Ryzom is the game they can't kill, 'they' have tried and failed. I agree with Bittty, this game isn't a PvP game. How can you say a game that didn't have PvP at the start is "Faction vs Faction and Player vs Player". If you'd been here before they added PvP, you wouldn't say that. It's so much more than PvP or even PvE. The pro-PvP people wont drive the PvE players away, or vice versa. Those who understand know we're all in this together at the end of the day. Hope to see you in 10 years when you return to eat your words :-D

In fact, the introduction of PvP had players leaving in masses and the augurs predincting the death of Ryzom. ;)

Hm, somehow true. Although I'd like to state this more precisely:

PvP has been introduced during the Beta already; in form of:
* an arena (near Yrkanis), while more of those have been announced (we expected similar arenas to pop up in every country)
* duel-invitations and also team-duels called "PvP challenge" that would transport your team to a secluded instance in the desert where you could fight it all out, making every defeated character return, until the last character standing and left in the instance was declared to be the winner

During a media conference 2004 Davon Cohen Corval envisioned that after release there will "fun-PvP" (duels and events) in Ryzom, linked with money-bets placed with NPCs (!), and perhaps also possibilities to fight duels across servers to reward a single "Atys-wide best fighter".

At that same time DCC said that there will also be guild-PvP for outposts later on. Tribes would be the original owner of outposts and they would be the ones to give outposts to guilds (either fighting for it or trading/questing for it) for a certain period of time.

During the first Q&A-session in September 2004 the devs from Nevrax made very clear that PvP between guilds (connected to outposts) and faction-PvP will be introduced for sure.

Still: during all this time everyone from Nevrax has always stressed that PvP will only be "optional" and consensual with other alternatives to receive outposts and with possibilities to avoid PvP.

For patch "chapter 2" we were told in November 2004 by Nevrax at first that new (!) regions would be introduced offering different kinds of PvP - for factions, for guilds and also everyone against everyone, also during events.

But two regions were then made into "PvP-free-for-all"-zones by patch 2 part 2 in December 2004: the already existing lands of Umbra (not team-PvP at that time) and the Nexus (aimed at guild-PvP back then). This patch was not welcomed at all by many players (some had protested against it beforehand too), because this greatly affected popular regions for diggers and the PvP there was "non-consensual". A lot of players left bit by bit afterwards, feeling griefed by "fun"-ganking in the roots.

Later on during the so-called temple-wars-events ("episode 2" in October 2005) the temporary accessible "old lands"-regions with temple-ressources (Aelius Dunes, Olkern Lake, Almati Wood) were introduced as fixed "forced" faction-PvP-zones too. No PvP-tags existed back then of course.

The ignorance of the devs towards the many players who have again objected to the non-consensual PvP with polls beforehand, the digger-killing that went on in these regions after the event started, the boredom of those who could only avoid PvP by staying away from the new content, but also the increasing mocking, griefing plus other OOC-misbehaviour all over the game and even in the forums fuelled at that time made many players leave Ryzom.

In December 2005 outpost-PvP was first introduced with a patch, in a simpler version than we have it today of course. At that time nobody was particularly surprised anymore that this new content once again came without a non-PvP-alternative opposed to all of Nevrax's promises ever since 2003/2004...

However some players still were sad about this (after having raised fame with tribes for a long time in expectation of trading for outposts) and in time they too vanished from Atys forever. Also outpost-PvP ensured that the half-OOC-half-RP-bickering amongst the ever-shrinking community on all servers did not stop for a long, long time :(