New Player considers Ryzom for long term play

[jackmor]

Dont worry guys the next big patch will fix everything. I can feel it in my bones. My blood is hot with antisapation. My skin is tingleing with the very thought of the next patch. My eyes are itching to see whats coming. I can almost smell it and my nose is running. Oh crap never mind ive got a cold.

[tetra]

I'm with SystemV on this one......What legal issues are there exactly?

First Googled Link

• UO guides get canned.
• UO guides are angry and sue.
• UO guides get money

I don't know what the laws are in france, but I know that AO has guides from all over and am 99.9999999% certain I've seen funcom folks say that they can do it because the law doesn't apply to them since they are in the Netherlands or whatever it is.

[lyrah68]

Well I served as a Guide in Everquest, and I have heard some stories that MIGHT be the reasons behind why NO guides...or limited guides. It is too easy for a guide to snap and ruin things, run amuck so to speak. There was a case of a GM summoning players into the plane of Fear right under Cazic, and then not helping them get the corpse. The customer relations NIGHTMARE that this was turned a rather relaxed guide/gm relationship into a rule laiden tense cold war. GM's spied on guides, but due to the HUGE server loads and petition queues that could reach 200 petitions long at prime time, not having guides was NOT an option.

One way that Ryzom avoided the NEED for guides is the way their death system works, not having to loot your corpse has made life easier on EVERYONE. I can honestly say, if I had to loot my corpse in Ryzom...I would never have left Pyr.

Actually, based on Fadin's response in this thread:

http://www.ryzom.com/forum/showthread.p ... ge=2&pp=20

it sounds like the laws about guides is more strict in the US and that's why we don't have them in the game. We have GMs like everyone else but not Guides (at least not nearly as many). I recently saw some screenshots of a beach party player event on the Aripostle server where there were loads of people with Guide and Senior Guide people. It'd be cool if they can make that happen on our server so we have more of an official presence and interaction in the game.

[sprite]

What I meant by the different laws is said quite nicely here so I won't have to repeat myself, but I think this is a side issue here.

[xeenon]

Well I'm drawn tot eh game because of it's open source game engine. Also GFunk runs the game on Linux... so it agrees with me politically!

I like to kick booty as much as the next guy, but I also want some of that care-bear goodness as well. I want to have offspring and an apartment my friends can admire because of my nifty furnature. I want to be able to farm chickens if I want to. I played a bit of Ultima Online and I like the game play of that game, but I just can't play an online game with graphics that outdated anymore!

So I'm really close to picking up the game (that is if my car repairs arent' too much! (car broke down today)) It seems a bit barren to me is all.

[jfoxp]

The issue with guides and the North American server is roughly as follows:

"Guides" are generally people who do their "guide-work" in the game for a small compensation. They don't work for the company full time, and aren't paid full time wages.

This is generally how it worked in Ultima Online. Their accounts were free, but that was it.

Some PITA probably looked at labor laws and realized "Hey! They, by law, have to pay me!" and sued. I believe it was for minimum wage backpay.

That's the dumbed down, gist of it. Someone posted a link around these forums to an article about the incident.

It boils down to the fact that labor laws in the US are rather restrictive on volunteer work for commercial entities. Any lawyers around here correct me if I'm wrong. I'm pretty sure Nevrax would have to pay guides minimum wage in order to actually give them scheduled hours to work.

[tetra]

Some PITA probably looked at labor laws and realized "Hey! They, by law, have to pay me!" and sued. I believe it was for minimum wage backpay.

I'm pretty sure it happened when Origin killed some aspect/all of the guide program or did something to anger them/a good chunk of the players. I fully admit to simply not caring enough to google for it

[systemv]

Once you mentioned it, the lack of children npcs kind of stands out to me now... Was walking around Pyr last night and I thought "this seems... unnatural."

I can't wait to see how they plug this into the lore when children npcs do get in the game(they will won't they @_@). I can see it now:

"There have been sightings of little homins all over Atys! Word has got out that certain elite homins have come upon texts explaining how to tame newfound land mektoubs for riding. However, the mounting technique still remains a closely guarded secret only known to a lucky few."

ewww

[lariva]

Heh, i remmeber that - i was a guide

First Googled Link

• UO guides get canned.
• UO guides are angry and sue.
• UO guides get money

I don't know what the laws are in france, but I know that AO has guides from all over and am 99.9999999% certain I've seen funcom folks say that they can do it because the law doesn't apply to them since they are in the Netherlands or whatever it is.

[xeenon]

Once you mentioned it, the lack of children npcs kind of stands out to me now... Was walking around Pyr last night and I thought "this seems... unnatural."

This game COULD be fantastic. The look of it alone is enough to keep me around for a while. It's just I'm a SWG veteran and I sick of playing a game based on promises.