On the other hand, I tried Ryzom a while back (a while after the free trial was launched). Liked it enough to stick around for a while, but it didn't work well enough for me to consider paying for it. Then I heard that Neverax was going under (no offense but not really surprised on this one, seeing as to how they didn't manage to hook me who actively wanted to get hooked by the game) and that some people started a Blenderesque project to buy out the code and the IP.grimjim wrote:
Reading the various commentaries at slashdot, Ryzom.org et al I do not get the feeling that most of the interested parties are actually interested in the game or in being our white knights on chargers coming to the rescue.
They're interested in 'sticking it to the man'.
And I thought, now this is a cool project. And I returned and I made a pledge. Not a big one, because I ain't swimming in money, but I pledged because I wanted to see what I view as a promising game to continue.
So there you have it: I am willing to actually spend money on Ryzom due to Ryzom.org because I *care* about the game. I care about the people who I never knew and who have played the game for years and would now be faced with, basically, the end of a world. I can very well imagine how that feels.
Oh, and, just for the record... I am a UNIX nerd, too.
So don't lump everybody together. And do you really think some commercial entity is your "white knight" come to rescue you? Sorry to burst that bubble but it's all about your wallet in one way or another.
As for the actual running of a community MMORPG, I don't see why that cannot be done. There have been some attempts before, on a smaller scale, with varying degrees of success (or mostly lack thereof), but that doesn't mean it is inherently impossible. As for the cost of running the game - Take a look at Wikipedia. A huge effort requiring a massive infrastructure, and it works too. Yes, that's comparing apples and oranges, and there are many things such a community-run project would need to figure out how to do... but it's not like running a community MMORPG was comparable to, say, building a fusion reactor or a dyson sphere.
- Nils
The internet rarely forgets anything.
