What do we REALLY think of GF

[wakatack69]

enough said....

[slippery]

How about a middle comment? I dont feel strongly either way, i am obviously not happy with what has happened but i am sure it was never their intention to let this happen.

[wakatack69]

couldnt think of anything..... sorry... but 10 months is 10 months.. and since 2 of those we the community requested/demanded answers... they hid behind their scared little pr/legal team waiting for the time to pounce (reluctantly at that).

Refuse to commment covers all middle-ground feelings


The games going (for now) do no need to be so diplomaticly correct

[slippery]

couldnt think of anything..... sorry... but 10 months is 10 months.. and since 2 of those we the community requested/demanded answers... they hid behind their scared little pr/legal team waiting for the time to pounce (reluctantly at that).

Refuse to commment covers all middle-ground feelings


The games going (or now) do no need to be so diplomaticly correct

Don't hate GF for whats happened, they are a company interested in profits and they did what every good company would do, get the hell away from it. They could / should of done things differently, but they didn't and as much as it annoys me being angry about things doesn't help.

Look to the future, GF tried but screwed up, next people who pick up ryzom learn from their mistakes.

[varelse]

Their CEO is also a Ryzom player, as are a number of other GF employees - let's not forget that. I think they really did become captivated with Ryzom and wanted to make it work, but were not willing to let it drag their company into financial ruin in the process. MMO's are a huge investment risk and many more have failed than have succeeded. I can't blame them, or even Nevrax before them, for this sad fate. Like Jayneylou, I find myself laying this at the foot of 'pure' capitalism, and while I regret it, I understand it all too well (sadly).

[wakatack69]

remind me not to start polls when i am emotional....



i wanted to find out who would consider a GF game now........
if anyone would support GF as a company...


opps... my second poll and i screwed it too

[fiach]

Apparently they paid 10 mill trying to get Ryzom sorted, and it only has a population of 4.5 thousand.

I would not be too quick to kick them, we got nearly an extra year out of Ryzom from them, I have bo beef with them, the other alternative was a dead Ryzom much earlier.

[kaetemi]

Apparently they paid 10 mill trying to get Ryzom sorted, and it only has a population of 4.5 thousand.

From what I heard, 10mil was the initial development cost, and they bought the game for 25k. Don't know how much money they put in it for the rest, though.

[iphdrunk]

Although we do know a few things now, there's much that only the interested parties now, and even then, they may not agree, and have different views. I do think that there are complex issues that we are not aware of. Some have been hinted in press releases and interviews, but

I honestly can't believe that at least 20 people working on a software project (as complex as it may be), supposedly full-time employees with *previous* knowledge of the system (in some cases dating to 3 or 4 years) and different game mechanics can be so little productive, unless there are things such as who owns the Intellectual property, really not motivated devs or similar. Or, as Kaetemi hinted, there's been a lot of development but it has not made it live, for whatever reason (bad management, hidden agendas, you name it...)

I have stated before. Look at the development effort and results (deliverables, lines of code, implemented modules, changes, etc.) in the time periods 2002-2004, 2004-2005, 2005-2007... true, it's been some number between 50 and 20 employees. Let's assume worst case: 20 employees, from the liquidator, remove community managers, mangement layers and anyone that is not productive from a dev point of view and assume that there are 3 devs and 2 3d artists. 5 mman month for 8 months, with *hands-on* experience. It is hard to believe that they cannot fine tune 1h weaps for good, add a few 3d models, etc. So there should be a reason to explain this.

Without knowing what happened exactly, it is hard to tell something about one given company. But I do think that concerning development, it's been a mess, with uncompleted features, parting in all directions (spires, ops, pvp, ring, kitin nest, missions) and yes, I do think that somehow we've been treated without honesty (did I say malice? nope, some clever guy said that Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence), not only by GF but by previous owners as well (Ranging from the "outposts are simply disabled in FBT, will be there for release" to the "here are the titles we are working on")... How can you honestly look us when you publish a document about a Kitin nest when you positively know that it will not go live before 1 year?)

I guess that in the real world it's free for all, and if stating something can cover your back and keep a few players around, ethics are secondary. The truth is that I don't see a lot of difference the way GF and Nevrax treated the end customers, except in communication, but that's also debatable, for some may prefer no communication that false promises and about great plans of world domination, patch processes, etc.

[millar]

Very eloquently put Anissa. Not being that good with words myself I will just say this. If Gameforge expected to make the game successful by installing the wheel of fortune thingy and trying to make the game bug free (unsuccessfully) in 8 months of ownership with little or no advertising i'm suprised that this is there first failiure. As Anissa said "Never ascribe to malice, that which can be explained by incompetence", but which Gameforge was guilty of we will probably never know.


Ashy, Thomas's frustrated alt.