Ryzom

lizzykos wrote:I know a few French people, and, from how they describe it, the labor laws are very strict over there. The way I understand it, they can't force their employees to work overtime. They even tried a 32 hour work week for a while, and they have a government mandated 1 year of paid maternity leave.

I also wanted to comment on the difference between a customer and a client. It's a difference of $14.95 vs. hundreds of thousands of dollars (that number can, of course, vary, but you did say major client).

I submit that 14.95 multiplied by their entire player base may approach atleast a hundred thousand dollars...

But in all actuality probably not. There is generally a rule of thumb here that states for every person that posts on a forum there are 10 users who do not. If that rule is actually true we can infer that ryzom is lucky if they have 5000 paying customers.

Honestly, I think this game is going to die a painful death. There is no way with that small of a subscription base they can afford to pay the bills for long, they must be using up cash on hand or investment capital to stay afloat until they raise their revenue. After this patch and the way it turned off so many people and considering the competition that is about to launch this month, I think they are buggered quite frankly.

Assuming that like most good business they started with enough cash on hand to see themselves through 6 months... thats about the time we should all expect them to close the doors if they don't somehow manage to raise their subscription revinue.

I don't know how it is there in France per-se, but here in San Jose you can expect to spend about 10,000.00 bucks a month on a single mid-range programmer after you calculate payroll taxes and benifit costs. Then add ontop of that the cost of their physical offices, support staff, their outsourced CSR, their server hosting, bandwith costs...

Well you get the picture.

A fair estimate at their price point would be about 30,000 subscribed users to be in the black, and Im probably low-balling that a bit.

This is just speculation on my part of course... but based on working my full adult life in the software industry.

jjm152 wrote: Assuming that like most good business they started with enough cash on hand to see themselves through 6 months... thats about the time we should all expect them to close the doors if they don't somehow manage to raise their subscription revinue.A fair estimate at their price point would be about 30,000 subscribed users to be in the black, and Im probably low-balling that a bit.

You made a lot of idiotic comments. I'll break them down. FIRST of all the one I quoted.

MMORPGs are NOT your typical "good business". In fact, companies that develop MMOs are LARGELY IN DEBT to investors and banks and whatnot (save for EQ2 and WoW, deep pocket companies).

Second, if Asheron's Call 2 and Horizons can still exist with their under 2000 subscripts, then I believe very strongly that NEVRAX will keep Ryzom.

You called a "fair estimate" of 30000 to be in black. Based on what? You claim knowledge because you were in "software" business, yet MMO's are HARDWARE. That's like claiming knowledge of how well Star Wars (Sci Fi) would do because you work with Lord of the Rings (Fantasy).

Anyway, I probably shouldn't have responded. I mean, you are horribly wrong about MMOs first of all... You also have never listened to reason in any thread I have ever seen you comment on.

Methinks you and Kamagi would get along.

- N

neiana wrote:You made a lot of idiotic comments. I'll break them down. FIRST of all the one I quoted.

MMORPGs are NOT your typical "good business". In fact, companies that develop MMOs are LARGELY IN DEBT to investors and banks and whatnot (save for EQ2 and WoW, deep pocket companies).

And this has what to do with anything? That's bad business practice if you can avoid it. Any endeavour needs atleast enough funding in order to survive long enough to stay profitable. If the cash is not on hand it needs to be provided by investors. My statement in this regard is no where near idiotic. It's just the truth.

neiana wrote: Second, if Asheron's Call 2 and Horizons can still exist with their under 2000 subscripts, then I believe very strongly that NEVRAX will keep Ryzom.

You called a "fair estimate" of 30000 to be in black. Based on what? You claim knowledge because you were in "software" business, yet MMO's are HARDWARE. That's like claiming knowledge of how well Star Wars (Sci Fi) would do because you work with Lord of the Rings (Fantasy).

First off, the fact that AC2 and Horizons still exists has nothing to do at all with if they are profitiable or not and has a lot to do with how much investment capital they have. I could sell bars of gold as my business for 1 dollar a pound. Sure that's bad business sense, but if I have someone that is willing to keep feeding me money I'll be around for a long time.

Frankly, you have no idea how they are getting their money and are just making a huge assumption based on no knowledge or fact or even understanding of basic economics. Way to go there champ.

Also, what do you think that stuff that runs my software is called? Oh that's right HARDWARE. I am intimately familiar with how much hardware costs to purchase and operate as well as co-location prices and bandwith costs. Don't be a fool... oh well too late.

neiana wrote: Anyway, I probably shouldn't have responded. I mean, you are horribly wrong about MMOs first of all... You also have never listened to reason in any thread I have ever seen you comment on.

Methinks you and Kamagi would get along.

- N

Horribly wrong about MMO's just because I pointed out some factual situations that may or may not be right? Why are you so riled?

I have a suspicion about you and people like you. It seems to me that for some reason a great deal of your self-esteem or value is placed on the shoulders of something other than yourself. For some people it may be a rock band, or an author, but in this case its a game. It's just like being a huge fan of a sports team in many ways. If your team does well, you are happy and your existance is validated. If it does poorly, you are sad and you are worthless.

Look buddy, I am not attacking "your team" and I'm not trying to assault your self-esteem. If you cannot seperate that part of your identity from a faceless game developer in France then you need to seek counseling.

Anyway, I think my assesment is fairly solid. Nevrax will have to have very deep pockets to keep this game afloat with their current subscription numbers and turnover.

They may have those pockets... I don't know. But its a fair assesment of the current situation.

Don't get me wrong here...I'm waiting for a response, too, and I'm unhappy with what I've read so far about the changes (haven't had a chance to log in recently, been too busy/sick). Anyway, I thought I should point out that you're basing your expectations that they work around the clock not only on American labor laws (I already told you what I know of the French laws), but also on the assumption that thousands of people will quit. I've seen many games suffer much worse, and many times where people swear up and down that they're going to quit, but there's never that much of an impact on the playerbase.

Also, it should also be noted that every time a new game comes out, there's tons of posts about how each and every game currently on the market will crash and burn as a result. The fact is, it takes many, many months of really crappy service, or years of somewhat crappy service, before an MMO dies from it.

lizzykos wrote:The fact is, it takes many, many months of really crappy service, or years of somewhat crappy service, before an MMO dies from it.

Actually, that is no longer true. In recent years many MMORPGs have ceased to exist, including several that were funded by big companies and cancelled before release.

jjm152 wrote:And this has what to do with anything? That's bad business practice if you can avoid it. Any endeavour needs atleast enough funding in order to survive long enough to stay profitable. If the cash is not on hand it needs to be provided by investors. My statement in this regard is no where near idiotic. It's just the truth..

And the "truth" is, ALL MMO's do that. I'm talking about FACTS, while you are talking about what you THINK is good or bad. I've been around long enough to have been in this discussion before. I've been on both sides, and I also know a few more details than your average wannabe "smart" person about this industry.

We can sit and argue about what games we've played, what our jobs are, and who we know, but the fact remains and my responses to you were factual and everything you have said is just you being melodramatic and egotistical.

Seriously, do some research on the topic.

- N

*notes that she hasn't bothered to read many posts in this thread*

Don't forget that it's the business weekend. We should all wait for Tuesday before acting as though there were no response for a day.

jjm152 wrote: My post is basically asking someone at Nevrax to either say the way combat is right now is intentional or that it is a mistake.

Frankly Nevrax has poor communication with its own subcontracted help desk, and even worse communication with its customers.

I've been in this game since first open beta. I'm 99% sure we have never seen a response on the beta forums or these forums directly from someone at Nevrax. I doubt they will do so now.

With regard to the European working hours, the EU has introduced a mandate that limits working hours to no more than 48 hours per week. There are some caveats to that, but basically near enough everyone in Europe is supposed to work no more than 48 hours per week.

I don't know how it is there in France per-se, but here in San Jose you can expect to spend about 10,000.00 bucks a month on a single mid-range programmer after you calculate payroll taxes and benifit costs

Just for info - a good games programmer in the UK can expect to earn around £35 to £40k a year, which at current exchange rate works out at about $6000 to $6250 a month. That is a high wage for the games industry in Europe. The average is far lower, maybe a quarter to a half of that.

Finally, and this is not directed at anyone, but again I wish people would not try to quote figures on how many subscribers there are or how much it costs Nevrax to run this game per month or whatever, because quite simply, unless you're the chief financial officer at Nevrax you don't know. None of us know, we have no way of knowing. All of us can pluck figures out of the air and attempt to justify them through various means, but at the end of the day we simply don't know.

amitst wrote:the devs dont talk to us, cerest just tries to calm us down

As a developer, i don't consider it my job to talk to the end-user very much. If my employer is paying good money to have a CSR team do that part of the job (whether it's in-house or out-sourced), it gives me a heck of a lot more time to do the job they pay ME for, which is get the code working right.

The jobs I've had where I had to deal directly with the user were some of the worst I've ever had. Especially in a time-pressed environment such as the one the Nevrax team is working under, it's almost impossible to get anything done if you have to be answering questions from the users all the time.

Cerest and all the rest of the CSR team, especially the GMs, are doing one heck of a job. As for the devs, I think having 2 mini-patches in the 72 hours since Patch 1 went live is more than I would have expected. Development by itself takes time, and patches take all that time plus testing to make sure they deploy properly.

kahuna wrote:
The jobs I've had where I had to deal directly with the user were some of the worst I've ever had. Especially in a time-pressed environment such as the one the Nevrax team is working under, it's almost impossible to get anything done if you have to be answering questions from the users all the time.

We can only speculate on thier business model, but in fact, there has to be a line of communications between the CSR and the DEV's and that can take time. What IS painfully obvious is the extreme attempt at curtailing advancement and the Harsh Adjustments from patch 1. Someone had to make that call, and I am sure they are not pleased that the community reponse was overwhelmingly negative. That alone makes the job more difficult, but there is always the possibility they will be able to succeed and find that middle ground.