Ryzom

Most of the monthly cost goes into server maintenance, etc. As I said before, even under ideal conditions it costs $9 to $12 per player to handle that. To write all the monthly fees in under "profit" is absurd and you know it, Zumwalt.

But Ryzom is a new company and I wouldn't be surprised if they made some mistakes. I wouldn't be surprised if they have to spend more than $15 per month per player on windermeer. Let's assume that they are, in fact, making money from each player. If the maintenance costs are $12 per month per player and the players are paying $15 per month, then they're getting $3 per month per player.

If they can get 10 times the playerbase, that is sound in theory. But they can't, frankly. Changing the price from $30 to $16 isn't likely to even double the population within the next 2 months. And the average player leaves well before 5 months are up (5 months times $3 per month makes the $15 currently being charged). Whether it would be a good move in the long run is questionable - for a game that's doing well, I think it would. Increasing the player base has many advantages. For a game like Ryzom that is in crisis, I don't think it would be so effective.

And Raynes has a good point; I don't think WoW is better, but the fact is many of my RL friends gave Ryzom a try and didn't like it one bit. Now probably more than half of my RL friends have WoW accounts and are satisfied with the game. Early on, I saw copies of Ryzom in my local Gamestop. I saw an ad on Penny Arcade. The idea that this game has gotten no exposure and that's the reason it isn't doing well is just unfounded. I got half my linkshell from FFXI to try Ryzom, and not one of them wanted to stay. I don't keep in touch with them any more, but I know some of them stayed in FFXI and some are in WoW. This game is a niche game. Reaching out to that niche market is important, sure, but say what you will about Ryzom's quality, most people just don't want to play it. Niche games have to make compromises that involve sacrificing mass-market appeal in order to get a stranglehold on their particular nook of the gamer population. That may also mean charging more in general - the costs of a good infrastructure that caters to a small number of players can be substantial. If you have millions of players, sustaining that infrastructure will tend to be cheaper (per player).

And Nevrax is in hot water. Optimism is fine, but if David is openly posting letters as grim as these, what do you imagine the investors are thinking? Changing the pricing scheme may seem simple and easy on the surface, but this type of decision shouldn't be lightly made. Particularly in times like these. We don't have access to Nevrax's internal data, but I am sure they aren't making decisions arbitrarily, definitely not at this point.

What I'm curious about is what 'failed' in the US?

Germany, France, these are smaller countries with lower populations yet their servers aren't being proposed for a merger. Just the US one.

Which means, IMO, they must be doing a lot better in these smaller countries than in the US.

Gaming culture must be v.different.

We have been wondering the same ourselves. I personally can come up with 2 or 3 things. This is from feedback from mmorpgers, and others who are not gamers. Some of this will sound repeated no doubt.

1. The cool and creative systems we love are very diffiult to understand and learn. Most people want a very easy user interface, and the ability to have "assistance" in deciding direction, etc. i.e. skill selection, what should I do, etc.
2. The game is not available where the 'general' gaming population can find it. Online is not the place to mass market the game. If you did pay the price and dropped it in the retail outlets on the shelf right next to WoW you would get a bunch of new players, but fix #1 first
3. There is much more to it than kill the other guy. A more advanced crowd intellectually.
4. LOW population. If you had more people to ask questions of, #1 would not be as big of a stumbling block. The noob island is just worthless, IMO, it tends to chace more people off than to get them involved. If we had 5,000 people on and 200 on the noob island actively it would not be a problem.
5. People have tried it and left due to bugs, not understanding, low population, etc...

P.S. I just had an idea to fix noob island. Why don't you combine the 4 with a new map. Have 4 cities, 1 from each land and join them in the middle. This way, they could even experience the different landscapes. I would even volunteer my time to make your map, and I am sure others would too. At least this would put 10-20 people on the island at the same time. And now that we have guides(NA did not), Position a guide on the conslidated noob island all the time, or atleast the top 14 or 16 hours of a day for population.

The American consumer is demanding. and the American MMORPGer is typically younger and stuck on WoW. This is what they learned is best. Sry, but a harsh reality.

Why hasn't it taken off in the US?

1) At launch almost all of the game systems were either broken or missing. Many of them are still broken or missing today.

2) The lack of a story and quests.
This also is still the fact today in game.

3) Patches that were a failure.
Patch one completly changed the game
Patch Two was so bug filled that the big features of it did not work and one of them still does not work.

4) A lack of events including use of the famous raid engine.
The events were dull and had no effect on the game world. Instead of using the RAID engine to have invasions all the time they were few and far between.

5) The lack of anything truely exciting to pull players in.
Lets face it right now and for the past 6 months Atys has been a drag. There have been a few exciting blips on the radar but 80-90% of the time it has been uneventful.

6) The lack of a coherant story
The story has changed many times. What might of been true once is no longer true. Even worse changes have contradicted what was.

7) The fact that almost all the interesting areas of the game are unfinished.
The Secret Kami Oasis? Darkmore? The ruins in the roots? The green orbs?

raynes wrote:It;s more than that. The reason EQ2 and WoW do better is because they are better. (I can hear people screaming now). No matter how much you want to argue those two games simply have more content and more to do in them. That alone makes them better games.

Offtopic i know but actually ontopic of MMORPGs...:
But how do you see "better"? Commercially, from a business-perspective yes, it is better. And they have a good reason to be, they have more resources and experience to make it happen after all.

First of all, I know without ever playing WoW that I will have lots of fun playing it. At least initially. The game is just made to be fun. Putting your mind to 0, forgetting the real world and having fun. Not much downtime at all, not as much grinding etc...

In WoW, you can solo or team your way to max lvl. In Ryzom or EQ2 after a while you're forced to team. Both methods have their advantages disadvantages, but it shows how WoW tries to expand the (imaginative)freedom the players think they have at any cost (cost of meeting new people for example?).

Lastly, WoW is a success not only because of good programming but good management. Seriously, i have a strong feeling that they knew their servers were going to be overrun. Having full servers is just emphasizing their success. And, people just tend to prefer success-stories over others. Would you rather sit in an empty restaurant or one thats (nearly) full?

Ryzom could go the way WoW went. Though there are some aspects that are hard to change now, there are some things that could be altered easily. For example regen rate. If you sit down, it doubles. This could be increased so it triples or even quadruples. I don't see many people complaining when they make this change. But Ryzom will lose some of its challenge.

Another example: you used to be able to get stuff from ( and put on) packers from every stable. They changed it so you can only do this at the stable where the packers are located. It is more realistic, yes. But i don't ever think enjoyment should be sacrificed for realism. Whats the point in having to waste an extra 20k on tickets and passing 2 loadingscreens to put stuff on packers?

The way i see it, WoW may have more content and things to do but not as challenging nor original as Ryzom.

predzz wrote: The way i see it, WoW may have more content and things to do but not as challenging nor original as Ryzom.

I can speak for EQ2 and say that it is as difficult as Ryzom. On the subject of originality. Ryzom might be original in it's ideas but that originality is useless if you do nothing with it. That currently is the case with Ryzom. Ryzom is loosing out because it's at the same place it's always been... The possibilities are amazing, it has great potential, but has not even started to reach it yet.

raynes wrote:Why hasn't it taken off in the US?

1) At launch almost all of the game systems were either broken or missing. Many of them are still broken or missing today.

2) The lack of a story and quests.
This also is still the fact today in game.

3) Patches that were a failure.
Patch one completly changed the game
Patch Two was so bug filled that the big features of it did not work and one of them still does not work.

4) A lack of events including use of the famous raid engine.
The events were dull and had no effect on the game world. Instead of using the RAID engine to have invasions all the time they were few and far between.

5) The lack of anything truely exciting to pull players in.
Lets face it right now and for the past 6 months Atys has been a drag. There have been a few exciting blips on the radar but 80-90% of the time it has been uneventful.

6) The lack of a coherant story
The story has changed many times. What might of been true once is no longer true. Even worse changes have contradicted what was.

7) The fact that almost all the interesting areas of the game are unfinished.
The Secret Kami Oasis? Darkmore? The ruins in the roots? The green orbs?

I think raynes has hit the major points correctly with this post. Rather than asking why the game hasn't taken off in the US, it might be more correct to ask why it would be very successful anywhere, given it's ongoing problems and lack of content.

But even that question is probably wrong, too. The assumption by grimjim and others that the game is doing fine in Europe is probably incorrect. I suspect Nevrax is losing money there, also. The US server would be the first to go because the US player population was probably lowest, and because getting rid of an entire customer support team probably saves the most money the quickest. But it was also the easiest to get rid of because there is another english server to take the players.

Imagine if the german server isn't making money (which may very well be the case). If you close that server, you write off any players who aren't willing to migrate to a server with a different native language. That is a much, much tougher business decision.

Doctor Z.

I will triple my membership fee if they hire raynes to help them develop.