Ryzom

I think the main problem is that we have not the slightest clue what is going on. Are bugs fixed right now? Is new content in the works? Did they spend 2 months on paperwork and still haven't done all?

Most player just want to know *if* the new owner is working on all the stuff we hope. Because this answer is directly proportional to the number of people who will subscribe

We are here so long, we got promised so much in the past, seen so little, I do think we have the right to ask here. It must also be in the interest of the owner/devs to know what the community thinks, fears and desires.

After all we are supposed to pay their jobs when the game goes back to payment mode. Having this said, I do believe they work on many different aspects of the game currently, engine and content wise. But not even knowing who spiderweb is among other mysteries doesn't really give the relief most of us wish.

I want to believe. (tm) But I can't so far. (arc)

All,

If I may chime in again and throw in some more comments, in line with what Arc just postedm which I agree fully.

Maybe we can't see the forest for the trees. At first, the present thread and annoucement ought to send the message that the game will remain free at least for one month more. So no mistake, this is indeed something to acknowledge as a complimentary offer for us players - and potential subscribers - from the game operator and something to be grateful for.

The problem is that, in the context of Ryzom past history, some of us may take a excessively defensive posture/stand. This posture risks leading us, somehow unwillingly, to read between the lines of what was supposedly a nice gesture. The text between the aforementioned lines, the subliminal message, seems to be "the game will remain free because we can't setup the billing system fast enough". Does this mean thatm had you been able to, you would have said otherwise?. In other words, past the "free month thing" the apparently crystal-clear statement is that "they" (more about "they" later on) are working on setting up the billing system and that the game, "bureaucracie oblige", will remain free another month (there is no choice either way). Is this month what you (guess)timate will take to finish the paperwork?.

The second message was "it seems that they can only communicate basic details when it concerns the billing system, while there are sooo many unanswered questions and it should be well knonw that us players are willing to commit to the game - including the billing part- if... very big if". We can't be blamed for raising the question whether they are *only* working on the billing system since nothing hints otherwise, while there are outstanding bugs that have been only partially acknowledged and, as far as communication goes, if not ignored, not addressed.

I am afraind that we still (or at least, myself) do not know who Spiderweb (SW, for short) is, which is something about which players may want to know a bit more, even ifit is just, for example, to make an informed choice before committing to 6 or 12 month payment subscriptions.

I find it a bit shocking that until now, there has not been a (sticky) announcement concerning who Spiderweb SARL is. It is not at all trivial, for a new player, to figure out which is the company behind Ryzom. I find it surprising that, in these months, we only got a few posts on the "steps", while most games have a dedicated web page yet the company running the game / service has its own; that same company is "trackable". Yet, unless error on my part, I can't say the same about SW. Looking at the terms of service, it says "Spiderweb SARL", and it seems as if a search and replace was performed on the webpage. The same terms of service mentions Spiderweb website, referring to it as "www.ryzom.com". There is some speculation regarding "ex-Nevrax" employees, old GMs now becoming (supposedly) fully paid employeesm that the same terms of services mention that the contract is governed by French laws and a simple google leads to a Spiderweb SARL in Mulhouse, and there is a spiderweb-sarl.comdomain...m will this go live anytime soon? etc etc, etc, Is SW a small company? one dev? but this is only speculation. From a marketing point of view, I think this should be answered well before any other question. For now, a huge difference between the VCA and SW is thatm at least, the former were clear about their intentions and would have opened the code.

Another factor to take into account is that, also in the context of Nevrax/Ryzom past history, players today may be far less patient, far less willing to "invest" on the game and to hold (again) on to the greatest future that awaits us if we just stay patient and give the new "team" some time to develop the ideas... so far so good, provided that, at least, these ideas are somehow "known". There is some gray between the "do not make promises that we can't keep" and "tell the players of every single dream the game designer may come up with".... which is, imho, "a generic roadmap", detailing if/when major bugs are fixed, overview of the development plans and, in all "game mid and long term future".

This is exactly what motivated my post. While I appreciate the gesture and the communication, I cannot understand the silence regarding these also fundamental questions.

While it would be great to have a fresh start, and to enjoy new "content" in form of a game patch and a formal release, knowing the roadmap of the game and the identity of the company behind it is a minimum.

Thanks for reading

Ani

ps: Jack, I hope there are not too many big-words that you need to look up...

iphdrunk wrote:Thank you for keeping us updated.

<private joke> the following post is dedicated to Jackoba's verbosity </>


I do have one comment, though, which I am afraid is not original and somehow expected.

It is quite possible that, after the free period, some players including yours truly will consider subscribing (or to be more optimistic, will subscribe more willingly...) if we have an idea of the development plan and general roadmap. I do hope that you have been working not only on setting up the billing system, opennel and the webpage, but also on the game itself, as you may have hinted in previous communication, even if it is simply defining a generic roadmap.

Plainly speaking (and without going now into whether there are plenty of things to do, roses to smell, the greatness of sandbox games, and how to spend hours "counting the spots in a varynx skin during sunset", etc.. that's offtopic) it is easier to wait for news while the game remains free, which, in my opinion, it is something to be grateful for, and serves the purpose of keeping the community "tight". However, since we do have now more and more concrete details, it would be great if we could also have more concrete aspects on the game itself.

Let's consider this in 2 ways:

a) Without going into the details if you cannot or do not want to provide them, Could you give some hints i.e., be more especific concerning global game aspects and scenario evolution, such as if there will be minor / major updates to the game at the same time of the new "release"? Can we expect a simultaneous patch during the new "rererelease"?

b) Otherwise, can you confirm that the game will be back to pay-to-play, "as is", with exactly the same feature set? Can you give a "stalled lower bound" i.e., time with monthly subscription in which no changes are planned / considered?

I hope that having this information around could help players make (more) informed decisions, and even the hint of a minor update could be a strong reason to attract and convince the player population segment that are in a "wait and see" state, or who may think that if game remains "as is", it may be worth suspending the subscription until when new features are added. I don't want to think that it is naive to expect some of these questions to be answered


My optimistic side says that it would be quite reasonable, even from the marketing point of view, to expect some candy at "release", rather than a disappointing "switch to pay mode now", despite how realistic and necessary this may be...

Yours
Ani

Many of you have been playing the game for four years now - or even longer if you were part of one or more of the pre-release stages. The fact that you have stuck around this long shows that you care so much about the game, just as we do, and want to see it succeed and be the best it can be. The fact that the game has elicited such devotion from many of you is something that we're very proud of and very glad to be a part of; to be blunt, we hope to be one more reason that you stay with the game for even longer

Thank you for understanding that we can't always give you absolutely all of the details; it's simply not possible in every situation, regardless of the industry you are in. Having said that, we strive to be able to claim that when we say we're going to do something, it happens. Hopefully you have already seen some evidence of this mantra in what we've done so far but we also understand that you need some more "future-oriented" information alongside things that we have been telling you thus far.

To start with, we bought the game because we love Ryzom dearly and strongly believe that it has what it takes to "make it" and become what we all dream it can be. Before we start "dreaming" and putting those dreams into practice, we need to stabilise the game and rectify some of the issues that might put off new players. We need to get profitable first and to do that we need to tidy things up and make the game a lot more user-friendly and accessible to as many people as possible, without diluting what makes Ryzom special. With that in mind we've already started on creating new ways of marketing and translating the game among other things.

To answer your direct questions ( http://forums.ryzom.com/showpost.php?p= ... ostcount=3 ), we also have fixes written for some of the bugs that annoy you the most and we plan to put those on the live server as soon as we have the infrastructure in place to ensure that our code reaches you all effectively and in its proper state. To be specific that means test servers and processes, as well as the patch system - these are "in the works" at the moment, but *hopefully* should be ready for deployment at somewhere around the same time as the billing system goes live. We're not yet quite ready to talk about "large-scale evolution" of the game; obviously the game must evolve to survive and we have some ideas floating around regarding that, but changing the game so that it's not "Ryzom" anymore is most definitely not our goal

As an aside, we also plan to fully support and re-introduce Live Events to the game. The whole way we handle and manage events is being reorganised; the lore pages and chronicles website are currently being reviewed as part of this so that we can bring them back in a centralised and easier to use manner once the reorganisation is complete.

Yumeroh wrote:Many of you have been playing the game for four years now - or even longer if you were part of one or more of the pre-release stages. The fact that you have stuck around this long shows that you care so much about the game, just as we do, and want to see it succeed and be the best it can be. The fact that the game has elicited such devotion from many of you is something that we're very proud of and very glad to be a part of; to be blunt, we hope to be one more reason that you stay with the game for even longer

Thank you for understanding that we can't always give you absolutely all of the details; it's simply not possible in every situation, regardless of the industry you are in. Having said that, we strive to be able to claim that when we say we're going to do something, it happens. Hopefully you have already seen some evidence of this mantra in what we've done so far but we also understand that you need some more "future-oriented" information alongside things that we have been telling you thus far.

To start with, we bought the game because we love Ryzom dearly and strongly believe that it has what it takes to "make it" and become what we all dream it can be. Before we start "dreaming" and putting those dreams into practice, we need to stabilise the game and rectify some of the issues that might put off new players. We need to get profitable first and to do that we need to tidy things up and make the game a lot more user-friendly and accessible to as many people as possible, without diluting what makes Ryzom special. With that in mind we've already started on creating new ways of marketing and translating the game among other things.

To answer your direct questions ( http://forums.ryzom.com/showpost.php?p= ... ostcount=3 ), we also have fixes written for some of the bugs that annoy you the most and we plan to put those on the live server as soon as we have the infrastructure in place to ensure that our code reaches you all effectively and in its proper state. To be specific that means test servers and processes, as well as the patch system - these are "in the works" at the moment, but *hopefully* should be ready for deployment at somewhere around the same time as the billing system goes live. We're not yet quite ready to talk about "large-scale evolution" of the game; obviously the game must evolve to survive and we have some ideas floating around regarding that, but changing the game so that it's not "Ryzom" anymore is most definitely not our goal

As an aside, we also plan to fully support and re-introduce Live Events to the game. The whole way we handle and manage events is being reorganised; the lore pages and chronicles website are currently being reviewed as part of this so that we can bring them back in a centralised and easier to use manner once the reorganisation is complete.

BEAUTIFUL!

Thanks for these details, they are received with great appreciation!

*pours everymin a cup of fine hot Slaveni tea, with a touch of Cratcha sap*

Yumeroth,

personally i like your way to communicate since your first announcement and I found your last answer absolutely logic and reflects what I was thinking about the future.

Thank you.

CHEERS!!!!!!

That made my week. It's not like I was going to leave anyway, but it's still great to hear.

Yumeroh wrote: (snip) we also have fixes written for some of the bugs that annoy you the most and we plan to put those on the live server as soon as (snip) test servers and processes, as well as the patch system (snip) some ideas floating around regarding that (snip)

As an aside, we also plan to fully support and re-introduce Live Events (snip)

Yumeroh,

Thanks for taking the time to elaborate. These are precisely the things that I, for one, appreciate concerning communication. I fully understand that you cannot specify lots of aspects and cannot commit to concrete dates and details but at least you kept us updated. Your post sounds realistic with regard to your internal objectives and it is good to know that bugs have been addressed and the game is not stalled.

Finally, I am confident that, when the time comes, you will keep us informed, grossly, on the game roadmap and evolution (at your total discretion regarding the degree of detail)

Thanks

Ani


PS: see? it wasn't that hard it shouldn't be necessary that we come vent in forums

Hurray and stuff

Yumeroh wrote: As an aside, we also plan to fully support and re-introduce Live Events to the game. The whole way we handle and manage events is being reorganised; the lore pages and chronicles website are currently being reviewed as part of this so that we can bring them back in a centralised and easier to use manner once the reorganisation is complete.

I think this is what most people here are really hoping/looking for. After all what good is a fantasy world with no story, no life of its own. If i'm sitting down digging AGAIN because i can't seem to find much else at the time and suddenly some odd character starts chatting begging for help in a crazy situation like marauders or kitin running amuck, I wouldn't be able to change gear(or my plans for the evening at home) fast enough.

what makes me feel confident though after your post back to us is that if whoever all of you are loves this game enough to invest your future, fortune and time to bring it back to life, that you also love it enough to improve and grow it and ensure that people will be happy with your efforts so they will finacially support you guys for those efforts.

So thank you and I hope we are here together for years to come.

Brock

Thank you for the information, my dedication is still there and no other game could take it from me.
Looking forward to everything, whenever it will arrive.