Ryzom

ashling wrote:Normaly I'd agree with all that ummax but after being a SWG player I've seen that there is indeed something worse then stagnation for a game ..... I'll admit SoE is an extreme example though

Hehe I played SWG and I know but leaving the game just sit and do nothing wont help either

tr808 wrote:why do all u guys need to bash Soe constantly?

Well my main reasons for 'bashing' SoE are,

They changed the basic design of SWG from a sandbox game with a skill tree based character system to a loot mission coookie cutter class system and admited after the event that they knew the current players wouldn't like the changes but did them anyway.

They annoced that they were doing this with two weeks warning before it would hit the live servers the day after the release of a new expansion. They even removed all the pet taming skills from the game and they had been advertising that the expansion would give people with those skills rewards that might finaly have brought their combat ability into line with other skill lines.

After getting that good view of how much SoE respects their current customers and how honest they are with them I'll never touch a game SoE are involved in again.

and now I'll leave it alone so we can talk about something that's worthy of the attention

ashling wrote:and now I'll leave it alone so we can talk about something that's worthy of the attention

I still miss that game

Some answeres (as promisted);

Please see http://www.ryzom.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=1805#1805

I'll post a copy in this thread in next post, but since it's probably a violation to the COC/EUALA for this service, it might be ripped out.

Quote:
1:- Is it feasible while keeping a single hosted physical server and shared bandwidth to have 4 separate "shards", meaning by shard an independent "Atys instance"?



Not with the current architecture, no; we need 8-10 big physical servers to host one full shard.

Quote:2:- we don't know the details on what was implied by the pre-ring shard unification process. Is it tied to the first question? What changed, what's the relationship between the terms shard/server/service/UNIX process/etc...



- A shard is a set of 10 physical servers
- A server can contain one or several services
- A service is made of one process

The Ring didn't changed that. The only thing is that Ring sessions, from all shards, are hosted on dedicated servers, so people from all shards can connect to the same sessions, and shards communicate, for example for the tells.

Quote:3:- If the client/server architecture is done in such a way -- at least at the beginning -- that it seems non trivial to have separate instances (e.g. fixed-static vs dynamic service ports, unable to launch several instances of the same process, etc), is a "virtualization" approach possible? considered?



No; for the simple reason that the servers just haven't enough resources to host several shards.

Quote:4:- Some posts in the ORG project, referring to "multilanguage" seem to imply a "Shard merge". Is this correct? (see question 1) or by the evolution from Jolt hosted towards a more economical solution the shards will be kept
separated?



Shard merge is now only considered for the case where the user base would drop substantially. Currently the shards have 300 to 700 simultaneous players at one time, which is enough to have the feeling the shard isn't empty. When a shard goes down to 100-200 players, it isn't good anymore.

Quote:- Cho being conceived as a fresh start, with trading and character transfer limitation, suddenly becoming a shard as the others



I don't know the answer here, but I guess this was more a "uber player" limitation at the start than a technical reason.

Quote:- Scalability issues, such as number of players per server, number of ring instances, etc.



Again, I don't know the answer. But from what I know, I think this was more related to Nevrax *expecting* scalability issues, and the fact that it is good publicity that you need to open new shards.

Quote:- What will be the policy if the ORG server gets "too crowded" to make the server unplayable? how will you manage opening new servers and transferring chars?



I think this would have to be discussed with the overcrowded community then. There is no perfect solution in this kind of case. Splitting a server in two, closing subscriptions in the first one, allowing voluntary transfers are all likely options. None of them is perfect, and this would have to be voted.

Quote ifferent server status (e.g. built temples, economies, accumulated currency and wealth)



Except for the temples, these were already managed when there was to merge Windermeer to Artispotle; so there is no reason why it shouldn't be done again. And, again also, this could be discussed among the community.

Quote:- Multilanguage clashes, specially in official events, lore articles, Customer Service ("Hello, guide Gobs at your service!..uhm, wait a second, I need to forward your ticket to a German speaking Guide... hold! " )



True, it wouldn't be easy, and there would be side-effects. Possible solutions include having language-specific events, or integrating the different languages directly into the background.

But, remember something important: this would be a community-driven project. So it means nobody should expect a Godly Company to bring the perfect answer, et voilà! On issues like that one, I know a lot of people would have interesting suggestions. That's even what *is* interesting in this project; finding solutions together, instead of relying on one or two decision makers, always in a hurry - they invariably overlook a large part of the possibilities, which a community doesn't.

Quote:6:- Can you elaborate on these issues? is it wrong to assume that the answer to these questions will be "uhm, yes, shard will be merged and although we are aware of these issues, we will deal with them one at a time... till , and we'll see.... this is what we can offer, leave or take it"...



See my previous answer. http://www.ryzom.org/forums/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif There is no "we" and "you" here. This is not a commercial company project. This is a Free Software, community driven project.

Quote:7:- Is it unreasonable to think that a random player X may prefer a buyer that, without GPLing the code and with less open/community driven model can stick to a more classical MMRPG service/business model and assure a seamless continuity with 4 different shards and a professional CSR service that covers 24/7?. Please elaborate




The Ryzom.org is more risky, true. Something like this has never been done. I personally think this could work, but you can think otherwise. Until it has been tried, no one will know for sure.
_________________
/Aprak on behalf of Ryzom.org community

Aprak / fattus

Thanks for your answers. I wish I had the corresponding ones from other potential buyers w.r.t. the continuity of the game.

Ani

kaetemi wrote:Open Source is not total chaos or something, changes have to be accepted before they are added to the official source. There could be full pvp and no-pvp servers, and stuff like that.

Heh, actually, it can get very disorganized and chaotic. If you've been watching the progess of the SWG Pre-Cu emulator, its just shows how bad things can get when people go open-source; sloppy code, disorganization, unnecessary bickering, etc.

I really hope an experienced company picks up Ryzom. Open-source would probably kill this game.

rejectfi wrote:Heh, actually, it can get very disorganized and chaotic. If you've been watching the progess of the SWG Pre-Cu emulator, its just shows how bad things can get when people go open-source; sloppy code, disorganization, unnecessary bickering, etc.

I really hope an experienced company picks up Ryzom. Open-source would probably kill this game.

Perhaps doesn't you know that Ace, in charge of the technical aspect of Ryzom.org, was the lead dev of Nevrax during the 4-5 starting years.
He had not killed Ryzom for 4-5 years with Nevrax and he will not let anybody kill it now.

I doesn't know the pre-cu emulator project you talk about but I guess it has not been made by ex-dev of SWG. With Ryzom.org, you can count on a lot of ex-employes of Nevrax to support the project. And Ryzom.org will buy the game. I guess too that the pre-cu emulator team had not bought the servercode of SWG...

Just simply take a look at this four guys.

Xavier : ex-senior gamemaster
Ace : ex-lead dev
Lejade : co-founder of Nevrax and Director of Mekensleep
Lacambre : well known figure of hosting in France

They are not amateurs. Working for the Ryzom.org project will not make of them a bunch of amateurs.

About free projects, Blender and mozilla are still alive no ?

Last thing. If the rumor about gameforge.de is true, they are certainly far less experienced than the guys of the Ryzom.org project.

jezabel wrote:Perhaps doesn't you know that Ace, in charge of the technical aspect of Ryzom.org, was the lead dev of Nevrax during the 4-5 starting years.
He had not killed Ryzom for 4-5 years with Nevrax and he will not let anybody kill it now.

I doesn't know the pre-cu emulator project you talk about but I guess it has not been made by ex-dev of SWG. With Ryzom.org, you can count on a lot of ex-employes of Nevrax to support the project. And Ryzom.org will buy the game. I guess too that the pre-cu emulator team had not bought the servercode of SWG...

Just simply take a look at this four guys.

Xavier : ex-senior gamemaster
Ace : ex-lead dev
Lejade : co-founder of Nevrax and Director of Mekensleep
Lacambre : well known figure of hosting in France

They are not amateurs. Working for the Ryzom.org project will not make of them a bunch of amateurs.

About free projects, Blender and mozilla are still alive no ?

Last thing. If the rumor about gameforge.de is true, they are certainly far less experienced than the guys of the Ryzom.org project.

Hm. I wasn't aware of that. Well, that puts my mind at ease, somewhat.

btw, the pre-cu emulator is built from the ground-up (SOE would never let them by the code to pre-cu) by some very talented devs. The open-source thing got out of hand because, well, there were far too many code submissions by supporters of the project, many of these submissions were sloppily coded, and there were a few cases in which people tried to steal the code and call it their own.

The actual devs of the project on the other hand know what they're doing (more so than the actual SWG devs, I'd say), and its all being going smoothly ever since they went closed-source

Right, back on topic now :s

Only two points:

jezabel wrote: He had not killed Ryzom for 4-5 years with Nevrax and he will not let anybody kill it now.

If he will be dictator, yes, sure you have a point.

But if the project will be democratic and the project will be community-driven
(As they have claim in all places) they will not have that power. If the democratic community make bad choices, they couldn't do nothing for it. It's the disadvantage of this way.

jezabel wrote: Last thing. If the rumor about gameforge.de is true, they are certainly far less experienced than the guys of the Ryzom.org project.

First, you can make FUD about this al you want; but I don't see a reason for you have this kind of privilege information; except a information leak somewhere (And again with the bad practices and extranges belhaviours in this project).
Second, even if is Gameforge, it looks fine for me. The games thay make, even being web-based, are addictive and have a very good service and very good publicity. And they only have to hire the actual devs of Ryzom (the devs that are making his job and don't get fired) and have a good commercial eye; as far as I know they have this cappacity.