[exNews] General Thread

[dbhkin9]

*knocks quietly and peeks in* Hello homins, I was just curious about the status of ryzom but it seems my prayers havn't been answered yet.....
I hope you are all making it through life without atys, and hopefully we will all have a happy reunion in the Pyr Baths *passes out shots to all*

[whiterider]

AJ!!!!!!!!!
Long time! How you doing?

[dbhkin9]

I am doin fine bored without ryzom to pass the hours but stayin busy in RL actually i was feelin sick 2day so I called out of work and decided to check up on Atys events How r u nysha? and how is the rest of our beloved guild doin?

[jared96]

That canNOT happen. I swear, what's wrong with people!? Ryzom is the best game I have ever seen and played, even my friend who have NEVER played it just need to take a look at some of the screenshots and hear the lore and I have them converted already. My stories about the amazing community and the roleplay experiences I've had in the past only feed their itch for the game (not to mention mine ...) ... need I say more?? Why can't people see the amazing game we have! Spiderweb can't just wipe Atys off the face of the universe; it's damn hard to erase a planet.

No argument from me....I have been playing the game since the early betas, participated in the FBT and was still playing at the end. We suffered from several issues however:

1. Even if cherry pie is your favorite thing in the world, after a while, you just don't want to eat it every day.

2. One of the reasons the community was what it was is that the game didn't appeal to a certain element. Unfortunately thta element represents a large part of the game buying population.

3. The owners were stuck in a low funding cycle. There wasn't enough money to adequately promote the game, which led to low uptake of new players, which left less and less money available for promotional activities.

4. A large portion of the original population was not PvP oriented. The game lost half it's player base as it was unable to implement PvP in a manner which didn't make this group feel disenfranchised.

[jared96]

Since the players are customers, I would think that the player information would be very valuable to any buyer looking to get the complete package. I would not want to spend the kind of money that they did and only get a partial game.

You did not think of option 3, where they have the software and are trying to fix the bugs and develop a marketing strategy that will work. Any marketing strategy takes time and they will need a good one to fix the mess that Gameforge has left behind.

Hey MLM ! I'm looking forward to be able to say I'll be playing "in the midnite moonlight tonite" (remember our music lyrics conversation ? )

The player information's value has to be considered in context.

1. What % of the original playe rbase was left at the end ?
2. What % has fluttered off since then ?
3. What % has found new games / new communities in the "between"
4. So how many are left ? How many were "Ryzombies" (players who were perennially afk)

I don't know how many peeps were on the other two servers before GF's problems started but let's just look at the English server. On any given night, it would be extremely hard to find 20 people playing......but with time differences, let's call it 50.......let's say 4 times as many were playing at least once a week, let's say 2 times that were paying subs....that's 400 peeps.

Triple that to remove any argument and you have 1200 folks.

1200 x $15 = $18,000 a month or $216,000 a year. What can you buy and how many people can you pay with $216k ? Remember you need:

24/7 TS/CS available
Billing
Marketing
Management
24/7 IT Geeks

Put 1 person in ecah 8 hour slot for just that lineup and it's 9 people. Consider that "to pay the bills", you generally incur 1-2 times (let's say 1.5) direct salary costs to pay bennies, phone, credit card costs, electric, rent, insurance etc. So 216k / (1.0 salaries + 1.5 overhead) = $86.4K to hire 9 people or under $10k each. That's in mimimum wage territory.

By that I conclude that the income from the remaining player base is not a significant factor on the potential success of the "new" game.

As for taking time to develop marketing strategy, one would think the best bang for the buck they could get would be word of mouth from th existing player base.....sure doesn't cost anything. But my thinking is, it would be a financial drain. So they could be holding off to develop something along the lines you are thinking ..... or they may look at the rsults of a google search on Ryzom and figure the 100's of obituaries would be a hard thing for the marketing team to overcome. Maybe a rebranding of Ryzom into a new game (same world - different episode) is under consideration. Maybe using the engine, they want to make a completely new game.

In short, what my thinking is, that **if** there was going to be any reopening of the old servers in the near future, it would be somewhat foolish of them not to be in here and making some sort of announcement saying something before more and more people drift away.

[stelf]

*quote* In short, what my thinking is, that **if** there was going to be any reopening of the old servers in the near future, it would be somewhat foolish of them not to be in here and making some sort of announcement saying something before more and more people drift away. *quote*

Exactly what I think jared96

[riveit]

Triple that to remove any argument and you have 1200 folks.

The Atys alumni list is considerably larger

http://forums.ryzom.com/forum/showthrea ... ns+players

Obviously, the large majority of those wouldn't be coming back. However, alot more people played the game over the years than what you get by estimating who was on Arispotle at the end.

While using the census addons in another not-to-be-mentioned game, I've found that census snapshots tend to capture about 10% of the total server playerbase there even at peak hours.

[meryan]

Hi Fyros Yes I do remember the music, still brings a mental image of digging in the lakes for me.

Yes, players have left. There is nothing more frusterating than logging in to see the error code flash up on your screen (happens every night). So, I have been playing other games, and trying to keep in touch with other players, but I will be back as soon as the servers open. There is nothing better than running through the dunes.

I would love for them to make an announcement, but I think they want to have everything sorted out before (just a gut feeling on my part). They already have spent the money on the game. They probably already have a staff. Eventually they will want to see a profit on this investment.

And word of mouth advertising does not reach everyone. Compare word of mouth to what WoW did running ads with William Shatner, etc. What will get you more players?

[maccer16]

it was posted a few weeks ago on clients that spiderweb would be funding the game and black widow hosting the game so make a guess what do you think

[neofyte]

[QUOTE=maccer16]it was posted a few weeks ago on clients that spiderweb would be funding the game and black widow hosting the game so make a guess what do you think[/QUOTE

Who posted that? Someone with some knowledge or someone with a dream?