I'm affraid to say it, but Mokdarion is probably right, being at each other's throat won't help the boat float. Only let it sink with a harder feeling. Seeing that some people, even some of my own guildies have already given up hope and would prefer to see the game definitely dead than accept some alternatives just can't help but make me more sad than the game itself dying.
On the other hand, I see some people of the French community that are really active and ready to give "Free Ryzom" its chance and contribute to it as much as they can. That gives me hope, that gives me the will to fight for the survival of Atys. If it's our last hope, why not give it a try ?
I wouldn't spend a dime myself on cash shops because I'm a broken student, but if some people do spend RL money on things that I can get for "free" with a bit of work, why should I care ? After all... time IS money, isn't it ? I don't have money but I have plenty of time, so I don't mind investing it in a project that is most likely the ONLY way to save the only game I love.
And there is NO other place such as Atys in the entire gaming world. You all know it and yet you'd prefer to let it die than maybe accepting some changes to save it ? FOOLS ! A couple l33t n00bz that we can either ignore or educate cannot possibly be worse than losing what is for most of us the only virtual world that is immersive enough to really makes us feel at home.
Let's face it : the big game companies with big money out there are too affraid by Game Forge France and Neverax failures to even considering buying the game. Too affraid to see that those failures weren't because of the game itself but because of the companies' own fatal mistakes. And because they think of dev cost before thinking of the potential income of the game as it actually is.
Ryzom.org's #1 objective is simple : buy the game rights so it can at least run as it is right now, but without the lag. Even then, people are already volunteering to work on the the code, Graphical development, sound development, on the Lore/animations, on the customer support, on the marketing/advertising and even on the potential translation of the game in other languages. Even alternative money income such as derivated IRL products were proposed. Dev cost = 0$ because done by volunteers, that's what Open Source means. The only cost will be the game hosting and maintenance of the server by a few paid employes. Of course, the implementation of new features might take some time at first because they need to clean the code so its easier for the volunteer coders to work on it, but who cares about how much time it takes if we have a Lore/event team that keeps the story going to entertain us while we wait for the new features.
"Power to the player" would become even closer to the truth. But for this, it takes players that are ready to devote their time and talent to save the home they love, if they don't have money to donate to save Ryzom, they can still contribute. If it's not to build something, then at least to test and give feedback on what is being built. An event team won't make itself on its own, French people have theirs since quite a long time because some players invested their time in it, I believe we can do the same.
For the Living Rootball's sake, it is really not the time to be close minded and spit on what might be our only chance to keep Atys alive. Being snobbish to any form of change won't bring us anything except maybe doom. Server hosting and maintenance does cost money, because Atys needs a lot of ressources to run and right now this cost can't rely on income as "unstable" as cashshops, especially considering the amount of players right now that seem majoritarly hostile to it. It would be pure suicide.
On a side note, even people at Virtual Citizenship (Free Ryzom) do not consider cash shops a reliable source of income for a game such as Ryzom, even if done in parallel with a lower monthly fee. From what I've seen, they have other priorities on what they want to develop and derivated products (T-shirts, figurines, posters and a Comic Book serie made by Psychée) or even litteral donations are considered more seriously as alternative source of income than spending some volunteer devtime on cash shops.
I know most of you don't like VCA or are highly skeptical about its chances of succeeding. Yet, I prefer seeing them trying to make Atys a better and more accessible place (with platforms that would really be compatible with Linux of Mac OSX and probably damn Vista too) slowly than a company that cares only for costs and profits and doesn't give a damn about letting their customers and/or volunteer staff really know what's happening until it's too late to do anything about it. Maybe GF France did its best but it obviously lacked many things to succeed and we all know what it was, and whatever it was, we DON'T want to see it happen again.
So either you invest yourselves and try to save your world or you don't and wait to see it die while hoping for a miracle that most probably won't happen. But don't you dare spit on the ones who try to bring ideas and alternatives, because it is a well known fact that Atys won't save itself alone ! Maybe I didn't succeed in convincing anybody to participate in the Open Ryzom project, then I would be really disappointed, but at least, unlike those people who prefer bickering to acting, I would have
tried something which is still better than doing nothing while crying on the tragical end of the world.
It is not too late yet... Atys ain't dead until its death.
shame the retard.org project amounts to
You already have given up, haven't you ?