When the Spires documentation was actually read by players, not only remembered as a postponed expansion, most people, at least most who read forums were horrified about what this could bring to the game. Mainly encoragement of aggressivity, more rewards for pvp, limiting access to certain areas, all in all making the world tougher, and the two factions even more separated than now. Their reaction made Nevrax rather focus on different expansions.
GF agreed that Ryzom is a niche game from the very begining and focused accordingly on enriching existing proffessions (see planned ranged fighting made more feasible), crafting and market.
Now at time people come and say: when Spires will come to life. Less and less readers know what Spires are at all. Less and less people answer to the request leaving the impression that the community would be happy to have them.
See the wishing lists there (housing, boutiques, more proffessions), see the polls out there: more land to explore, more and challenging bosses, etc.
News on Spires? No news good news for me
Let's put it this way: SWG had like 500k players (yeah, you heard right, about half a million, and the destroying of that world came with surprising echoes, New York Times wrote about it). They lost about half. A good proportion of them were people who loved complexity, crafting, forageing, RPing. Ryzom lacks very little to compete with what SWG once was. Namely lacks housing and a big area to explore. The rest are details. There isn't yet a full game to fill this gap on the market (but may appear the moment I speak).
Now what would you chose: take back an abandonned project that may lose some of the player base already in Ryzom? or rather try to bring part of that huge lost player base once living in SWG by improving what Ryzom lacks now and here?
And I leave alone the number of bugs that make pvp almost impossible, the disbalance of the world due to pvp rewards distribution, the great features implemented but not working, lack of traditional areas for free pvp etc etc.
And I leave alone the Ring, which is a huge, unique tool for endless fun (and money) if it worked properly.
C'mon, there is work for years here without bothering to give a glimpse to the Spires.
