I am truly saddened...

[cosmo365]

Originally Posted by raynes

That's what your not understanding, they don't own the servers. They are not in charge of server maintenace, upkeep, or bandwidth costs. They use another company for that. That company being Jolt. Nevrax is the owner of Ryzom IP, they develop and publish the game.

You are new to the game so you aren't familiar with how the game was launched. At launch time they had another publisher, they had servers in the US as well as Europe. They had a contest to give away 40,000 dollars worth of video cards. All of these things built up huge debts for them. They never got the subscriber base needed to cover it.

Now all the severs are being hosted by another company. All in one place. They don't run expensive contests. They have a loyal fan base. Operations are much less costly now that they were back when the game started.

But the costs associated with server care and feeding, bandwidth, et al are passed back to Nevrax. I don't care on whit who pysically owns the servers...the bottom line is that it is a cost center for Nevrax. My $14.95 a month goes to Nevrax, not Jolt. Is Jolt providing all these service at no cost, out of the kindness of their collective hearts? Heck no. Nevrax being unable to fulfill their fiduciary obligations is what landed them in this ugly place...that doesn't make it any more ripe for a buyout. It tells me that Jolt is either overcharging, Nevrax is under billing, or there was some other accounting weirdness going on.

[cosmo365]

Originally Posted by turjake

Actually one of the "evil empires" mentioned above could be very good solution for Ryzom. Microsoft. They got the money for development and marketing *and* they are already supporting and developing at least one "niche game" - Flight Simulator anyone?

Gah, I hope not. Look at Vanguard...MS was gonna be the publisher until MS started trying to make decisions about the game, including a corporate push for it to be Vista only. At that point Sigil bought back the publishing rights and then went with SOE to publish, host, market and bill. Sigil still holds all CS and design decisions.

Honestly, I would lean to hoping that FunCom would take it. They know niche games, have good CS, and are located in the EU.

[raynes]

Originally Posted by cosmo365

But the costs associated with server care and feeding, bandwidth, et al are passed back to Nevrax. I don't care on whit who pysically owns the servers...the bottom line is that it is a cost center for Nevrax. My $14.95 a month goes to Nevrax, not Jolt. Is Jolt providing all these service at no cost, out of the kindness of their collective hearts? Heck no. Nevrax being unable to fulfill their fiduciary obligations is what landed them in this ugly place...that doesn't make it any more ripe for a buyout. It tells me that Jolt is either overcharging, Nevrax is under billing, or there was some other accounting weirdness going on.

Again just because they can't pay back their debts does not mean they can't pay their monthly operating expenses.

[ummax]

Originally Posted by katriell

SONY involvement = bad. Got it?

Anything good this game has going for it would be wiped away if SOE got its hands on Ryzom.

hehe actualy I consider ncsoft a much worse alternative then sony and I played the "evil" SWG game from release date as well. The farmer problem in lineage 2 is simply incredible and I can safely say that there is not another example out there of a completely ruined game on the face of the planet its pretty obvious to most who logon that the majority of the paying customers are in fact farmers. Its strange and wierd and makes no sense whatsoever, but yeah that experience stopped me from touching any ncsoft title for a goodwhile after. ONly now about 2 years after the dreaded release of the farmer riddled game (from open beta is was riddled with farmers actually) am I recovering from the craziness I saw. Trains of cloned bots, entire farmer clans that could in fact put a stranglehold on entire server populations and completely (not just sorta and somehwat) control the market and value of any ingame item. Every dungeon filled with farmers and more farmers upon farmers running afk macro's bogging down servers causing crashes. It was like an infestation of lice that they never got to go away. They didnt manage it in the beginning and so well its an experience to behold it truly is and is enough to leave anyone totally speechless hehe in awe of it all....

Anyhow it would bother me less if ncsoft didn't get it lord knows that i still see those trains of bots with self running macros running through the centers of towns unchecked and bullying players to this day when I think of NCsoft.. (absolutely incredible it is and was and well i think I said that before)


The farmer problem in lineage 2 is a true spectacle to behold and in itself is worth subscription money to level up and see it for yourself honestly it is its the ultimate freak show of mmorpgs hehe

/cry

[ummax]

Originally Posted by mugendo

Never expected to see these three words in the same sentence.... *crying with laughter*

Rofl well they are all "relative terms" hehe. One thing I have found after playing a lot of other games is at least their servers stay up which is not something I can say that was common for a long long time heck even blizzards toonville extravaganza (WoW) is less stable then most of the sony stuff around now. So yeah i've come to hate sony less then other companies as a result of their good points and not their evil points. Its kinda like well taking the lesser of two evils when you go out shopping for something like say oh internet service in canada. We have in Ontario 2 large internet companies with crappy customer service and horrible prices I picked the one that was less mean to me hehe. I mean really does one have a choice in the end? If you want something you shop for the lesser of evils.

[matic77]

That sucks, this game had some great ideas and some great concept. hopefully the next owner will have the same imagination as the original devs. And not turn this game into your basic loot whore class based MMO.