The Free Ryzom Campaign -> donate to make Ryzom GPL

[JoWilly]

The Ryzom Saga could be free, in the same way it happened to Blender...

More info on http://www.ryzom.org/

Free Ryzom!

Help us make Ryzom a Free MMORPG! Donate now to help us purchase the source code, artwork and intellectual property associated with Ryzom, so we can breathe new life into it as an open, democratically run player project.

What is Ryzom...

Ryzom is an innovative MMORPG, which has been developed since the year 2000 by the independent studio, Nevrax. For the past two years Ryzom has been marketed and sold to gamers, developing a fiercly loyal fanbase. Unfortunately, due to market conditions and other unforseen cirucumstances, a request to begin bankruptcy proceedings has been filed at the commerce tribunal.

[Txukie]

I have donated (or well, made clear that I intend to donate in case the objective is met). This needs to be supported by the community.

[JoWilly]

Yes, this is a rare opportunity.

There is an interesting thread on the the ryzom.org forum about the feasibility of a linux client.

Ryzom is opengl as well as directx; it also uses a lot of portable libraries (STLport, libxml, freetype, fmod, zlib, etc...). Furthermore, the Ryzom engine (NeL) including the tools, works on linux.

There is much to say that Ryzom could become a linux native mmorpg

[aanderse]

i'm not sure i understand correctly: you want gnu/linux users to donate money to a game that currently only runs on windows?

and ontop of that, the website mentioned above is covered in macromedia flash content ... that makes me really wonder about the commitment (of this effort to "free" the game) to the GPL.

i'm sorry but i'm just not convinced yet.

[User_Program]

It's also stated that it is pay to play. About 10 € a month, this is for the "official project Ryzom server"
There is mention about a player run server
"Note that player run servers would likely be free to play since their playerbase would likely be much smaller."
but this doesn't give a 100% for sure.
I'll have to wait to see how it plays out before I donate.

[polpak]

It's also stated that it is pay to play. About 10 € a month, this is for the "official project Ryzom server"
There is mention about a player run server
"Note that player run servers would likely be free to play since their playerbase would likely be much smaller."
but this doesn't give a 100% for sure.
I'll have to wait to see how it plays out before I donate.

I don't mind if it's pay to play. Heck, I don't care at all what other people want to do with it... It's worth the money if for no other reason then the fact that it'll make it much much easier to develop other games of this sort by the OSS community. They are going to GPL the game (client and server) and put all the art into creative commons. This could be a very significant boost to the Open Source gaming scene. If it's GPL, you can download it, build it, and run it on your own server for free. You can change it any way you like.

As a developer and a proponent of OSS. This is definately worth a lot to me.

[JoWilly]

i'm not sure i understand correctly: you want gnu/linux users to donate money to a game that currently only runs on windows?

Nope. As polpak already said very well, I want to donate money so that the OSS community gets access to the source code, art, etc.. etc... -> the complete game. This will bring us a native linux port. It costs millions to make such a game; we can get it for a bargain. This is a big plus for the OSS software pool.

The fact that the engine and many libs are already running on linux makes it much easier.

and ontop of that, the website mentioned above is covered in macromedia flash content ... that makes me really wonder about the commitment (of this effort to "free" the game) to the GPL.

Come on, just sit back and think about what you just said

[Lord Illidan]

I'd like to see it OSS too.

[JoWilly]

It's also stated that it is pay to play. About 10 € a month, this is for the "official project Ryzom server"

There will always be costs with a MMORPG. Someone has to pay for the servers (to support a large userbase you need many interconnected servers, a large bandwidth and maintenance). This costs a lot, it *cannot* be free.

Someone has to pay, be it players, sponsors, advertisement... you name it.

There is mention about a player run server
"Note that player run servers would likely be free to play since their playerbase would likely be much smaller."
but this doesn't give a 100% for sure.

Look at what exists today:

1. There are many free private (illegal) WOW and Lineage2 servers: as they are completely free, they run at reduced costs (1 small server): hardware is too small to support many players.

2. And, there are also several free private (illegal) WOW and Lineage2 servers supporting serval thousands of players in the same "world". These severs+maintenance are paid by players' donations. Donations are sometimes made in exchange for ingame armor, weapons,...

In case 2, you pay what you want (nothing, 1$, 2$, 5$, 50$, 100$ per month, it's up to you). You can be a cheap charlie and play for free while others are donating, or you can involve youself in helping your servers' community with a donation (to pay for maintenance or to purchase better hardware, etc...).

-> so there is no discussion here, ALL of this, and more, can and will happen (but legally, in a free, open, GPL environment).

[JoWilly]

I'd like to see it OSS too.

Yep.

With our poor linux games, we can keep dreaming and either sit back an watch games beeing played on windows.

Or we can get our hands on a multi-million $ MMORPG today. Just think about the possibilities, and the boost it will bring the existing linux games (source code is worth much more than the money needed for development).