Another solution ?

[Zexoin]

I hope my post won't be deleted.

Have some of you heard about this association ? http://www.virtualcitizenship.org/
They tried to buy Ryzom when the editor went into bankruptcy.

Might be a solution for HZ's future.

[C`gan]

I sent them an e-mail. Their response back took minutes.

It might be, yes. Are you interested in trying to discuss this with
the developers? If you are ready to work on this, we can try it.

--
Xavier.

[Hasai]

Hm; the Ryzom campaign put together 170 K€? Not bad seed money. I wonder what their business plan looked like.

[Zexoin]

From their main page :

"Our mission, as stated in the Social Contract, is to protect our elementary rights; living in a virtual world gives us the status of citizen there, and our rights have to be recognized and enforced.

Who are we...

We're a group of MMORPG professionals, people who enjoy playing in online universes in general and people who advocate the use of Free Software. We strongly believe that virtual worlds should belong to all of their players. Furthermore, we believe that the players, as virtual citizens, should have the right to influence the laws governing the virtual worlds in which they live. Also, any sufficiently motivated developer should be able to realize their own dreams, by starting their own virtual world. This vision should include making all of source code, artwork, documentation and tools available to any developer as Free Software.


In late 2006, our first action was an attempt to buy the MMORPG Ryzom while its first editor went into bankruptcy. A commercial company had its way ahead of us, and got the code. But the campaign was still a success. It made a lot of noise on the Net, it was covered by mainstream medias, and was supported and backed by the Free Software community. In 25 days, 170 K€ (=225k$) of donation pledges have been registered, and – perhaps the most important – we have found we were not alone willing to inhabit our own world."




I suggest you to read their social contract too - most of what you'd like to have, they want to provide you.

[IndyMan]

of donation pledges

Now to get people to actually cough up the cash.

Also, from the stories about how the code is and the alleged lack of documentation. Hz sounds like a nightmare worse than the reality.

[vahrokh_the_ancient]

Horizons is the only game with dragons. The only game that years ago did what Vanguard promises today.

It just can't die like that, it's a disgrace.

Same for my dragon, I completely HATE this feeling of having him there, sitting in a turned off hard disk and calling me, not to forget him.

For years I played him for 12 to 18 hours a day, I feel physically sick at not having him back and be completely impotent at changing the situation.

[Zexoin]

I understand your feelings, Vahrokh. I would hate to loose my dragon too. So I'm searching for everything that could prevent the shutdown. And that might bring back Unity and Blight.

[Eileen Mavourneen]

Have some of you heard about this association ? http://www.virtualcitizenship.org/
They tried to buy Ryzom when the editor went into bankruptcy.
Might be a solution for HZ's future.

Interesting thought. Did I understand you to say you got a possibly favorable response, C`gan?

The concept raises a whole lot of fun, speculative questions in my mind. If these kind of initiatives succeed, (calling for "rights of the virtual citizens", I mean) then longterm will we all end up supporting virtual worlds and games with tax dollars? Will that substantially increase the going $12 - $15 rate to make things viable or would taxes gathered from those who don't play make up the difference? Would it end up eventually like a Dennis Danvers novel?

Short term, would adding a Horizons leg to the Ryzom initiative strengthen or weaken it? Strengthen it by the addition of voices and dollars? Or weaken it by dividing the available resources between two worlds?

I didn't see anyone actually step forward to pledge their dollars after IndyMan's call though. Is that an indicator of the way such an effort would go?

If it did succeed, would the participants be obligated to continue trying to untangle the current mess of code or would they be free to say "This ain't working" and build a new virtual world just reusing the concepts and some artwork?

Fascinating thoughts.

[Zexoin]

Short term, would adding a Horizons leg to the Ryzom initiative strengthen or weaken it? Strengthen it by the addition of voices and dollars? Or weaken it by dividing the available resources between two worlds?

The ressources won't be divided : Ryzom has been bought by another company, Gameforge.

If it did succeed, would the participants be obligated to continue trying to untangle the current mess of code or would they be free to say "This ain't working" and build a new virtual world just reusing the concepts and some artwork?

I think if the game becomes open source, the second option could be ok.

Fascinating thoughts.

Indeed

Zex

[Nayuaka]

I was against this for Ryzom as I play that game as well. But for Ryzom we got a decent company called Gameforge who kept the original dev team and we still have regular updates. I was against it because for Ryzom because I would have rather had a company and a dev team then players. And to be honest I would prefer this for Horizons as well. I miss our old dev team something fierce. The communication and the friendships we developed with them sitting in out chatrooms and treating us as equals. But I digress.

Since I doubt the option of getting out old dev team back for HZ is viable I would say I would support this option because at this point absolutly anything is better then EI/PME. At this point I would contribute money to this cause.

PS. I hope this post doesn't get deleted either. Even our moderators shold be able to see that EI is treating us horribly.

[Zexoin]

In retrospect, I think discussing this matter is inappropriate for this forum. Eileen, please could you lock the thread ?
Thanks

Zex

[C`gan]

In my post, I gave the response I got back from Xavier.

It might be, yes. Are you interested in trying to discuss this with
the developers? If you are ready to work on this, we can try it.

--
Xavier.

[MadDwarf]

Ryzom suffered from the fact it was not a typical MMO. It did not suffer from game breaking bugs and a set of engines that was not up to the task of running the game.

Horizons suffers from some very major developmental issues and design flaws. Any company that would buy it would have to be totally accepted to the fact that it would take a lot of resources and programmer hours to even get HZ on par with other games in this arena. Which was why Baker could not find any other company that was interested in it other than PME who did not fully grasp the games problems.

game forge got a game that wasn't broken. Any CO that buys into HZ is buying a product that is broken and would have to commit itself to fixing it.