Just a few days ago, the Ryzom Community Liaison announced that, due to delays in setting up the paperwork for the billing system, Ryzom would likely remain free for another month or so.

There followed quite a few inquisitive questions, as this announcement did nothing to clear up doubts, although it pointed with near-certainty that Ryzom wouldn’t go Free-to-Play (F2P).

Yumeroh just responded to address those doubts with these words (highlights are mine):

Many of you have been playing the game for four years now - or even longer if you were part of one or more of the pre-release stages. The fact that you have stuck around this long shows that you care so much about the game, just as we do, and want to see it succeed and be the best it can be. The fact that the game has elicited such devotion from many of you is something that we’re very proud of and very glad to be a part of; to be blunt, we hope to be one more reason that you stay with the game for even longer

Thank you for understanding that we can’t always give you absolutely all of the details; it’s simply not possible in every situation, regardless of the industry you are in. Having said that, we strive to be able to claim that when we say we’re going to do something, it happens. Hopefully you have already seen some evidence of this mantra in what we’ve done so far but we also understand that you need some more “future-oriented” information alongside things that we have been telling you thus far.

To start with, we bought the game because we love Ryzom dearly and strongly believe that it has what it takes to “make it” and become what we all dream it can be. Before we start “dreaming” and putting those dreams into practice, we need to stabilise the game and rectify some of the issues that might put off new players. We need to get profitable first and to do that we need to tidy things up and make the game a lot more user-friendly and accessible to as many people as possible, without diluting what makes Ryzom special. With that in mind we’ve already started on creating new ways of marketing and translating the game among other things.

To answer your direct questions [stated here], we also have fixes written for some of the bugs that annoy you the most and we plan to put those on the live server as soon as we have the infrastructure in place to ensure that our code reaches you all effectively and in its proper state. To be specific that means test servers and processes, as well as the patch system - these are “in the works” at the moment, but *hopefully* should be ready for deployment at somewhere around the same time as the billing system goes live. We’re not yet quite ready to talk about “large-scale evolution” of the game; obviously the game must evolve to survive and we have some ideas floating around regarding that, but changing the game so that it’s not “Ryzom” anymore is most definitely not our goal

As an aside, we also plan to fully support and re-introduce Live Events to the game. The whole way we handle and manage events is being reorganised; the lore pages and chronicles website are currently being reviewed as part of this so that we can bring them back in a centralised and easier to use manner once the reorganisation is complete.

I think this is the best piece of news, and very clearly stated, that we’ve had for months, even years. There is a plan, there will be consistency with lore, there will be events, there will be bug hunts. One day, we’ll have to learn who that Spiderweb is, but in the meanwhile, we’re here!

Ryzom: The general meaning ,  The deeper meaning

Atys: A demigod who was turned into a giant pine tree.

Karavan: Persian Pilgrims

Kami and Ma-duk: It is a big ole pdf, check out words 172 and 189 on the word list if you decide to look at the whole thing.

Jena: Simple word play on Genesis.

Goo: Runaway nanobots

Kitin: Armored bugs

Matis: Look familiar?

Zoari: Ancient religion

Fyros: I think it is just cause they like to burn things but the name could be tied to Former Yugoslavian Republic of Slovenia (FYROS) and they just liked the sound of it.

Tryker: Really couldn’t find anything, maybe something to do with Elias Tryton?

Enjoy the links.

It will take a bit more information for me to jump for joy, but things definitely appear to be moving forward. The forums subdomain, which was previously removed, is back, and locked up as if it were in maintenance. More importantly, Klients lets homins log in and appears to have fairly recent user data, which means ryzom.com is run by the elusive new owners.

Still no word on who’s behind it. A head architect (HeadArch) shows up in Klients from time to time, but hasn’t been very loquacious. So we don’t know whether Catalyzers will be out the windows or if the game will be put up as is, in its current form. But there’s time to worry about development. The hopeful sign is, whoever bought it is rumored to be a homin who believes in the game. I chatted with Boroshi yesterday, who thought the low-quality picture put on ryzom.com’s cover page only indicates it was a low priority, and that the team was probably more concerned with getting the servers back online (which I’ve come to believe as well).

For those of you that rid yourselves of Klients, a copy of version 1.33 is available here. If you want to chat with hopeful homins, you can log in with your Ryzom user name and password. EDIT: link updated, should work fine now. Also make sure to set your game name in Klients by typing in, e.g. .set name Hekla (don’t forget the dot!).

Yesterday, ryzom.com’s DNS was pointed to different locations, the old subdomains were taken down and the MX (mail) server was set to Google Apps. I have no idea what exactly this may mean, but today, a picture was put in ryzom.com’s front page, notifying us of the imminent return of Ryzom (see here).

We have no idea as yet who is behind this; purchasing an available domain is easy enough, so this may just be a hoax, or a sign that the fellows behind Atyscape are getting serious in their efforts to retro-engineer server behavior from the old Ryzom client… But their intention was to revive it as Ryturn, because of copyright issues. So this wouldn’t seem consistent since, presumably, only Spiderweb would be authorized to use the name Ryzom, unless the company waived their rights.

But perhaps something is happening after all, so it’s worth a mention. Apologies in advance if this all turns out to be a false hope.

Surprising news today: someone popped in the ryzom.org forums to inform us that the liquidation was almost complete, and that the bids had been evaluated yesterday afternoon, Paris time.

After verification and cross-checking, it appears a company called Spiderweb won the bidding process (213,000€). No information is available on the web for this company; Xavier mentioned he has a feeling it is a front for another company made up of people who, in his own words, are “close to the game”. Spiderweb doesn’t have a website, and many companies are registered at the same street address, so I tend to think it’s a front as well.

However, it appears other bidders were not notified, which opens the possibility for a counter-bid to take place. Should that happen, it would only delay the process by a few days, not weeks.

In either case, things are moving forward much faster than expected.

Source: ryzom.org forums - Qui a gagné la vente de Ryzom ?

Updates: Ryzom riddle (June 17) / Ryzom: hope? (June 25)

Xavier posted a recap on the legal process. As we all feared, we could be in for a long wait, as it appears GameForge GmbH never paid Nevrax in full to purchase Ryzom, during the previous liquidation.

My notes on the legal status have been updated and moved to this location.