Ryzom: News Galore

1st Newsletter

June 13, 2005.
IRL : Thanks ! by Xavier Antoviaque

Thanks to all of you who came to the first official Ryzom IRL, and contributed to make it a success! It was a real pleasure to meet you and share a few stories. We will publish local debriefs for each of the three locations in the following days, along with more pictures (you can already find a lot of pictures on the boards).

And to immediately answer an important question : yes, we will do it again! :-)

June 13, 2005.
Forum : Forum changes by Xavier Antoviaque
The forums have undergone two changes you requested.

First, we have created a feedback forum for each community, where we are moving all the threads asking for your feedback; you will be able to find them more easily, instead of having to parse the General boards.

Second, we have moved the 'Saga' roleplay boards to their respective community-specific categories, since it makes more sense to have everything at hand.

Forums : English speaking community

June 10, 2005.
Letter : Creative Director's Letter to the Players by David Cohen Corval
As we are in the process of improving the game, we are putting a lot of effort to the events. Until now, events were punctual, with little or no story / world implications. They were small introduction events. Now, we are working on a new generation of events dedicated to the story development.

June 10, 2005.
Tip : Backing Up Your Map Landmarks by Xavier Antoviaque
Since the in-game map landmarks are stored on the client and not on the server, it can be useful to backup them from time to time, to be able to restore them in case of a crash, a re-installation or to reuse them on another computer.

June 9, 2005.
Website : New Section on the Website - The Game Basics by Xavier Antoviaque
We have just opened a new section on the website, called the Game Basics; you will find it under the Game Info section. The Game Basics are meant to be an online starting guide for beginners, giving them a practical description of the game's main features. Have a look at it, and tell us what you think of it !

June 8, 2005.
Patch : Bugfix patch tomorrow ! by Xavier Antoviaque
Tomorrow (Thursday, June 9th) we will bring all servers down from 10 am to 2 pm, Paris local time (UTC+2), to apply a patch, made of bugfixes and tuning bits.

I've also created and filled the new In the Next Patch section of the website, with the elements from the In Development section that we are introducing on the live servers.

Thanks for your feedback everyone on these topics - since no major issue has been raised, we have moved quickly on that one.

June 8, 2005.
IRL : Real life event this week-end! by Xavier Antoviaque
Just a reminder that the "in real life" event (close to 200 of you have registered over the three locations) is taking place this Saturday, June 11th! We are looking forward to seeing you there; some of us are even already packing their stuff to be sure to be ready ;).

If you want to join us, there are still some places left for Frankfurt and London - click on the following links to know more, and be aware that we will close the registrations on Friday at 6 pm Paris time.

See you there ! ^-^

English real life event - London. Guests: well, me :) (Community Liaison, Nevrax), Soulsnatcher (SGM, Jolt)
German real life event - Frankfurt. Guests: Ravna (Head of Event Management, Nevrax), Lawrence (Community Manager, Jolt)
French real life event - Paris. Guests: Jessica Mulligan (Executive Producer, Nevrax), Vince (Head of Customer Support, Nevrax), Choule (Community Manager/GM, Jolt), Colorman (GM, Jolt)

June 8, 2005.
In Development : Named Creatures Respawn Delay & Bugfix by Xavier Antoviaque
Following up on various comments we have read from you about the new respawn delay of named creatures, we have discussed the topic internally, and we came up with a solution we want to discuss with you. I have thus updated the In Development section accordingly, and added a small bugfix item.

Feel free to share your thoughts with us!

June 7, 2005.
Production : In Development Section Updated by Xavier Antoviaque
We have just updated the 'In Development' section of the website with a (small) new bugfix item.

June 7, 2005.
ATS : Advanced Test Server reopened by Xavier Antoviaque
Just a quick note to let you know that we have reopened the Advanced Test Server to ATS testers. As mentioned three weeks ago, we have deactivated the outposts on the ATS (currently, the ATS is used to test a new EAX sound DLL) to let us have the time to code some changes, now that our first series of tests are over.

I will let you know when we will reactivate the outposts feature; ATS testers will then have plenty of time to play it -err, 'test it' :)- and provide us with feedback.

In the meantime, if you want to join the ATS test team, the ATS application form is for you ! :-)

June 7, 2005.
Letter : Executive Producer's Letter to the Players by Jessica Mulligan
Hello and welcome to this inaugural weekly letter. My purpose here will be to discuss the nuts and bolts of what we are doing here: what we're currently working on, what issues we're running up against in development and just in general the state of game development. The objective is to give you a clear idea of what we're doing, so you know we're actually working, not just hanging out, :D. So let's get started:

June 6, 2005.
Production : Currently in development by Xavier Antoviaque
Following up on Jessica Mulligan's article on the four new player information sections, we have started to compile the In development section, to give you a practical example of this section. Do not hesitate to add comments about it in Jessica's feedback thread, we will monitor it to see if it fits your needs.

You can also start to use the feedback threads we have opened for each of the items of the 'In development' section, and give us your comments and concerns about the upcoming changes

2nd Newsletter

June 16, 2005.

Letter : Executive Producer's Letter by Jessica Mulligan

OK, time for a quick update:

Now that we've finished reorganizing the time, we've started work on three critical content components for the short term, namely:

June 16, 2005.

Letter : Creative Director's Letter : The future of MMORPGs by David Cohen Corval

I was recently asked what made me want to develop an MMORPG, which is probably the toughest type of game there is to make. Really, the reason I wanted to work in this space has much to do with the future, not just of gaming, but of learning about who we are as individuals and as a society.

June 16, 2005.

IRL : Report letter 2/3 - The German IRL by Lawrence

Hi folks!

Today, we'll be reviewing the next one of three Saga Of Ryzom real-life player gatherings, which all took place in major cities across Europe this weekend.

We'll be taking a close look at the event itself, the people who attended it (be prepared for some shocking footage here), as well as the location we chose for the meeting.

June 15, 2005.

Q&A : Answers to Questions from the Boards - 2005-06-15 by Xavier Antoviaque

It has been a month since my last Q&A! Now that the E3 and reorganization heat is cooling down, it's time to look over some of the questions you asked on the boards in the meantime. There are more questions than usual, and you'll even find some outposts questions answered.

Please also note that my Glimpse of Production articles are no more: they have been advantageously replaced by both the Player Information Sections as well as David and Jessica's weekly letters. We hope you appreciate the changes. ^-^

June 15, 2005.

IRL : Report letter 1/3 - The French IRL by Choule

I do not know where to start - the list is so long! About 120 players of the French Ryzom community met at the "Flam's Colisée" restaurant in Paris to share a moment full of joy and emotions. :)

The event started at 8-8:30 pm. The players were gathering in the Colisée Str., near the Champs-Elysées, in front of the Flam's. The doors opened at 8:15 pm and then a long march of players into the restaurant followed.

3rd Newsletter

June 27, 2005.
Forums : Newcomer Welcome Board by Xavier Antoviaque
Following-up on a suggestion made by some of you on the forums, we have just created a new forum for each community, the Newcomer Welcome Board, where new players will be able to post when they need some help. To be sure newcomers find their way to this forum, we are also modifying the email sent to new subscribers (click on 'Read more...' to read the paragraph we have added on the top of that email).

If you want to help here, have a look from time to time to the Newcomer Welcome Board; contributions can range from answering with a small tip, to helping them directly in-game (or even accepting them to your guild ^-^). Even something small and insignificant to you can mean a lot to a newcomer.

Thanks to those of you who will help here!

June 24, 2005.
Letter : Executive Producer Letter #4 by Jessica Mulligan
This past week has been pretty intense for us here in Development. Lots going on internally, but a couple items of special interest to players.

June 24, 2005.
Production : Faction PvP enters testing phase by Xavier Antoviaque
A set of features and related changes to be used for faction PvP have just entered the testing phase. Once patched, the event team will be able to activate faction PvP zones where Karavan and Kami defenders will fight each others.

You can get the list of changes, along with the other items we have put in test, in the Now In Test section of the website.

June 24, 2005.
Letter : Answering comments from the boards (CDL #3) by David Cohen Corval
Hello everyone,

Well I didn't notice any particular question regarding my latest letter.

Some people tend to think it is interesting to look at the MMORPG genre with some perspectives, others don't seem to understand or care at all, and others still are just angry about this letter because the only thing they want to hear about is pure Ryzom stuff.

June 23, 2005.
Production : Player Information Section Updated! by Xavier Antoviaque
We have just updated the Player Information Section to show the current queue of fixes and features currently being tested in-house. These items are part of the now ending Spring Clean phase, where our devoted Bugbusters made heavy use of their Proton Packs to squash bugs and make your in-game life easier.

The items have been added to the Now In Test section; this section was previously called "In The Next Patch": we renamed it since the new name better describes the status of these items; if one of them doesn't pass the tests, we won't include it in the next patch.

June 22, 2005.
Technical : Issues by Xavier Antoviaque
The website was partially inaccessible today, from 3 am to 11:30 am (GMT+2); the database used to store news items and forums posts went through an error and stopped, to let us investigate the issue. We ran sanity checks and resumed the database operations once we were confident nothing had been harmed. Everything is now up and running again!

As a side note, here is an update on Sunday's issues; there was a failure on a core component of the network connecting the Ryzom servers to the rest of the Internet, resulting in unavailability of the game, web and chat servers for short lapses of time. The issue has been solved in the early hours of Monday morning by replacing the defective hardware.

June 21, 2005.
Ring : R2 - An Introduction by Xavier Antoviaque
Daniel Miller, Nevrax's Technical Director and the Producer of the Ryzom Ring (aka R2), wrote an introductory article on the upcoming extension. It gathers the information we have released in various places since the R2 announcement at E3, to give everyone a the same knowledge before starting to address more specific aspects of the project in the next articles.

You will find the article on the Ryzom Ring website, refactored today to give space to the R2 team's articles.

June 20, 2005.
IRL : Report letter 3/3 - The English IRL by Soulsnatcher
The mists swirled through the streets of old London town as terrifying dark figures made their way towards The Old Star near Buckingham Palace. It was either the return of Jack the Ripper or the long awaited London version of the real life meeting of Ryzom players from the English speaking shard.