I see everyone trying to create a new project, buy another game ... But it is not the original purpose of ryzom.org. Don't forget that the pledges are only aviable for Ryzom. And by the way, Ryzom is not yet lost. We can talk with Gameforge and negociate.

And also, something important, we are all here for ryzom. if we change the game we focus on, we may lose many people not interested.

And iIf it was to create a new game, I would rather spend it creating a game based on the Wheel of Time...

I think, before focusing on a new project, we should really try all we can to free Ryzom as we didn't lost it yet.

I offered to release Legendary Quest, a pen-and-paper RPG I created, under a Creative Commons license if the community felt that it would provide a good starting point.

We must develop a new game.

I tried making this a poll with no success.

You post seam a little naive concerning the artworks. Graphics and animations are our main issue. Making 3D models and animation need lot of time and expertise. We lack both of them. So it is possible that we chose a background that only need simple models and not a background where there are pegasus, medusa and griphon because we need to develop specialized and not trivial animation for each of them.

I do not say that we should not use Legendary Quest. I just want to say that it to early because we need to resolve some issue that can have serious effect on the background. So it is not possible for the moment to say anything about the using your work or not.

Requirements and Specs have not been in first draft stage and already its fragmenting into islands?

Anyone and everyone is welcome to join us.

A lot of this data can be used cross-wise between these projects(graphics, text, and code).

Are you sure you want use to join? Because you left the project one week ago without telling anything and now you ask us to do the same. There is something wrong here. I mean, you did not even post a message announcing the formation of your team.

Well, this is not the problem, we can work with other projects. The problem is that they just fork without giving good reason. This is bad and this do not encourage me to believe that they want to cooperate with other people.

1) Keep trying to negotiate with Gameforge to open up Ryzom
2) Re-obtain pledges to try and buy some other game that goes bankrupt.
3) Create a new game from scratch.

What we have here is a perfect example for why IRC/IM should never be used for decision making.

Reasons IRC/IM is BAAAAAAAAAD:

• People get left out of the loop. Not everyone keeps the same hours. Not everyone even "hangs out" with any instant messaging window. Some of the team will be present, some wont.
  
• There is no record. At some point, six months or a year down the road, you will want to go back through a discussion. Someone new to a team should be able to go through the important discussions that passed before they joined the team. You can't do any of this with a chat session.
  
• "We talked on IRC and..." is another way of saying "fuck you". It tells everyone who was not present in the IRC conversation that their input is irrelevant or unwelcome. That may not be what you intend to say, but you are saying it between the lines.

Chat has its place - scheduled meetings with someone designated to take minutes and post them for record. I actually have experience being on the - I guess "live team" is the proper word - of a community (NWN) world that ran well, had a loyal playerbase and went all to hell when one of the admins started making decisions on IM.

Honestly, I can't agree more about the conducting of major decisions on IRC/IM. It is a place where many are unable to go at all times. I work 12 hours a day two days on and two days off, and those days I work, all I really do is eat and sleep and maybe check my email, and that is about it. I myself would be miffed if a major decision was made in my absence without my knowledge beforehand on a project I was a member of.

I can certainly see your point. I would prefer to use forums and/or wiki's myself. The Aurora B SourceForge project has forums we can use, and I know that folks are checking out various wiki programs to see which would be best. So, we're getting there, and we really do want everyone's input. Hammering out how we are all going to communicate is of paramount importance in any project. I'm glad we're having this discussion, so we can fix these problems up front.

As far as I know, there haven't been any unalterable decisions made yet. I do know that OGRE is being very seriously considered as the graphics engine, though. I've also taken a first stab at a possible "world history" for the game world, but that hasn't been given the thumbs-up by anyone either. Everything is still very much up in the air.

I can certainly see your point. I would prefer to use forums and/or wiki's myself. The Aurora B SourceForge project has forums we can use, and I know that folks are checking out various wiki programs to see which would be best. So, we're getting there, and we really do want everyone's input. Hammering out how we are all going to communicate is of paramount importance in any project. I'm glad we're having this discussion, so we can fix these problems up front.

As far as I know, there haven't been any unalterable decisions made yet. I do know that OGRE is being very seriously considered as the graphics engine, though. I've also taken a first stab at a possible "world history" for the game world, but that hasn't been given the thumbs-up by anyone either. Everything is still very much up in the air.

Except that the forums for Aurora B are empty; not a single post as of the time I write this. (I was curious to see what, if any, overlap there was between the Aurora B discussions and everyone else) The wiki's don't exist yet and there is no mailing list defined either. You simply can't take everyones' opinions into account when the main medium of communication is chat. For that, you need an asynchronous form of communication.