As happens, this post started out as a comment. In this case, it was over on Sanya’s blog, in response to her post about the Jade Raymond … thing.

What drove me over the edge into commenting was this:

Game “journalists” made this mess. I expect the real journalists to clean it up. If I have to be a credit to my gender against my will and principles, surely some of you nice boys out there can take one for the team. Stop painting her as a victim, because that marginalizes her even more than the original “articles” did. Also, through all the drama, anyone who actually listened to HER noticed she was not even remotely a “poor me” kind of lady. She’s tough and funny in the few interviews I’ve seen. So let’s call a do over. Let’s see some interviews with this producer that never once mention her femininity in any respect save the usage of the feminine pronoun, let’s police the comment threads a little more stringently, and let’s vow to do better this time.

My response is below. It’s behind a cut because it is full of swearing. If you have sensitive eyes, don’t continue on. If you’ve met me in person, and I went off on a full-blown rant, this will sound somewhat familiar. You’ve been warned.

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Well, it looks like the possibility of a truly free Ryzom just got about $60,000 more likely:

Boston, December 13th 2006 - Free Software Foundation announces that it will officially support the Free Ryzom campaign (www.ryzom.org) with a pledge of $60,000.

The Free Ryzom campaign was established to purchase the online game and universe known as Ryzom, property of the now bankrupt Nevrax company, and release the entire game as free software … The Free Ryzom campaign represents a unique opportunity for the free software movement and the emerging free gaming field. A fully free MMORPG (massively multiplayer online roleplaying game) engine and client/server architecture would allow the development of a myriad of universes, each one evolving its own philosophy and unique content - but sharing in general technical improvements. If successful, this campaign would allow any user to create their own universe and produce their own content based on the Ryzom/Nevrax architecture.

When something falls into your lap like The Free Ryzom Campaign, you don’t throw it out like the drunk it is. Instead, you buy it another drink and hope it starts making sense sometime soon.

I gave it the old college try over at GameSetWatch today, and (to my eyes) kind of ended up talking around myself in circles. Ahh well. I always have next week to do better.

“In the long term, this could mean the beginning of a game that is truly dynamic. With the Ryzom Ring toolset available to everyone, players and interested third parties could create zones and scenarios, which could then be integrated into the actual game by Ryzom’s keepers. Given the lack of a financial stake in the game, the game’s minders could execute truly game-shaking events, wiping out cities and changing the face of the game; in-game events retail games could never dream of attempting might be your average Saturday night in an open source Ryzom.”

Damion has a few words of commentary about the player-created content that is being introduced to Horizons.

Using a public copy of the game database, players and writers alike can use existing characters, enemies, and items to add or change their own quests. Tulga’s staff will evaluate these quests for quality before bringing the customized quests into the live game. These customized fan quests should certainly add a homespun dungeonmaster feel to the thousands of Tulga-crafted quests already in the game.

There’s no word on when this is going to be released, and Horizons has competition from the Ryzom Ring expansion Nevrax has planned for later this year. My inclination is that these are going to be interesting for those of us who like novelty in the genre, but it’s not going to do what the companies making the games are aiming for.

Both Ryzom and Horizons are (let’s face it) not blockbuster games. If the goal here is to to try and attract more players, I don’t have high hopes they’ll meet with success. On the other hand, if they’re aiming to differentiate themselves from WoW by going for a new and different niche, they may just have something interesting. Here’s hoping there will be trails available for the curious.