I said earlier that I followed SoR until recently, but I didn't know anything about its new owners.  So I just got bored and did about two minutes of research.  Don't ask me for a lot of detail.  I could give you a lot more if I dug around, but I won't.  I'm almost entirely certain what I will find.  Here's what I can tell you.

Whoever now owns your game does not want to be found, and there's a pretty good reason for this.  Almost all of the names I have pulled up in relation to this company are either fleshed-out dummy identities which trace back to nobody or outright fakes.

The game of Saga of Ryzom was sold rather cheap, probably for about 500k-600k USD, including all secondary costs.  This broadly expands the potential base of who could now hold it.  In fact, it throws it rather squarely into a certain market.

Saga of Ryzom is apparently now owned by one Spiderweb International.

This is nothing more than a limited-liability holding company based in London.

The director of the company is listed as Benoit Faure.  There are a few noteworthy Benoit Faures in the European tech industry, and this name might have been chosen for that reason as a means of obfuscation.  If there is an actual Benoit Faure involved here, the _most likely_ Benoit Faure is the former president of an Italian company called C.T.O.  This company supposedly specialized in bringing online games to Italy, particularly MMORPG's.  It went bankrupt rather quickly after that, even after securing very lucrative localization deals.  DAoC's collapse in Europe was partially due to the actions of this company.  According to himself, this Benoit Faure is now supposedly selling yachts.  There is a potential significance to that which I won't go into.  His shift to the "yacht" business coincided with certain "movements" by the man below.

Spiderweb International now has a single shareholder, who holds one share valued at 1GBP, one Sean Lee Hogan.  This is the minimum requirement for LLC's, as specified by certain British laws designed to counter exactly what this company is.  As you can see, the laws aren't working very well.  To begin with, there is no Sean Lee Hogan.  However, that name does mean something.  Somebody earlier uncovered a few details about "Mister Hogan".  He left out the important parts, probably because he didn't find them.

The only thing I can't really figure out is why they want your game.  This is not exactly part of their usual business portfolio.  Mines.  "Cruises."  Those make sense.  But the return on a MMORPG is not exactly as guaranteed as their usual pursuits.

Edit: Actually, what confuses me more than anything is who is running the game.  Which actually might answer my above question.  Pretty much everybody who has touched SoR since Ryzom has used rather grey financial tricks to limit their exposure as much as possible.  The above parties could simply be involved as financiers or as a third-party for a much larger entity to work through.

I'm sorry, but this isn't any news. ;  ; Thanks for looking it up though.

I want a formal introduction by the new owners by the end of the month, SpiderWeb or no SpiderWeb. Otherwise I'm not sure I can fork over money with good conscience. It was exciting to see the servers come back, it's nice to see them recruit volunteers. However their continued silence on who they are does nothing to inspire much confidence at this point.

Hate to be doom and gloomy all of a sudden, but come on.

Originally posted by Cynthe

I'm sorry, but this isn't any news. ;  ; Thanks for looking it up though.

I want a formal introduction by the new owners by the end of the month, SpiderWeb or no SpiderWeb. Otherwise I'm not sure I can fork over money with good conscience. It was exciting to see the servers come back, it's nice to see them recruit volunteers. However their continued silence on who they are does nothing to inspire much confidence at this point.

Hate to be doom and gloomy all of a sudden, but come on.

Their continued silence?  You mean it's not clear as to you who you're dealing with?

I'm really torn here, to be honest.  To some people, it will be glaringly obvious.  For everybody else, I know I'll get flamed for saying it, which is why I've been vague thus far.  Y'know what, though.  I'm going to go ahead and say a little bit, anyway.

I would give serious thought to waiting a few months before resubbing.  Actually, if it were really me, I'd head for the exits and not look back, but you guys are too dedicated to this game to do that.  At the very least, just wait a month from today, please.  Best case scenario, the involvement will turn out to be relatively benign, and you can continue to enjoy your time on Atys.

That's about all I'm going to say.  Anyway, I wish good luck to all of you.  This really was a unique game.

Oh I get what you're trying to say, but yes I'm holding on that there's another reason for all this nonsense.. However I won't resub until I know for sure, you can count on that.

EDIT: No it's not clear who's running the show and even though you seem to have speculations of the shifty nature, you don't know either, also you said 'pretty much everyone who's touched Ryzom'.... Nevrax was an honest to goodness game company, Gameforge is the only somewhat shady character there is, other what we have now...

O.o

to paraphrase some old friends, all will become clear soom(tm) i'm sure

actually all signs point to 'Nevrax', ofc this corp entity no longer exists, but they were a well funded dev studio back in the day. Lets call them now Nevrax II shall we, there are certainly some old devs involved and its not a giant leap of faith to assume some of their bank rollers are still here.

Maybe the legal situation isnt fully resolved and this is responsible for the lack of information. But tbh i am a little confused about what all the fuss is about. We currently have a game whose servers have opened to old players, for free. there is no commerical ryzom today, there wasnt yesterday. There wont be tomorrow.  No one is trying to scam anyone, money is not changing hands, contracts are not being signed.

There are some servers where a very limited number of people have access to. give it some time, just because spiderweb arent answering these insistent questions about who they are is not a good reason for the rampant speculation and pre-emptive assination of them. 'course this is the net so nothing i or anyone else can say will stop it :p

And if it wasn't for the recent announcement asking for volunteers (translators?) I would whole heartedly agree with you Rushin. Seems like a preemptive thing to do without a single introduction. I don't care what the reason is, I don't go asking for people's help without telling them my name and giving them a phone number...?!

I really hope it gets cleared up fairly soon.

Originally posted by Kurush

To begin with, there is no Sean Lee Hogan.  However, that name does mean something.  Somebody earlier uncovered a few details about "Mister Hogan".  He left out the important parts, probably because he didn't find them.

I'm genuinely curious about who these people are - but I don't understand what you've said here.

There is no Sean Lee Hogan? And you've said he left out the important parts about Sean - but you haven't said anything at all about him yourself. If you actually found something I didn't, why not share it?

I'm all for a good conspiracy theory - but they're generally more juicy if they're you know, based on actual facts.

It's fairly obvious that Spiderweb International is a shell company. No-one who's looked at the facts has tried to dispute that. But as an elaborate scheme to rip off players?? It seems more likely that they're previous owners who have re-acquired the company debt-free.

The only crystal clear sign of dodginess I could find attached to Sean Lee Hogan was in relation to his directorship of a mining company. Not long before selling up, they released a report with very promising forecasts of how much gold they could extract from their sites. They were acquired and then the new owners discovered there wasn't anywhere near as much gold as that report had indicated.

If that was a deliberate con job... and it does look suspicious... don't you think ripping off mmo subscribers would be selling his talents short?

How would they even go about ripping off players? You subscribe via credit card and have a fairly lengthy period to dispute questionable charges to a card.

I'll finish off with this little funny found on the official forums.

Try out this tongue-twister: Sean sells shell corporations by the seashore in Cyprus.

i played the trial about 2 years for a few days.

I went to the site, forgot my password, got en email with a new password, tried to login on the main site, said "invalid account"

Will i be eligible to play this week ? 

Wow, this thread has all the intrigue and mystery of a moderately B class movie! Staring Eric Roberts!
Will be semi-exciting to see how it all pans out.

And if the original poster would be kind enough to expand on all the "I have a feeling, but- well never mind" statements, that'd help to quell the half-baked suspense floating around this thread!

Spiderweb International... the very Hollywood sounding names Benoit Faure and Sean Lee Hogan... links to yachts and mines (caves..?).
Perhaps Ryzom has been bought out by a Spiderman and Batman conglomerate!

Maybe this shell company understands the hype associated to Ryzom, the loyalty of its fans, and the willingness of 5 million bored MMO players to jump ship to try something out?
1 million bored MMOers actually do try it out.. prepared to try the game for a month (assuming no free 30 days from the store bought box).. 10 Euros a month...
Hell, they could make 10 million dooollars in a month and then just disappear to the Mediterranean, not looking back!!

Ok so I'm bored and it's a slow news day.
And I just realised I'd have to pay $26 a month to resub to EQ2 in the meantime ($26!!! Can you believe that??), so am in a mmo-devs-hater mood at the moment . No MMO is worth $26 a month, especially EQ2.

But on a positive note, who really cares if all they do is open the servers as is and leave them as is (no massive development)?
It'd mean we get to play Ryzom again!
And it'd be much better than not getting to play it ever again instead!

God I hope it's Spiderman.

Originally posted by SpungeX

i played the trial about 2 years for a few days.

I went to the site, forgot my password, got en email with a new password, tried to login on the main site, said "invalid account"

Will i be eligible to play this week ? 

I think you've posted this in the wrong thread but... I don't get "invalid account" when I login on the main site. My full account details come up. I did, subscribe though, so find out what recent free-trial'ers get when they login.

Originally posted by green13

Originally posted by SpungeX

i played the trial about 2 years for a few days.

I went to the site, forgot my password, got en email with a new password, tried to login on the main site, said "invalid account"

Will i be eligible to play this week ? 

 

I think you've posted this in the wrong thread but... I don't get "invalid account" when I login on the main site. My full account details come up. I did, subscribe though, so find out what recent free-trial'ers get when they login.

Well I assume you mean login to the forums because the account page isnt up on the site yet?

On the forums I can login with my trial account and not post. What i can also confirm is I can currently play through at least the trial content of the game ;) Im not expecting to get any further until they open it up to all account types completely though.

Originally posted by Arremus

Wow, this thread has all the intrigue and mystery of a moderately B class movie! Staring Eric Roberts!
Will be semi-exciting to see how it all pans out.

No-one's even mentioned yet in this thread the tenuous link that can be made between Mister Hogan and the KGB! :P

Anyhoo, just to throw in a dash more intrigue, look at this reply from staff on the official forums in a thread titled So, is Nevrax back?

Boroshi avoids directly answering the question re the Nevrax connection, but makes a point of disqualifying an argument against said connection AND he winks!

AHA!!!!! :P

Quote:

Originally Posted by boroshi The game is already in French and German

 

Originally posted by kikinchaz

Well I assume you mean login to the forums because the account page isnt up on the site yet?

He said login from the 'main site' so I assumed he meant he clicked on the Login link from the main site.

When old Nevrax was in business, all the news from the company hit the French community first, then got translated after a while to English and German forums. Now English forums are privileged with first posts.

Same happened already with other posts concerning Ryzoms recent return, although in those cases the postings hit German and French forums soon after. Of course one can argue that most of the people able to translate the game to different languages are on the English server, and thus the announcement was only posted in there. Anyway the priority of communication seem to have shifted which IMHO means that the helm is held by someone other than ex-nevrax.

On the original post though, I wouldn't mind getting hit with the cluebat, unless the OP meant the Hogan-KGB connection...

I am intrigued too as a potential subscriber!

I think theres enough interest for Jon Wood to put down his microphone and put on his tweed hat and smoke a pipe while investigating this!

This needs a professional! Please Jon Wood help us!

.... to be continued.... next week, prime time.

Lawl... You guys are great. ^_^

Yes Prime time I really cannot wait..

Originally posted by Gilgameesh

.... to be continued.... next week, prime time.

 

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