A final thought on marketing... It's the Ring.

[smorrey]

I feel that besides the tight-knit dedicated player base, what sets Ryzom apart from every other MMO is the promise and potential of the Ring.

If you added a mechanism, whereby the Ring was part of the official lore of the game (shard world or multiverse concept). And made Ring Scenarios (at least the masterless ones), persistent or available even when the creator was offline.

Then added the option for players to rate each scenario after they have run through them, then took the very best rated scenarios and made them a permanent part of the game. Imagine what could happen.

You could market Ryzom to the same modder community that exists around games like Unreal Tournament and Quake.

A creative person, would absolutely love to look at a scenario, a zone, a world, what have you and know that hundreds of people each day enjoy Ryzom a little more because of it.

It also means you could focus on the core and let the players fill in the details, adding content, quests and challenges for their fellow players.

In effect, add a few simple features to the Ring and market to those who are tired of killing the same monsters over and over again.

Just remember your old slogan circa 2006 "R2, power to the players!", and follow through with it.