http://forums.ryzom.com/forum/showthread.php?t=31491

Apparently, the hype that surrounded the buyout wasn't enough to garner any more interest in the game, so it's going bankrupt again.

This is unfortunate.  The game is one of the most unique out there, with a lot of great ideas, and I hope it finds a new home somehow.

The upshot is, it's free for the remainder of it's lifetime, they even removed the level cap from the free mode, so if enough people check it out, maybe it'll make it more appealing to a potential buyer.

I'd really rather see an actual company get ahold of it, because the open source movement is just too anarchic to run something like an MMO.  At best we'll get something like the mess of mediocre free shards for UO.

Used to play it, loved it. Things have been downhill all the way since Patch One and the merge with the US server though.

The adventure creation software's great, if limited.

It needs someone who understands it's a niche product to make it work.

I've heard of this, what's it like? Is it worth giving a try as it's free (how ironic)? Right now Guild Wars is pissing me off like a motherfucker.

Things that are/were bitchin' about Ryzom:

1)  The character system.  There are no classes.  There are instead four different skill trees, broken into four broad categories: Fight, Magic, Harvest, and Craft.  Each one further breaks down into sub-specializations.  Levelling in a specific skill on the tree simply requires taking the appropriate action, so to boost your Melee Fight, you would stab things, to boost your Magic, you throw spells at things.  It's entirely up to you how you specialize, and you can have skill in all of them if you desire, though IIRC, there's a total cap on how many ranks you can have in each of the four categories in total, but it is fairly generous.  

2) The skill/ability system.  There are no real pre-defined spells or abilities in the game.  Instead, it's built off an effects-based sort of system that allows you to design your own spells and abilities for your character, using "stanzas" that serve as the individual components of the spell's effects.  Each one of these will have a net cost, plus or minus, that must be balanced so that the final result is zero.  There are example abilities that you can buy from the trainers, and if you're not super interested you could always just use those, but for maximum efficiency, really what you're doing with most of the pre-built abilities is buying a package of new stanzas.

3)  The Ring.  It's an instanced client for user-created modules and adventures built into the Ryzom game, accessable from terminals inside the game.  It's sort of like the NWN module builder and DM client rolled into one, but far, far, easier to learn.  I was able to be up and running and set up a simple rescue quest within a pretty short time, and with no documentation.  It's all very intuitive, and you can test everything on the fly because it's all still running inside the game engine.  Created modules can be designed to run entirely standalone, or you can run them like a DM.  It's probably the best implementation of this sort of feature I've seen in a CRPG anywhere.

4)  The setting.  It's a very strange and wonderful sci-fantasy setting, with clashes between the mystical and the technological, a couple mysterious alien invasions, and the ecology of the game actually impacts player decisions even, as over harvesting can anger the Kami, the mystical protectors of nature.  And it's all presented with a gorgeous and uniquely alien art style that simply must be seen.

5) The look.  The game is damn pretty.  Really damn pretty.  On the gearhead level, it's not super fancy, but the art direction as mentioned about is stunning.  Everything just looks damn gorgeous, and I've enjoyed simply wandering around to see the sights.

6) Dynamic mobs.  The animals are actually designed to behave like real animals.  Foraging rodent-like Yubos sniff about the ground, and will wander up to the player curiously.  Bovine-like Bodocs wander the fields in herds.  Ragus hunt in packs, with a lead scout that goes out to find kills, often bringing the rest of the pack behind him in a sudden ambush.  The mobs are intelligent, and behave in an actual interesting fashion, as opposed to simply wandering preset paths back and forth until something walks into it's aggro range.

7) Events.  Ryzom is famous for these.  In fact, when the game first started, it actually took some flack for "lack of content", because the designers had focused so much on the big roleplaying events.  These used to be pretty regular things, but things have apparently been very quiet for a while now.

Roleplaying.  Really, on a mechanical level, between the Ring and the tabletop-esque character and skill systems, the game is probably the most TRPG-esque game I've ever played, and it matches that with a pretty strong focus on roleplaying within the game community.  

In theory, right now, you can create a free account and play on the newbie island until the servers finally go down, though the servers seem to be on the fritz ever since they announced it was going into recievership.  

Here's hoping someone picks it up and keeps it going, but does so on a much smaller scale, so they can actually keep from going broke this time.  It just doesn't have a particularly huge playerbase, and I think Gameforge expected to be able to take it over and the hype from the buyout would give them a bigger audience.

The reviews it got probably did a lot towards killing the game.

Which is too bad.  You never get a second chance to make a first impression, and all that.  And it sounds like it was one of those games that had a lot of potential, but got rushed out the door before it was ready.