After seeing the topic titled
PlaneShift Client (without some bugs and with movierecorder) moved and censored
"for review due to possible licensing issues", I decided to research the topic of PS license and the claim of it being an
"open source game" in detail.
As many of you know, I did not register here just to start some big argument but rather to make some good and thoughtful suggestions, many of which people liked and complimemted on. However, what I found out did not make PlaneShift and Atomic Blue Corporation look good at all. It looks like there are some major issues with PS license. For one thing, ABC calls PlaneShift an
"open source game", which evidently isn't true, based on a lot of solid evidence provided in places like
this and all over the internet. Why not be honest about it instead and call it
a free game with a hybrid license? After all,
only the engine is open source but that isn't the game.
Apparently, some people associated with ABC have also resorted to editing and later attempting to delete the Wikipedia's definition of what qualifies as an
open source game, after deleting a forum post here that pointed it out. Its original definition being that of
a game with an open source engine and open source content, such as OpenArena. PlaneShift's content isn't open source. The Crystal Space 3D engine the game uses has a license requirement to keep it open source, so, obviously, no credit goes to ABC for that part. Also, quite a few people from Blender communities don't think that PS deserves to be called an
"open source game". This is, obviously, a major reason why many potential developers don't want to join the project. A big reason for a very slow development instead of it simply being a
"hobby in spare time".
I've also found some other major issues with the game and the community treatment. Apparently, anyone questioning the license or the text parser quest system was usually ridiculed and insulted by both staff and "fanboys". Some developers and contributors have left because of that and because the team has refused to improve the quest system. For example, I found out that a poster named Xanacru, who has contributed some of the current PS icons (setup and updater), and also made a popular "Black UI" has left because the team did not want to try a better NPC dialog and quest system. Many other people have suggested a better system and in-game maps and mini-maps (including a little girl, who was insulted on the forum by some people with no brain), and of course now it's
suddenly a good thing but no apology was offered by either the staff or the regulars who tried to ridicule and insult people for suggesting it in the past. It looks like those people were right, after all.
Additionally, the game has been advertised as a competitor to commercial MMORPGs in the past but when that part is taken into account for the game's development cycle and quality in reviews, "fanboys" try to insult the reviewers by saying it's a "non-commercial project" as an excuse. Then there is an issue with spoilers and spoiler policy, while the main site is linking to a PS community, which openly posts spoilers. Yet, the link isn't removed from the site. Yet another issue is the game asking for donations on the main site and to specify which feature you'd like to see the most, as if the money influences its priority. At the same time, ABC claims "0 budget" for the game's development. Then there is an "Alpha" vs "Beta" issue that the team can't make up their minds about.
One site (SA) shows "Talad" saying that
"the project is the king!". This is completely wrong! The project is not the king, the customer or the playerbase is the king! Anything from 5-star restaurants to best game developers will tell you that. No customers/players, no game! And if you piss your playerbase off, the negative publicity will spread like a wildfire. No wonder there are so many bad reviews of the game on the net. You can't blame players for your failures. This is like blaming restaurant customers for its bad food when they complain.
Some of the staff often mentions
"pessimism" when people speak of near-empty servers, lack of activity, and overalll slow game development but there is also such term as
unwarranted optimism. This is where you cannot back up your words with actions in development of the game. In fact, when the "fanboys" are complacent, it's due to their inactions that the game is being damaged. Everything is A-OK, hunky-dory for them, so the game never improves.
Being a "free" game can only work as an excuse to a point. There is also another standard that people will hold you for, and that standard is MMORPG, something that you chose to make, and therefore have taken a certain responsibility that goes with it. You can't possibly hope to retain a playerbase with no active development, regular updates, and open communication with the community. All of this is expected in successful MMORPGs, free or not.
It seems that there's overall a big censorship going on at these forums, a group of complacent "regulars", and not enough respect given to the playerbase overall.
For all the reasons stated above, I don't want to be a part of this, so I'm leaving this game. And even if this post is censored here for some reason, you can't control it being posted on the more independent sites on the net.
