Like a cat with nine lives, Ryzom announces this science-fiction MMORPG is making another comeback, following another brush with receivership (story) that's had the game offline for some time now. They've been running in an invitation-only mode for a while, and are now inviting anyone who has ever had a Ryzom account (even a trial account) to check things out as they prepare for a full re-launch. Here's word:

In order to keep you informed on what is going on with the new Ryzom, we wanted first to tell you that we are all really very happy and very proud to work, and for some of us work again, on the magical world of Ryzom. We wanted also to sincerely apologize for not having been able to talk to you earlier. Unfortunately we had a lot of work to do to revive our fabulous planet; tonnes of terabytes of blood, sweat and tears... hard drives to recover, check, and deal with... countless Kami, Karavan, Kitins, and friends to find and put back in place, all in order to reawaken Ryzom and to prepare it for your next visit.

But now we are all very pleased to share with you our joy that the hardest part is behind us.

Yes, our servers have already been revived in a testing phase for several weeks now, and with the help of our great CSR team, we have worked hard to repair Ryzom to its former glory. We mowed lawns, trimmed hedges, pulled weeds, and fed the Yubos which were feeling very hungry and abandoned.

These past weeks we also re-opened the servers to our former Ryzom subscribers to thank them all for their patience with a totally free VIP access and as we are very happy with how this VIP phase progressed we have now decided to expand the access to our servers to everybody who already had an active account, free trial included. Yes, even if you previously only had a free trial you can now once more log into Ryzom for free with all your stored characters! The only restrictions still applied to the free trial accounts will be the level cap and the geographical limitation to the starter island "Ruins of Silan", but these restrictions will not last long either! We will keep you posted on all of this when the time comes.

ATTENTION for those of you waiting to step onto Atys for the first time, please don't forget that we are still in a re-launch and testing phase. This means that Ryzom is still closed to newcomers as the creation of new accounts is not yet permitted. If you don't already have an active Ryzom account you won't be able to play Ryzom yet.

Don't worry though, we plan to reopen the account activation pages shortly; once again, we will let you know as soon as it happens.

Thank you for your loyalty and above all for your patience. The new Ryzom team bids you a very warm welcome and is looking forward to seeing you again in our world...