There were several factors in Ryzom's demises, none of which involved the payment model.
- Bad management. For a third of its lifetime, Ryzom was owned by Gameforge, who severely dropped the ball, doing almost nothing of any sort with the game. For the other two thirds, it was owned by Nevrax, who while better than Gameforge were also not good enough at managing and developing the game:
--- Poor communication and little evidence of listening.
--- Inadequate marketing. Advertisements aren't the only way to increase awareness of a game. They could've improved their performance in this area by simply notifying multiple MMO websites about every patch, announcement, etc. and doing interviews.
--- Development decisions that didn't correspond to the basic nature of the game and drove away sizeable portions of the community, while perfectly suitable and desirable mechanics/content was half-finished and left to rot for years.
--- The free trial island represents a game that is very different from the real game.
--- The Ryzom Ring, an extremely innovative expansion, was somewhat ruined by lacking some necessary features and being ridden with bugs.
- Debts and an oversized development/management team. Both of these problems were mandatorily carried over to Gameforge's tenure. They probably don't exist for the new owner, and that is a major reason why Ryzom has a chance to succeed this time.
- Read this for further explication:
http:*************/discussion2.cfm/post/1851160#1851160
Looking at the fact that it was P2P and concluding that it can only succeed F2P is like saying a marriage - between people who had little in common and no idea how to handle a relationship - failed because one of them wore shoes of Brand A and the other wore Brand B.