[NECROPOST][NECROMMOG]Uru: The Trainwreck Beyond Myst

[pxib]

Honestly, I cannot think what didn't  go wrong. The content was exhausted before people started playing the online game, no zone could handle more than twelve simultaneous players,  the avatars were ugly and identical, and... worst of all... it was about the least likely franchise in history to make the MMOG leap, but it tried anyway. The fans were so eager and so unprepared that they made beautiful games (and pseudo-religions) out of traffic cones and invisible walls. The developers were so eager and so unprepared that they showed up in-person to chat IN-CHARACTER about how it wasn't a game at all BUT A GIANT CAVERN UNDERNEATH NEW-MEXICO. Every tiny,  precious thing done right was surrounded on all sides by great looming broken dreams.

So they pulled the plug after the game launched, but before they started charging a monthly fee... then they provided software for hosting your own servers... and now, rumor has it, they're developing tools whereby the thriving fanbase can produce worlds of their own. It was never massively anything, but somehow after a truly unprecedented failure it's still around. Then again, the players were such fanboys that they had long, involved debates about the meaning of the flickering of certain lamps.

(In a perfect world this post would be brimming with inset hyperlinks, but I honstly don't care enough anymore to hunt the stuff down.)

Anybody else part of this?

[Numtini]

I was in the first wave of beta or was it alpha for Uru. I told them right off the online game was going to flop. What I took away from the game was that the Uru/Myst fanboys outdo any fanboys that I've ever seen for any game. They will sit around in a single room for hours with nothing to do and nowhere to go just to say they did.

They're really kind of pathetic.

[HaemishM]

They are fanbois around a game that is nothing more than a pixel-click-and-peck game. There is less interactivity in the Myst series than the Wish alpha. Of course they've built a religion around the game. After all, what else would they have?

[Hoax]

This really sounds like something that could teach us a great deal about religion.  Makes me sort of wish I was some kind of sociologist/theologian hybrid with lots of time on my hands and people paying me to write "academic papers".

[WayAbvPar]

They are fanbois around a game that is nothing more than a pixel-click-and-peck game. There is less interactivity in the Myst series than the Wish alpha. Of course they've built a religion around the game. After all, what else would they have?

They left out the goat wrangling??

[Jobu]

The technology in Uru was very nice, as I recall. It's a shame they wasted a very nice engine and a very solid art team to make an insanely confusing, worthless online design. That game dressed up in standard Myst gameplay would have been pretty sweet. That Atrus guy who runs the company just lost his mind and thought adding "Online" to the genre in any form at all would mean instant money.

[HaemishM]

That Atrus guy who runs the company just lost his mind and thought adding "Online" to the genre in any form at all would mean instant money.

George Lucas owns Myst? 

[Riggswolfe]

To resurrect this dead topic, it looks like Uru is back:

http://pc.ign.com/articles/747/747605p1.html

[Signe]

It's actually been back for some time.  It's in closed beta at the moment.  Again.   

[Numtini]

I wonder if it's the same beta because all those screenshots are things i saw in the first iteration of their first beta.

The interview is painful to read. I don't think they've learned anything.

[Cheddar]

I keep getting invites to their beta.  Wierdos.

[pxib]

DECEMBER 20th LAUNCH

So let me steal the chronology from an unofficial new user guide created because the documentation was so completely obtuse that many people couldn't figure out how to the interface worked:

* November 2003: Uru: Ages Beyond Myst is released. This is a single-player game which covers what we now call "the Journey". (See "What is the Journey?") This off-line game is also called "Uru Prime". The software includes a client for the on-line Uru.
* November 2003: Players are invited, in small groups, into the "Uru Prologue". This is a free on-line game which includes the Journey Ages, the Neighborhood, and small parts of the City. Prologue is considered by many players to be an open beta-test phase, although it is not officially labelled that.
* December 2003: More players are invited into Prologue. More areas of the City are opened. Dramatic events occur, involving both players and DRC personnel (handled by Cyan actors).
* January 2004: A whole lot more players are invited into Prologue.
* Feb 4, 2004: Cyan announces that Uru Live has been cancelled. Prologue will be shut down (on the 9th) and the unreleased Uru material will be released as single-player games.
* March 2004: Uru: To D'ni is released. This is a single-player expansion to Uru Prime. It includes the City and Neighborhood areas (which had already been seen in Prologue), and a D'ni construct called the Great Zero.
* July 2004: Uru: The Path of the Shell is released. This is a single-player expansion to Uru Prime. It includes two brand-new Ages -- Ahnonay and Er'cana -- and some associated material. (There is also a combined package, called Uru: Complete Chronicles, which includes all the single-player Uru material.)
* August 2004: Cyan releases the Uru server binaries. This allows fans to run their own Uru servers -- no support and no new material, but it keeps interest alive. This shared on-line service is called Untìl Uru.
* October 2004: Myst 4: Revelation. (This game was designed by Ubisoft, not by Cyan.)
* September 2005: Myst 5: End of Ages. This uses a version of the single-player Uru engine.
* September 2005: As soon as Myst 5 is out the door, Cyan ceases operation and lays off all of its staff. Three weeks later, they resurrect themselves and hire many people back. Everybody says, what the heck? (It is now clear that Cyan managed to make a post-last-minute deal with Gametap to revive Uru Live.)
* Feb 14, 2006: Cyan opens D'mala, a "shard" (server) in the shared Untìl Uru network. (Does this make D'mala an officially unofficial Uru service, or the other way around?)
* May 16, 2006: Cyan announces that Uru Live has been resurrected, and will released through Gametap in winter of 2006.
* November 29, 2006: Cyan invites players into the "Uru Live Preview".
* December 12, 2006: Cyan opens the Preview to all Gametap subscribers.
* December 20, 2006: Cyan begins canonical storyline events (DRC personnel appearing in-character in the Preview)

If you check out that official site, it looks like they're simply re-releasing the original game. The trailer available is composed entirely of footage from previous trailers with new narration. How this project exists and how Cyan employees continue to be paid is quite beyond me.

(edit: heavily accented the chronology)

[stray]

How this project exists and how Cyan employees continue to be paid is quite beyond me.

The goodwill of a thousand philanthropic housewives.

I don't have my original game disc anymore (I actually gave it to housewife I knew), but I'm kind of interested in giving it a try again. Puzzles are more game-y than foozle whacking, and despite it's dated engine, it's one of the better looking mmo's to date.

[wysiwyg]

It comes down to values. For the most part, Myst fans are very "smart", and they know exactly what the Myst MMO is and isn't, but all the same they think it's basically the perfect MMO (or rather, that it's clearly an MMO which will be that). Comparably to those who cherish the grind in more "traditional" MMOs, they just enjoy talking to one another, just being there, and really get into the story. Their affinity for the MMO isn't rational, they're in love, and since they take pride in their values (translates to: elitism), they become "rabid" (don't understand and dismiss anyone who isn't also in love). That and the way they deify the company... I could discuss more details, but suffice to say there's no adequate argument against love, lol.

There's no much difference between the new Uru and the old beta, certainly. While in the old there were Cyan's actors and there were fans who took it upon themselves to role-play, the new storyline starts off with a system where players vote on representatives who confer with the actors on a schedule. Watson, a major figure at Cyan, posted at http://drcsite.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=403 a while back to broadly discuss the possibility player involvement. Rand Miller, President of Cyan, has said that they plan to allow players to create their own worlds (not with fan tools as previously, but with Cyan's tools as part of the canon). There was a contest for players to create an in-game t-shirt's design. And since Myst V was set after Uru Live and revealed a lot of what was a mystery then, there's definitely a need to "RP" for some aspects of Live's plot to have suspense.

[Sky]

[Venkman]

Hehe, wysiwyg, that sounds like Second Life residents circa two years ago. :)

[pxib]

Hehe, wysiwyg, that sounds like Second Life residents circa two years ago. :)

...and like Second Life, anything thrown together by "the creators of Myst, one of the world's most popular computer games" can be assured ample press coverage.

[Venkman]

Wouldn't that reference be "The Sims" to "The Sims Online", with all of the attached assumptions for success? :)

[raydeen]

I beta'd it way back when and liked it right up until the point where I had to do running and jumping. Super Tomb Raider Mario Myst just didn't do it for me. The soundtrack and atmosphere was nice though. Peter Gabriel did the music didin't he?

[Signe]

I don't know why, but every time I see a Raydeen post, I get Jolene sung by the Sisters of Mercy stuck in my head with the name changed to Raydeen.  It's okay, though.  I like it. 

[stray]

I beta'd it way back when and liked it right up until the point where I had to do running and jumping. Super Tomb Raider Mario Myst just didn't do it for me. The soundtrack and atmosphere was nice though. Peter Gabriel did the music didin't he?

He did one song, I think.

Loved the jumping/platformer/cliff hanging stuff. That other mmo's don't have that saddens me to no end. Damn RPG's.