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Myst MMOG Details Announced
Ubi Soft and Cyan announced the title for their upcoming online game. Uru: Online Ages Beyond Myst , developed by Cyan Worlds, Inc., is slated for release late this year. From the press release, "Uru will take advantage of broadband to deliver a continually updated, immersive environment and storyline, with content that grows, changes and evolves constantly. It will also be the first persistent world to support real-time voice communication." Sounds like a different road than online games like The Sims Online and Star Wars Galaxies are taking, with the entertainment consisting in exploration and storyline rather than in player status and achievement.
Will this be multi platform from release (Myst was a Mac game, the last version was a joint PC/Mac CD) or will it be like NWN?
You may think me a tired, old, cynic. I'd have to disagree about the tired bit.
This isn't just a remake of MYST -- but a whole new game. This uses a real-time 3D engine to generate the graphics.
Sounds like the closest thing yet to an actual online RPG, and it's not even being called a MMORPG, which things like EverQrack certainly are not. The gameplay differences between so called "MMORPGs" and games like Doom, Quake, and Unreal are negligible at best. FPS + chargen doth not an RPG make.
Don't get me started on how Final Fanstasy devolved from a game into a non-interactive movie.
I mean how many MMOGs do we really need to waste our silly little lives away? ... flamebait because I express my opinion that MMOGs might not be the most healthy thing in the world?
This from someone who makes nine posts to SlashDot within an hour (more than half of which are on the same parent post). How did that saying go about glass houses or something...?
moto411.com
Not to start a flame war or anysuch mayhem, but honestly I don't see this game or the always mentioned Star Wars Galaxies game getting too far.
Both these games will get great intial turnout, I would expect, simply due to the already successful marketing of their names. But beyond that they have relatively little to offer.
For my money, a game like ShadowBane (also from UbiSoft) will truly rock the market and gain players that will stick. As will Planetside , the first first-person shooter MMOG, at least that I know of.
At least these companies have their bases covered. When Myst dies a silent death UbiSoft will be sitting pretty atop the cash cow that ShadowBane will become, and Sony will keep things running with Planetside and of course the neverending run of EQ.
- I love animals. I try to eat at least one a day.
I mean how many MMOGs do we really need to waste our silly little lives away?
Infinitely many! Seriously, the MMORPG market is beginning to diversify, with games available or being released soon, catering to different tastes and playstyles. If the trend continues, I see the following things happening:
1) MMORPG's become more mainstream. The Sims and Star Wars Galaxies may set off this trend and expand the market for MMORPG's.
2) Each individual MMORPG will have less subscribers than they have now, and it will become increasingly difficult to obtain customers. That means that they may have to cater for smaller niche markets rather than trying to appeal to the lowest common denominator. This is good news: people are more likely to find an MMORPG they like, rather than having a choice from 5 or so games, all trying to be everything to everyone.
3) With each individual MMORPG appealing to smaller groups, revenues will drop sharply. However I suspect that MMORPGs for small groups can be run profitably, especially if a company runs more than one of them and shares resources such as billing, customer care, server facilities and possibly the servers and game code as well. Remember: some of today's MMORPGs are obscenely profitable. For a while, EA has been faltering, and Ultima Online by itself was the only thing keeping the company afloat (EA even admitted as much in one of the quarterly reports). These things will be profitable for less people.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
If it's going to be story-driven, does that mean you can play it reasonably well and still have a life, instead of running around for dozens of hours a week killing pixelated monsters to get to the next level? I played DAOC and I felt like a hamster on a treadwheel. I think a game that doesn't focus on levelling, and that you could play a few hours a week without being left behind, could be fun.
Don't drop the soap, Tommy!
Seriously, what you're asking for is basically what Neverwinter Nights provides in its multiplayer. Once upon a long time ago, I was seriously hooked on MUSHesand I figured that I'd get seriously into online games such as Everquest. Didn't happen. I was used to being able to *roleplay* in MUSHes, and of being able to set my own time schedules for things, of not having to go around and killing millions of giant rats just to go up a level. In EQ and others, even if you find a party of people to RP with, If you're not there all the time leveling, you quickly get left behind.
:)
Then out comes Neverwinter Nights. Pick up a module, or make your own, get a group of friends together (or make some friends in one of the persistent NWN worlds out there), and boom, you're good to go. You and your group control when the gaming takes place (I play every Thursday with a group of close friends who we all used to play tabletop D&D but in the past few years we've all found ourselves scattered to different parts of the U.S. - this helps us stay together and closer as friends even though we're geographically very far apart), and when you're not playing, the world stays still, ready to be picked up again when you guys get together; you don't get left behind. You've got the good things of online gaming without most of the bad: friendship, camraderie, fun, adventure, without the pk'ing, looting, endless hamster-wheel advancement (sure, you still have to kill monsters to level up normally in NWN, but the person running the module can choose to grant XP for other things at any moment, so you can go up in level faster by RP'ing instead of slaying monsters if that's the type of play you want).
Basically, it's a great online experience that you and your friends control, not some megacompany. And you don't have to pay a monthly fee for it either!
Allright, thus ends my rant about how much better NWN is than normal MMORPG's. This is just my opinion though, your mileage may vary.
"Two things are infinite: the universe, and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the first one." - Albert Einstein
A few years back they brought RealMyst to market to try out the 3D engine. I almost enough (K6III-400 + G400) machine to run it, and wallowed through, since I'd never played Myst before. For Christmas we got new machine parts that I'm still setting up, (time-challenged) and I'm looking forward to seeing RealMyst perform.
Cyan was candid about RealMyst being a technology vehicle for a future game, and included a "Bonus Age" at the end to check out more features. While most of RealMyst was merely slow-ish, the Rime Age was downright glacial. I'll be sure to check this out on the new machine, too.
But I have neither the time nor money to pick up on a time-chewer online game.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Hopefully Uru will let players just walk around and chat, much like the recently annoucned "There". My girlfriend and I held comparisons of the two worlds and be both agreed:
:P
Would you rather spend time There...
or here?
Weird people you meet online notwithstanding, Uru looks like a place I'm actually interested in visiting, exploring, etc. What I am not interested in is buying virutal Levi's jeans for my avatar with real cash.