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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.
There goes my social life again... ;-)
PageTurner Reader: open-source e-reader for Android with cloudsync. http://pageturner-reader.org
Isn't that internet enable Myst ? Or is this REALLY fancy with each person seeing their own powerpoint which can be updated ?
Myst has to be from a tech perspective one of the simplest games to net-enable, what it will be is bandwidth intensive, what it isn't however is time restricted.
An Eye for an Eye will make the whole world blind - Gandhi
Sweet. I loved not being able to do anything in the first game but flip toggles and walk around.. now I can go online and have people laugh at my moron-grade IQ!
How much a month?
s/nerd/boss/
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.
Aside from further shrinking the broadband-equipped potential audience, wouldn't real-time voice communication kind of spoil the suspension of disbelief?
Xyphor: Welcome to the Weapons Shoppe! How may I serve thee on this fine morn?
Benny38: Hey, er, what's up dude?
Xyphor: Dost thou wish to sample my wares?
Benny38: Can you hear this? Are we like talking now?
Xyphor: Thou art testing my patience with these fine weapons close at hand.
Benny38: Umm, hello? Can someone send me an email and tell me if they can hear me? It's benny38 at AOL dot com.
(insert blood-wrenching sound effect here)
It's Slashdot's evil twin... SlashNOT
Uru is called a MMOG, not MMORPG.
Reading the press-release, and considering the Myst series, it will be a game more concentrating on a story line and riddles, than leveling. (Wonder, how they want to achieve story lines in MMOGs)
I think it is an interesting approach, since leveling always introduces a competetive element, which a) is often less appealing to women (see success of Myst) b) is more appealing to pks.
> I mean how many MMOG [...]
So many, that the different type of players have their type of game, e.g. Roleplaying-people don't have to be bothered by Hack-n-slay-people, or strategists have their little empire, while more reactive-oriented people can have their ego-shooter world.
I think, currently the problem with MMOGs is, that most MMOGs are only variation of the same game with different themes and rules. Not different MMOGs.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
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
Oh great, like I need anything else to get me
Hooked on the Net
What's the attraction, well its like the song title
Yeah, I know, now you're going to have to spend the rest of the day getting that stupid tune out of your head.
--- have you healed your church website?
SlashDot is the only MMO(RP)G I'll ever need!
moto411.com
I think it could be funny to hear all the teenage boys, in a cracking voice, half heartedly telling us "I'm gunna kick your ass, you pussy".
I can see them now, blushing after saying it, kinda scared, since they'd never say that to anyone in real life.
War crimes, torture, lies, illegal spying... Would someone give Bush a blowjob, already, so he can be impeached?
Err, that's false. WorldsChat did voice on a persistent 3D world about five or more years ago.
More recently, the just announced There, also supports voice chat, for broadband users.
Myst online... just what I've been waiting for! I mean, if it's anything like the original, I'd be fizzzz...zz.zzzzzzzzzzzz
*conk*
Excuse me, I don't mean to impose, but I am the ocean
"...deliver a continually updated, immersive environment and storyline, with content that grows, changes and evolves constantly."
This is more or less exactly what Funcom said they would do with Anarchy Online. Now I only played the game for a few months, but the rumors I've heard indicate that any real storyline progression has been sporadic at best, and nonexistant most of the time. Can anyone who actually plays AO comment on how the storyline stuff is working out?
-- If no truths are spoken then no lies can hide --
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.
But how long could you tolerate their squeaking mating cry of:
"A/S/L? A/S/L? A/S/L? ..."
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
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!
no really it's not what it seems.. Not a slideshow of sorts. If any of you played realMYST that was a test of the graphics engine. It looked gorgeous slow as hell on a p3 with vodoo 3 though. But it was gorgeous it looked like the old myst did but in real time. The new one if you look at the graphics is simply just as gorgeous all in real time all online. How can one not love it? I'm a big myst fan so i've been following this game since it was titled mudpie.
There exists some positive integer N that you are the Nth person to read this signature.
Easy reaon why we need another: Each new game pushes the state of the technology a little further. The long term consequences of this process are of likely benefit to everybody, regardless of their interests.
so much for freedom
WTF does freedom have to do with anything, again, you're using emotionally charged words, that have no relevance to try and argue a point.
I'm the big fish in the big pond bitch.
Ahem...
...um...like...a sig...
There is no perfect anti-cheat system. Theoretically, it is impossible to create one.
:) ), but one could consider extending the punishement to reach to RL.
Practically, one can create, where cheating is near useless.
One possibility is to eliminate competion, but since this is most often the driving force behind an MMOG, it's not possible.
Another one is a "weapon race", so to speak.
In MMORPGs people are usually cheating by scripting their avatars, letting them doing the tedious repetetive work. By keeping the tasks more complicated (and more interesting) one could eliminate this scripting by making it too complicated and interesting to do the actual work.
The problem is, the client can be beefed up, to tackle the task and there are a lot more clients than servers. This is impossible for less social/intellectual games (ego-shooters).
Last possibility: Social engineering.
In RL people can cheat and make other people feel miserable, too.
Why is it still in acceptable bounds? Because people get punished by the community, who don't behave.
An online-game is a community, too. But why doesn't it work? Because, there is no real punishment possible.
To a certain degree, a community with punishements comes to existence by itself. For example, in Dark Age of Camelot, one can complain over the offender by the guild of the offender (often with support from ones own guild). The guild reprimands or even expells the offender (Or so I'm told from a friend of mine, lacking first hand experience in this game).
This helps, but only for people, who are already involved in the gameplay, so that those potential measurements are really a punishement.
But no one hinders people from creating another character, and fooling around with that one.
And what about people, who just started?
One solution could be, by integrating community functions more into the game system. For example a punishement could be extended to the other characters as well.
But what about people just starting with the game?
Hopefully, a well functioning community will integrate them (see Slashdot
For example, one has to sign a contract for a membership over a year. It is terminable at will, unless the person commits a "crime", which requires the culprit to pay for at least a year.
I've admit this is less than ideal, since it is very suceptible to abuse.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
Game is what you make it you know..
I've been playing Evercrack, on and off, since the day 1 ruins of kunark was released to stores in Finland.
I stopped for allmost a year in same point but have been playing again something around 5 months now.
The thing is, as i said earlier allready, game is what you make it yourself.
I've never had highend character, mainly because of my inpatiance so i dont know how things evolve after +30 levels but before that, all the time its been just mob hunting and exp gaining (far from rpg'ing)... Till now..
After i started playing again, i headed to Firiona Vie which everyone called "Roleplay" server. Well, ofcourse there are d00ds as much as anywhere else and IC is not mandatorying but. Its still there if you go forth with it yourself..
I've now joined one of the respected RPG guilds in FV and since then, (joining took me 3 months because something broke my computer and was offline most of that time) i havent been OOC ingame at all. IC goes on even in the guild boards (tavern) and play is good. Im still *young* compared to rest of the guild but i must admit, as a semiserious roleplayer, things havent been this good *ever* in evercrack..
So, if our EQ experience is lacking, dont make it the truth what you say.. RPG'ing is there and is going on really well.
Dullfiina, pround member of Saga.
Cleric of Bristlebane and Hugable Halfling.
yush
As new massively multiplayer worlds are emerging, we're going to see the worlds begin to resemble the cellphone industry, in that similar but incompabile technology will prevent (intentionally or not) users from crossing from one rhelm to another. The way individual manufacturers feel (be it games or cellphones), anything that cooperates with a compeditor would make it easier for that person to switch.
It would be nice if early on, the multiplayer industry members got together and agreed tho make their worlds and technology compatible, allowing one single account to which individual game charges are applied. This would a) reduce the cost of companies running their own billing sections, and b) allow a person to switch to another game without having to establish yet another account.
But most importantly, this would open the way to having an Ether -- a plcae outside all of the game rhelms where characters of all sorts could interact (imagine a Sim talking to a Stromtrooper while an Ultima Online player rode by on a horse!). THIS social in-between area would be the start of the Metaverse.
_______
2B1ASK1
In a way, you are right.
Palladium can make out of the PC a trusted hardware (especially trusted by the company distributing the game), the trusted hardware can verifies the software, which signs its data.
So, the user can't inject false data into the stream.
Problem: Extracting the secret from hardware can be hard or easy, but not impossible. DVD-players should be trusted hardware. Having Xing distributing a software player with weak protections made it relatively easy.
"Between strong and weak, between rich and poor [...], it is freedom which oppresses and the law which sets free"
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.
But it wont' feel like it. The whole point of Myst was the abandoned feeling you got from the areas. Crowding a Myst world with "asl??" isn't going to make it better in any concievable way. This just isn't going to make money.
-- The Sage does nothing, and nothing is left undone. --Lao Tzu
A/S/L
Trolls lurk everywhere. Mod them down.
by Linden Labs called Second Life is currently in closed beta, but are accepting applications. Your avatar's appearence is fully configurable, you can buy land and build on it, and you can create (3d model) just about any object you can think of and script its behavior using their java-inspired scripting language. Upload texture and sound files to use in objects. It is a great MMOG for techies.
Technoli
In the same way, he's wrong, and so are you. Strong protections protect against falsification of data input, but vanishingly few cheats in MMORPGs are data hacks. Most are processes completely legitimate to the code that take advantage of a flaw in the game design (a bug or a game fault, such as the Pindleskins problem in Diablo II) to allow a character to advance much more quickly, or procure much more power than is normal. Others are social engineering that allow people to sucker other people out of their power ("Let me look at that item in a trade window" or "F1-F2-F3-F4-F5 will give you ten thousand gold pieces!" or other such trickery). So, strong protections on the data stream are needed, but they don't protect against the large majority of cheats.
Virg
> While most of RealMyst was merely slow-ish, the Rime Age was downright glacial.
I hope you did this on purpose. It was damn funny.
Virg
To be honest, I'd be very much interested in seeing how they involve the Myst universe. The games Myst and Riven were quite good, and the books even better. There is a lot of potential for the Myst universe, given the idea that if you are trained, you can become a writer (creator/linker of worlds).
I personally hate the competitive aspect of the typical MMORPGs. That's why I've never gotten into them. I tend to like cooperative situations more, but Myst was one of THE best games to ever come out IMNSHO. I also really enjoyed the sequels Riven and Exile. The games left me wanting more though, and it looks like they are getting ready to deliver! :)
One more note... the game "Lighthouse" (From Sierra) was awsome as well. While many people probably percieved it as somewhat of a Myst ripoff, I thought it was very innovative for it's time. They had much nicer graphics and better sound/music. However, it felt more SciFi than Fantasy when compared to Myst. Anyone else here ever tried Lighthouse?
Un-news
I totally agree -- what's missing in virtual worlds right now is the ability for players to travel between them. Obviously, Stormtroopers shouldn't be invading the Sims Online, but there should be a virtual "border crossing" where you can step into the guise of a new character, appropriate to the realm you're traveling to, even exchanging coin of one realm for coin of another if both realms can agree on an exchange rate.
For megaMMORPGs like EverQuest, this is something they want to avoid, since lock-in is an important part of their business strategy. But I think this leaves a large niche open for new competitors. Ideally, individual users should be able to design their own virtual worlds and host them in the Metaverse, with the revenue generated in a given virtual world being split between the creator of the world and the corporation doing the hosting and designing the software.
Design an exciting, intriguing world and make a living off it. That's what I'd like to see.
He who refuses to do arithmetic is doomed to talk nonsense.
Actually, there are a number of titles before Uru came about:
;)
Parable
Mudpie (The most commonly used among the fan-base)
Myst Online (The worse by far!)
And a bunch of others I can't think of at the moment. I had written a paper about the issue of titles for Mudpie, but that's on another computer at the moment. But Ubi/Cyan seemed to followed the outlines I stated.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
Social engineering.
/report command so that the GMs can verify it, and then they can put a "soulmark" on the account. If you get caught multiple times, you can lose your account, along with any time you've already paid for (no refunds).
In RL people can cheat and make other people feel miserable, too.
Why is it still in acceptable bounds? Because people get punished by the community, who don't behave.
An online-game is a community, too. But why doesn't it work? Because, there is no real punishment possible.
In EverQuest, it's "illegal" to do many things that feel like "cheating," including kill-stealing and trade scamming. It's against the Play Nice Policy, and is subject to enforcement by the GMs. What typically happens is, if a player willfully does this stuff and admits it on chat, a player can send that chat with a
It doesn't stop things from happening; mostly because people don't properly report or GMs don't respond quickly enough to catch the perpetrator. But they do have a system, and it does work sometimes.
Is that kind of what you're talking about?
Don't you wish your girlfriend was a geek like me?
What Shadowbane? Try Vaporbane. Ubi has basically squandered their chance in this market. By the time Vaporbane appears, AC2 will have a huge player base, DAOC will have another expansion, SWG will be huge, EQ2 will appear, etc., etc.
Forget vaporbane.
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
This increases my fan boy status to new heights, but that's not the most accurate discription. No hard feelings though! :)
In Myst: Book of Ti'ana, A'Gaeris was the key player in the dystruction of D'ni and only inlisted (and to a point even tricked) Veovis who did help in the biological attack that caused the distruction.
AnamanFan - Trying to find the Truth, one post at a time.
For those who don't know, _Ender's Game_ is a great sci-fi book by Orson Scott Card. I've heard they'll be making a movie about it, but I don't know when.
...I don't have enough faith to believe in the "big bang"...
I mean really. They're entertainment. Take a valium.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I don't know...with my luck in that game, I'll end up touching the wrong book and ending up being stuck in some weird prison for the rest of my character's life screaming "Bring me blue paaaages..."
Much as I agree with you, I'd just like to point out that in a logical argument, people who live in glass houses are allowed to propel hard objects through the air. Denying them this is a form of argumentum ad hominem.
Excellent reference! (That page is really cool.)
Of course the original saying is something to the effect of one who lives in a glass house shouldn't (not mustn't) walk around naked (or whatever). Besides, even if I did have the desire to deny SlashDotters (or anyone) the ability to demonstrate hypocrisy, it is (fortunately) beyond my abilities.
moto411.com
> Well, those things you described I'd rather call exploits rather than cheats, since they exploit bugs in these programs (except that trade window thing, which is almost a bug in usability, but more social engineering, don't know about the function-key thing).
I can concede this.
Virg
P.S. the function key thing is an old social engineering thing in Diablo II. In this game, when your system drops the connection to the server (like a system crash), your avatar hangs around for thirty seconds or so before disappearing. Also, when you "go hostile" to another player, you must be in town, they are warned, and you can't attack them in town. So, the trick is that someone will walk up to you when you're outside the border of the town (a good hunting zone for newbies) and tell you, "if you hold down your Alt key and hit F1-F2-F3-F4-F5 you'll get 10,000 gold" or something else valuable. If you're dumb enough to do that, you'll find that Alt-F1, 2, 3 and 5 are meaningless, but Alt-F4 (the Windows "close program" hotkey) causes Diablo II to exit immediately. This leaves your immobile and defenseless avatar standing in the game for thirty seconds, which is long enough for the trickster to enter town, go hostile to you (you don't see the warning because you crashed your program), return and kill you to take all your stuff.
I probably didn't word it carefully enough. What I mean is you, or more accurately, your avatar, leaving the realm you're playing in, into an outside common area. Fundamental designs in the server and protocols would disallow an avatar to wander into any world that it doesn't belong. But what it would do is allow all avatars from all different types of worlds to mingle.
What I'm thinking is some lowest-common denominator protocol and character representation that all online multiplayer realms could build upon, but of course each realm (or, the programmers of the game software) would be free to augment or extend those protocols and avatar definition data within their own worlds. Think of it in terms of object-oriented programming: all massively multiplayer systems could adhere to a common base class of character, defining look and feel, then subclass that character for the unique features and functions of the realm which that character belongs.
Strange interactions would take place as well, as avatars (or more to the point, people) from both the social (like The Sims) and the rpg worlds mix.
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2B1ASK1