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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.
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/
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)
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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?
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...
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.
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
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
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
the storyline is kind of unintrusive. if you don't want to pay attention to it, it doesn't make much of a difference, however it's still there. it manifests itself as news stories updated at least once a week, usually more often. they used to have a good cartoon series that they produced as downloadable movies, but the production on that has dropped off. still, funcom does a decent job of keeping the universe in AO pretty lively. but like any other game, it's all what you make of it.
with the introduction of "The Notum Wars", AO has become a more player-driven story line as PVP battles erupt all throughout the planet. certain lands are pretty much uncontested, and other lands have turned into constant war zones. the plot isn't really advancing; rubi-ka has always been a land that was being fought for, but now people are becoming much more involved in the fight.
Theevilcouch Level 126 Martial Artist, Rubi-ka 1
The World's Worst Webcomic!
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).