Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Uru Live Cancelled, Expansion Packs Promised

Posted by simoniker on from the crying-shame dept.

Datasage writes "Announced today on the UbiSoft community boards. Uru Live, the online part of Cyan's PC title Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, will be closing down. They were not able to get enough subscribers (even within the free Beta) to sustain the world. Instead Cyan has refocused its efforts, and will be putting out expansion packs for Uru, the first of which, due out a couple months, will be freely downloadable." Andrew Plotkin has written an informative FAQ regarding Uru Live, explaining the now defunct collaborative online part of this single-player PC game from the Myst creators.

3 of 49 comments (clear)

  1. And people would've payed for this why? by shoptroll · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ok, while I applaud Cyan Worlds/Ubisoft for making the bold attempt to take Myst to the Internet, who in their right mind would've thought it would've worked...?

    1) The Myst series has been and will probably remain a series for the casual player. A lot of people who are turned off by the blood and action of fast paced FPS and involving RPGS and RTSes typically enjoy Myst.

    2) People aren't going to pay for a service that they won't make use of.

    3) Casual gamers don't usually have a whole lot of time to commit to a game for an extended period of time.

    4) Since the user base for the Myst series isn't "hard-core" they most likely will not have the time to justify for paying for something like Uru (which was to ultimately become a pay-for service)

    5) Finally, think about it. Myst by myself is cool. Myst with other people no longer sounds like a game anymore? How would puzzles work? What would be the objective of the persistant world? What are people supposed to be doing in this game?

    When you think about it that way. Would you honestly want to pay to play what would most likely become a 3D chat room? (Granted that MMORPGs seem that way sometimes, but the Myst franchise does not lend itself to an MMORPG easily)

    If they had gone through and done something like Battle.net with this (where the service is free), then maybe it would've worked. But I know if I buy a single-player game, the multiplayer had better be free.

    Maybe if Ubisoft/Cyan had did this as a free online thing, maybe it would've ended up doing better. I really can't say though.

    --
    Insert Sig Here
    1. Re:And people would've payed for this why? by ajd1474 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I was a Beta tester for the game, and the concept DID work. Basically you were on a mission to solve the riddle of what happened to a long forgetten civilisation. The puzzles were cool, and the grpahics and everything were great. Basically you had to interact with others to find new places and things to do. It felt alot like Second Life or There, but looked a lot nicer than both of them. I thnk it suffered from a real lack of exposure, and while i dont think it was ever commercially viable as a "pay to play" i think it did add an interesting new dimension to the Myst series...and i am sad that it didnt survive. Having said that.... i got pretty bored with it, as the online component didnt have THAT much to offer me to keep me logging back in.

      --
      I refuse to have a sig... dammit!
  2. I call bullshit on YOU by FireChipmunk · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Ubi didnt kill live because of lack of interest. there was a HUGE interest going on.

    It is a simple case of economics. If there aren't X number of customers Cyan couldn't cover the burn rate of Y. If you aren't making enough money, isn't it better to change early, instead of going [url=http://www.enron.com/]bankrupt[/url]?

    PC Gamer was highly impressed with it. the real reason it was killed was most likely because the morons who coded the network side of the game couldnt hack it.

    That makes me a moron?

    Anyone who played it new that the netcode was POORLY written.

    I am afraid you should stop speaking out of your ass now. If you looked at the auctual use of in-game bandwidth, URU uses signifigantly less than most common First Person Shooters. I should know, I wrote an Ethereal plugin while I worked at Cyan. This plugin would disect our own protcol. We closely examined every byte that is sent over the network.


    The True cause of the lag lies mostly with the Client. Improvements to this were being made. But since the online part of URU has been stopped, they will never see the light of day.


    URU Might of come before its time, and I am deeply saddened to see a project I worked on go down this path.


    -Paul Querna