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Uru Makes A Comeback
Via a GameSetWatch post, the news on Adventure Gamers that Uru is back in a limited form. Uru, the online Myst game from Cyan Worlds, was taken offline not long after the service was first launched. From the article: "In an open letter to the community, Cyan co-founder Rand Miller revealed that they have received 'limited funding from a third party that allows us to breathe some refreshing new life and optimism into all things Uru.' The server, called the D'mala shard, is available for no charge to any owner of Uru, though to access it you'll require an invitation from the community."
Look at the people rushing to FP this one.
I beta tested Uru, and it satisfied the little part of me that wanted more exploration in MMO's... but there was a serious lack of both content and purpose. It was far too centered on an open-ended social experience. Obviously exploration was the bread and butter of Myst (which OWNED my life in early middle school), but this game needed more.
Bury me in mashed potatoes.
"Uru, the online Myst game from Cyan Worlds, was taken offline not long after the service was first launched. "
Does Myst really work as an online game?
This is really good news for all us Myst/Riven fans out there. While URU wasn't a perfect game, it had great potential. However it was shutdown before it even had a chance. This game was just ahead of its time. Let's hope this leads to further development and more adventures.
I bought Uru because I was a fan of Myst, and was intrigued by the idea of a cooperative, multiplayer Myst (although, I was, honeslty, a little puzzled how they would pull that off - I figured cooperative puzzles that required players to be at different locations, do things together - although, again, how could they ever create enough puzzles to keep the game from getting old very fast. . .?).
Nevertheless, I bought Uru, and then was disappointed when I figured out that the multiplayer experience wasn't even online yet at the time they sold it. I registered for a Beta invite, and was finally invited. . . then they shut down the server a week later, before I had even really had a chance to try it out much.
Add to that the fact that while the single player game ran fine on my computer, the multiplayer experience, even though I never got out of my private 'neighborhood', so never even ran into any other people, was incredibly slow and laggy. To the point where it made it hard to explore the game properly. I shrugged this off though thinking to myself. . . it's a Beta, that's only to be expected. It'll get better nearer to release.
I really think Uru was a cool idea, but I'm still left wondering why it got canned before it ever even had a chance. The reason given for the funding cuts was that there was not enough interest/response. How can there be a lot of response for a game that never even had a decently working beta? Did they measure the response based on the sales of the single-player game? I don't think I ever saw much advertising/marketting for Uru. I just happened to see it in Best Buy and, being the fan I am, bought it.
Uru seems like it never got the chance to be the game it could be, which makes me sad. It also made me angry that they sold it as a multiplayer game, when the multiplayer component wasn't ready when I installed the game, and *never* was ready. But, being both poor, and a fan, I never considered trying to sue for false advertising or anything. It's just like, well, what can you do. You can't force them to finish the multiplayer component, the most you could get is a refund. But I didn't want a refund. . . I wanted the multiplayer game that the box promised.
I really liked the Uru game engine. Full 3d, full motion. You could *jump* - something no other Myst game ever let you do (I know some people hate jump puzzles, but if done in moderation, I find them to be kind of fun). I thought Uru was a better game than Myst 4 Revelation, not that Myst 4 is bad, but after playing Uru, it seemed more limited, like going backwards in game development instead of forwards. Like going from Super Mario Bros 3 back to Super Mario Bros - the original SMB was a great game, but after playing 3, it would be less satisfying.
I really truly hope that maybe Uru can be brought back to life. I'll probably even go seek an invite, just to show Cyan my continued interest. Maybe if enough people try to get on the shard, they can demonstrate sufficient interest to this mysterious source of funding, to get the funding necessary to continue the project and create new content.
Although. . . I'm rather puzzled that Cyan needs 3rd party funding. Myst was (and may still be) the best selling game of all time (at least it held that title for awhile). How could Cyan not have a development warchest to do whatever they want with?
It kind of seems analogous to Blizzard saying they can't develop a new game for lack of funding.
Reading this wouldn't 'Uru Attempts a Comeback' be more accurate. I dunno about you but 'limited funding from a third party' doesn't sound like a comeback. It sounds more like, well we couldn't bring the game back ourselves and didn't really have the drive to, but someone else has given us money so lets see if we can do something with that.
Brilliant.
...I got mixed up between "Uru" and "Uwe".
*shudder*
There was something terribly wrong with their design. The beta servers were capped at 25 players -- and even then the lag was so bad that it could easily be compared to a bad day on WoW, when the server is full and you are near a bank! What multiplayer game could survive with a 25 player cap on each server?
For every problem there is a solution that is simple, obvious and wrong.
I beta tested URU and didn't think much of it. Boring and the first 15 minutes of playing it I got stuck in a Myst style puzzle that just wasn't fun. It didn't get any better after that. I believe it did make it out of beta and launch for a couple weeks but that was it.
I've been a very big Myst fan for years, but when I first heard that Cyan was making an online game, I was very hesitant to try it. I didn't think there was any way that it would work, especially since one of the best parts of the other games was the atmosphere from being alone. When I saw that they were taking applications for the beta, I figured that I didn't have anything to lose by signing up, so I did. A few months passed and, since news of the game was coming very slowly, I forgot about it. Then, one day, I got an email saying that I had been accepted in the latest wave of testers. After reading through the NDA very carefully (my first experience with one), I accepted and installed the game. It crashed a few times at first, but that was because of my out of date video drivers. Once I got that fixed and I started to play the game, I started to see that the idea really could work.
The first thing that really caught me was the story. I had just read The Book of Atrus before playing, and so I was very excited when I started the game at the cleft where Atrus grew up. It also started me out alone. There were no people walking around, no chat screen scrolling by, nothing to indicate that this was an MMOG at all. There was no way to interact with anyone until after you'd already solved the first puzzle and you were able to visit the city of D'ni. Even after that, every person had their own instance of each age, so you could go through the majority of the game without seeing anyone else.
I played alone for a while and I really liked what I saw. The controls were somewhat awkward at first, but I got used to them. Once I did, I found that the immersion factor was much closer to the original games than I expected. It made me sad at times when I was reminded that I was sitting in my room at my computer and not actually exploring the worlds in the game. The first time I visited the city, I just couldn't shake the desire to actually go there. That was also the first time that I saw anyone else in the game. This was still three months before the game was released and they didn't have that many people testing at the time, so the city was almost empty. As I ran around, I came into hearing range of a couple of other testers and was startled when I saw their chat come up on my screen. Within a few moments I had found them, but didn't say anything to them. It was still too weird for me to talk to anyone in a Myst game. Over the next few weeks, more testers were added and it became hard not to run into someone in the city, so eventually I had to interact with someone. This whole time, I'd been dreading talking to others because I knew that I would just run into a bunch of kids spamming for help with puzzles and trolling and the standard MMOG chat, which would really ruin the atmosphere. However, I was plesantly surprised when I found out that there were actually very few people like that. In fact, I later learned that the average age of the people testing was in the 30s. It was even pretty common to run into a grandmother exploring the cavern. Very soon, I found that the social aspect of the game was actually very enjoyable. We would often invite groups to visit our instances of the ages (which is how you would solve puzzles together) just to hang out there.
After a few months in the closed beta, the release date finally arrived. Unfortunately, there were still some major problems with the game. The release really should have been pushed back, but I got the idea that Ubisoft wouldn't let that happen. So, rather than release a product that just wasn't ready, they came up with the idea of the Prologue... essentially an open beta after release. As people bought the game, they were let online in waves. Meanwhile, they were still able to visit all the ages and solve the puzzles except in the city as a single player game, which worked pretty well. Over the next few months, Cyan worked very hard to fix the problems with the online portion, but before they could, Ubisoft pulled the plug. Personally, I share the same opinion
Iesus Christus magnus est.
I was one of the few players who got to actually interact with the story they were building.
Imagine if in WOW the King of Ironforge got up and wandered around organizing Raid groups.. think Dev-controlled NPCs. This is what was really unique about URU... the characters even read your forum posts and treated you differently in the game because of things you said offline.
If they can bring this back and do it right, it could be really major.