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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."
I played Riven, and it was quite good too, despite the fact that there were many more 'people' in it than MYST. I ate it up, I worked on nothing but the game for four days. it haunted my dreams and my artwork for months afterwards. I drew maps of Riven (see the bottom of the page) and they were an instant hit, driving my website over quota for weeks. the maps were published in a couple different gaming magazines in Europe.
I tried Exile, but the "full motion" bothered me. so, I never got very far. I'm sure it was a great game, but I missed the 'stillness'.
based on what I've read in the parent post, Uru will never interest me.
Decay! Decay! Decay! -Helium
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 It crashed a few times at first, but that was because of my out of date video drivers.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.