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Myst Online: Uru Live Returns As Free-To-Play
agrif writes "Shorah b'shemtee! Uru Live has been released for free, as a first step towards opening its source. This game, an MMO released by the makers of Myst and Riven in 2003, has been canceled, zombified, resurrected, canceled again, and is now about to be released as open source to its dedicated fan base. Massively has written a brief newbie guide if you're unfamiliar with the game."
art will be too, slashdot has covered the discussion of this being open sourced previously
"The 3D models and textures that were used to create Myst Online: Uru Live will not be part of the open source license. We will probably release some of these models and textures, but under a different license than the code source."
From the Myst Online website, on the 'Developers' link.
In a nutshell, the entire city of D'ni was the common area of the game, with all the other ages behaving like instances. All players belonged to a neighborhood which behaved a bit like a guild hall. In addition to the social aspects, you could bring other players with you into an age to cooperatively work together, and several of the new ages that were released after the retail release required multiple people to solve. However the core of the MMO experience was this: there were live actors playing characters in the game a certain times throughout the month. These staff members represented the fictional org (D'ni Restoration Council) that was attempting to exhume/restore the remains of this lost empire. How the players interacted with them (roleplay!) and the decisions that they made determined what new areas of the city were opened up and any plot developments that occur because of that.
Bork Bork Bork!!