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."

Comments

How open?

[Anonymous Coward]

Will the art be open, or just the code?

Re:How open?

[walshy007]

art will be too, slashdot has covered the discussion of this being open sourced previously

Re:How open?

[Anonymous Coward]

"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.

Still Wondering

[wisnoskij]

Still Wondering, after reading the guide, if they managed to put enough content into the game to make it make sense to be a mmo game, Are you expected to explore the same age over and over again?
And how does it differ from Uru: Ages beyond Myst, The screen shots looks like at least a large portion of it is in the same places.

Re:Still Wondering

[brandorf]

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.

Re:Still Wondering

[Calmiche]

The answer to that is yes and no.

Maybe I can shed some light on this, having played the original beta and also when it was live on GameTap.

It depends on what you mean by MMO. No, it's not WoW. It's more of a graphical chat-room. All of "Ages beyond Myst" is here. (Ages beyond Myst is the original beta live game, altered for offline play and with a couple of ages that Cyan finished before canceling the beta.) Almost certainly there will be some added content from when the game was available under GameTap. (At least most of the files are included in the download).

When the game was actually live, there were monthly events put on by Cyan staff. These included plot and storyline events, opening of new areas, multi-user puzzles to unlock new content and from time to time, new clothing for avatars. These almost certainly will not happen in the foreseeable future.

The big draw, however, were user created events. There were regular meet-and-greets, poetry nights, dance parties and heek competitions (Similar to rock-paper-scissors but with up to 5 players.) There were D'ni language classes, tours of Bahro glyphs and paintings and discussion groups, especially about in game history and working translations of D'ni scripts and books.

Cyan released several new ages during the course of their run on GameTap. Some of the puzzles were altered to make them only solvable in groups or with at least two people. There were also at least ten other ages in various stages of development as well as quite a few fan created ages that are still being worked on.

So, if you are looking for fighting, leveling, auction houses and monsters, this probably isn't the game for you. If you like adventure games, long discussions, thought puzzles and linguistics, this might be something you would like to try. Don't expect any official updates, new content or bug fixes in the foreseeable future. Supposedly, the source code will be released. There are quite a few very capable coders and programmers in the Uru community so there is the possibility of fan created patches and updates before to long.

It's free. If you don't like it, that's fine. If you do, maybe I'll see you at the next poetry slam or Guild of Archivists meeting. Also, think about dropping a donation on Cyan. The more money and support they get, the more likely we will see real progress.

Re:OS availability?

[Fred_A]

Am I missing something or is it not available for Mac and Linux?

According to the website :

System Requirements:

        * Windows XP, Vista, or Windows 7
        # 512MB of Memory, 1GB or more recommended
        # Video Card: 32 MB RAM, DirectX9.0 -compliant video card and compliant audio card
        # DirectX 9.0c

Might work in a virtual machine or in emulation/wine. Or not.

Zarf's FAQ

[agrif]

I would like to mention here for those interested that Andrew Plotkin has written a FAQ that he has maintained meticulously through all of Uru's incarnations. Interestingly, this is the very same FAQ that was linked when Uru's first demise was posted to Slashdot.

Uru attracts dedicated fans, and Cyan has some of the best fan relationships of any company. This is a game worth trying out, if you haven't. You may not like it, but I guarantee, if you like it at all, you'll love it.