Cautious Optimism or Impulsive Pessimism?
This post has been migrated from my older blog A Bad Case of Nostalgia.
Following a slip of the virtual tongue on the Myst Online forums, a mysterious post has emerged on the DRC Site forums that may suggest Uru Live, in one form or another, may be close to being revived from its grave. While this certainly excites me, I became quite depressed while skimming through the various topics discussing this development.
An atmosphere of doom and gloom is not exactly a rare sight around the Uru/Cyan fan community, nor is it very surprising considering the tumultuous history Uru has had. Initially being supported by Ubisoft, who shut it down before it was properly out of beta, then maintained by fan servers operating for the better part of three years with virtually no contact from the guys in charge, and finally being revived for a short lived burst of life thanks to GameTap, it is easy to see why some believe any attempts to revive this collection of virtual worlds may be a lost cause. That said, I find not the lack of optimism surprising, but rather the extreme pessimism. It goes beyond just assuming things won’t work right, to actually begging that this doesn’t happen at all.
The Uru community has been split into so many different pieces that it is amazing it is still sticking together. There are people who think Cyan could do great things with Uru if given the chance, people who think Cyan shouldn’t revive Uru themselves because they will just screw it up, people who think Uru should be forgotten all-together, and these groups are split into subgroups which are split into further subgroups. Assuming that every person in the Uru community is hoping for an enjoyable experience in some kind of a virtual world, there are generally three directions that people believe Uru should continue in:
- Uru Live should be revived by Cyan with a publisher who gives it a real chance.
- Uru should be open-sourced with whatever state the source is in and let the community work out the problems.
- Forget about Uru and recreate similar worlds in popular virtual world environments (Second Life, Blue Mars, etc.)
Most people (and by that I mean the general tone that I get while skimming the forums, I have not actually taken a tally) seem to be tending toward the second option, with a handful of the less programming-oriented members leaning toward the third option. What surprises me is the violently negative reaction to the first option. For some reason, people in the Uru community seem to have this general idea that because Cyan has failed to make this game popular after two tries, the community has a god-given right to take it over from them. Where this idea came from I can’t fathom. Myst, Uru, and all related entities always have been, are now, and likely always will be owned solely by Cyan Worlds until such a time as they feel fit to give them away. Now, I’m not saying there is no support for the first option, but most people appear to feel that Uru would be better off if Cyan weren’t involved with it anymore.
To give you readers an idea of what I’m talking about, I have copied here some quotes from the forums leaving off the poster’s names in the interest of not singling them out. Note too that these are but a small subset of the posts relating to this topic. I urge anyone interested in getting all the viewpoints to visit the original threads these quotes were pulled from here, here, and here.
So, what do we have here…
An “Email” from “Tony” from “Cyan Worlds”, saying that URU Live will be live within a month…
BUT: No confirmation by Cyan. Chogon only posts weird stuff and RAWA something cryptic as always.
Cyan…You can’t fool us anymore. Please, just say either “Yes” or “no”…is it THAT hard?
Why don’t you just say something concrete that we can work with, instead of getting our hopes up for something that will never come?
URU Live, OSMO, whateveryoucallit wont come. end of message.
I don’t think we will see any news on Myst Online – especially within the next 2571 years.
Oh god, please not another attempt by Cyan to revive MOUL.
I’m not up to a 4th shutdown.
*sigh*
Here we go again.
So, we get another “Until Uru” type of iteration with user-made content.
An actual full-scale relaunching is probably out of the cards…unless whatever studio is attached to the Myst movie takes interest, of course.
Ehh… I’m not gonna get my hopes up until Cyan or someone gives me reason to hope.
I don’t think we will see any news concerning OSMO… Especially not in 2010. 🙁
I would love to get back into the cavern along with the friends I made all those years ago. And if Cyan thinks they can provide us with new content to keep it from getting boring, I say we let them try. The absolute worst thing that happens is that it gets closed down again. And if that does happen, oh well. It’s nothing that hasn’t happened before. But this pessimism has to stop. There is a big difference between “This will never happen, stop trying to get us excited about nothing.” and “Hopefully things will work out better this time around.” especially considering that we now have at least a glimmer of something stirring.
Cryptic posts and a possible leak of upcoming information would normally excite people because it’s a sign that things may be about to happen. Instead it gets half the community saying “Stop with these stupid cryptic posts. You’re not doing anything. Just give us the game and go away.” and there is really no reason for that. Yes we were told Cyan would be open-sourcing Uru, and yes Cyan has had a spotty track record when it comes to keeping Uru alive, but that doesn’t give us the right to essentially spit on them and tell them to get off our yard, especially when this yard isn’t actually ours… it’s theirs.
This little rant has changed directions a few times as I was writing it, and in the interest of length I’ll save my rant on Uru community hacking for another time. But for now I want to know what you people think, not about whether or not Cyan should or should not bring Uru back, but rather what you think about the pessimism in the community. Is it absolutely overwhelming and largely unjustified, or are the anti-Cyan-run-Uru comments well deserved?
February 5, 2010 at 8:44 am |
I don’t think the sentiment is that the fans have a “god-given right” to take over, but that we should be allowed the option after Uru’s previous demises. The fact remains that Until Uru was the longest-running version of Uru because of the benefits the shards afforded. Until Uru had started to dwindle near the end and, while a large part of that was Cyan’s resurgence, the other complaint was that there was no new content. If the fans can make Ages, that’s not a problem anymore. I think there’s also a benefit in having individuals cover the server costs of a free Uru.
February 5, 2010 at 9:46 am |
Heya! I’m “the stranger” from the forums, I just like this name better 😉
First, I want to say that this is a wonderful post, very well written.
I’m with the second group. I want to see the game Open Source. I don’t care if we see a Cyan Worlds server, but we need to have the source. However, I don’t think that Cyan Worlds should go away, as presented it. I have a great respect for them and for their creativity. The problem is that Cyan Worlds made some problems, and they never had the chance to fix them (or even look into them). Prologue had problems. MOUL had even more problems. Cyan Worlds obviously has good intentions, but things got somewhat wrong on the way. My idea is this: Cyan Worlds should release the OpenSource, and let us take the game to our hands (they can still open their own server if they want, of course. Maybe charge some fee on the other servers). We fix the stuff, solve the problam which gathered over the years. In the end the server who becomes the most popular has the best formula, and Cyan Worlds can take that formula, implement it on their own server/servers, and start making good money, hopefully 😉 .
February 5, 2010 at 11:00 am |
@Whilyam
While I certainly recognize that Uru lasted longer under semi-control of the fans (semi due to the fact that for the longest time we could not edit or add anything content-wise) than it did in any official form, I don’t think that should mean we prevent Cyan from trying again. I do think that we should get the game before it gets shelved permanently, but as long as Cyan is willing to keep trying I say let them try. Don’t cut them out just because they haven’t done well so far. And I’m definitely not suggesting that user-made ages are a bad thing. Even Cyan wants those to happen. Doing so would additionally help with the content shortage. As for users running the servers, there could be some merit to this, but I wouldn’t want it to come at a loss of control for Cyan as long as they’re willing to keep up the fight.
@ThedStranger
The problem I see with the Cyan runs “just another server” approach is that Cyan created Uru and only they truly know where the story is supposed to go. If they get demoted to being “just another server” their story is likely to get lost amid a bunch of fan stories. I’m not saying fan stories are a bad thing, in fact I encourage them, but not if it means throwing the main story out the window. I have heard too many terrible ideas for how the story should progress to be comfortable leaving it open to everyone and their brother. This gets amplified if Cyan charges for their server. Open source will certainly mean free servers, and while the players that prefer the Cyan story may be willing to pay that price, I suspect the large majority of users would rather opt for the free option, not caring what story or content they are missing.
February 5, 2010 at 1:32 pm |
Sure many people will find many fans stories bad. I’m sure I will too. And that’s the good thing: if you don’t like one server, you go to the other. If you want Cyan Worlds’ story, you go to their server. The point is, maybe the way Cyan Worlds intend the story to go isn’t very good. You saw what happened in MOUL- quite a messed up story. If fan stories will be that bad, people will move to Cyan Worlds’ server. If they don’t they will enjoy other servers. The final official canon, if that what concerns you, is Cyan Worlds’, until they state otherwise.
February 5, 2010 at 1:43 pm |
Don’t forget that the MOUL story had to be adapted to the episodic style releases they used. As long as they don’t do that again, I doubt the story will be as poor as last time.
The problem is that Cyan tries to sculpt their story around the players and their interactions. While I think this is a good thing, it has the side effect that if no one (or a very small minority) plays on their server, what is or isn’t canon doesn’t matter because if someone doesn’t want something to be canon, they just change it. Demoting Cyan to the same level as everyone else means their story holds no more weight than the rest, and the concept of a main storyline disappears.
February 5, 2010 at 3:49 pm |
It’s not just the episodes. Look around and you will find criticizm on the DRC behaviour, Yeesha’s character, and some other stuff. These are not small problems, and they divide into sub-problems.
February 6, 2010 at 1:42 am |
Very true, but let’s break it down a little.
The DRC vs. Yeesha storyline was, from what I’ve gathered, very popular in prologue. There were issues with the execution, but the base storyline was very well designed.
The DRC carried out endeavors that they believed would enhance their understanding of D’ni as well as allow other surface-dwellers the chance to participate. Certain storyline elements, such as Sharper’s hunting, were very controversial, but I don’t think anyone thought the storyline was poorly developed.
Yeesha had a very clear role as well, getting us to understand that D’ni fell for a reason and that the methodologies used by the DRC were hurting rather than helping. Again, while she was cryptic and her true end-game objective was never clear, it is difficult to argue that careful thought and planning was not put into the storyline development.
Look at these same elements during the episodic structure. The DRC would release a partially stable age with little to no information as to why. There would be a big spike of activity once every two weeks, but never in the interim. And most issues that they should have addressed (story wise) were left ignored.
Same with Yeesha, she basically completely disappeared, showing up once for no apparent reason and then disappearing again.
There was a very obvious lack of thought put into developing the storyline during the episodic releases, while details were very carefully considered during prologue. There is a difference between not agreeing with a storyline, and a storyline being poorly written. I didn’t particularly like the Sharper hunting Shroomies storyline, but I can’t deny that it was very well written.
February 6, 2010 at 3:41 am |
Obviously Cyan Worlds wants to make us happy with the story, and at many times they did (mostly during Prologue). But as you said yourself, as Uru moved into MOUL, the story was beginning to be more and more cheesy. It’s a matter of taste, as you said yourself. The problem is that most of the players didn’t feel immersed by it. It means the direction that was taken is not a very good one. Can Cyan Worlds fix it? I sure hope they can, but I know they have better stuff to spend time on. So that’s why I think it’s better that *for the time being* they will give us the code. Again, I really hope they will still have some position (once they release the code), so they can comeback in the future and make money out of this.
February 12, 2010 at 2:55 am |
It’s important to remind, once again, that what Cyan intends to Open-Source is Plasma, the engine. Not the content that its using (Uru).
There has been some discussion on OpenUru and GoW about getting some ‘common’ texture assets approved by Cyan so that Player Ages will fit in relatively seamlessly. The core, however – including the story, however convoluted it may be at this point – is still Cyan’s to control.
One side note to your main post, is that I’m unlikely to participate in this new iteration. It’s not that I disagree or hate the launch – in fact, I’m very happy to get *nice* birthday news from Cyan for once. Its just that I’ve moved on to other venues (amusingly, I’ve settled on Eve Online for now).
Will elaborate more soon, on my own site.
/salute
–TSK