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Games Entertainment

Uru Makes A Comeback 23

Posted by Zonk from the welcome-back-to-myst dept.
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."
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Uru Makes A Comeback More

Uru Makes A Comeback

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  • 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.

    • Uru makes me sad. . . (Score:4, Informative)

      by JSBiff ( 87824 ) on Thursday February 16, 2006 @12:57PM (#14734663) Journal
      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.
      • the stillness and solitude were the characteristics which really made MYST work for me.

        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 [vwh.net] (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

        • Exile not-so-good, i thought.
          Too simple. It felt like they were just showing off their new 360 degree views engine rather than concentrating on the immersion and storylines that made the first two so good.
          Myst IV is better, though.
          Although, for me, Riven is still at the top.

          Uru was a good concept, perhaps, but i don't think it worked. Like you said, all the Myst games are about being stuck on your own. They're better that way. You can never really communicate with any characters they put in properly - which
        • the stillness and solitude were the characteristics which really made MYST work for me.

          I have to second that. I guess it was the voyeur in me, but I really enjoyed wandering around from age to age trying to piece the lives of those who inhabited it by looking at their surrounding and the objects they left behind.

          Oddly enough, this is also one of the things I enjoyed the most in Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2. Thief also has a bit of it.
      • The couple of group interactions I had were great, but at the points that I ran into people, I very quickly encountered spots where I had to set out on my own.

        I never owned the commercial copy of the game... I'm interested in trying this again. Maybe I'll see if it's in the discount rack at best buy.
      • 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?

        This [slashdot.org] probably has something to do with it.
  • 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.
  • 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.

    • Re:Makes a Comeback? (Score:2, Informative)

      by SMQ ( 241278 )

      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.

      It's not that Cyan didn't have the drive; they didn't have the funding, simple as that. Cyan Worlds sunk something like $11 million in capital into Uru. Its failure has reduced Cyan to a handful of core employees barely scraping by from pay period to pay period. They actually closed the doors entirely for a while a few

  • Buy a game that has online gameplay as a feature, discover your purchase isn't 100% what was advertised, and then later have to hope that a random collection of forum members will grant you access to something you ostensibly paid for?

    Brilliant.

  • Uru, the online Myst game from Cyan Worlds, was taken offline not long after the service was first launched.
    Error -- Uru never made it out of Beta.

    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?

    • What multiplayer game could survive with a 25 player cap on each server?

      One that only appeals to = 25 people, by definition.

    • 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!

      Wrong.

      There was no limit to the number of people who could be playing on a given shard - there were 3, IIRC, "Atrus", "Catherine", and "Achenar" - but there was a limit of 25 people in the City at any given time. The city was only one part of the virtual world; access to the other Ages and the Neighborhoods was unlimited.

      As

      • 1 - The other ages weren't part of the online game, so of course they didn't lag. They were the original, single player game. It would have been fun to join other players and discover NEW content in those zones, but that wasn't what they designed.

        2 - Neighborhoods were instances where you could gather and talk... again, not part of the game.

        The only real multiplayer area was the one, tiny city... where lag was so bad that you could barely move around. Old EQ1 had problems when 200+ people showed up for a
  • 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
  • The key to URU was immersion... but, unfortunately, not everyone got to see this.

    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 coul

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