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."

Re:Who would pay for the hosting cost?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well there are a couple of options available, to start with there could be ads at the beging of the game; or the game could be open source but the servers them self may require some kind of login which wouldn't be free; or lastly the whole system could be completely decentralized and require no server over head. personally I'd vote for the last one.

Re:How open?

[walshy007]

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

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.

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: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 [eblong.com] 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.