I know I disgress from the original topic...
So with info given by Tweek, I should change the birth date of URU from 2001 to 1997, is that right?
I never heard about playing possibility starting as quite early as 1997. Maybe your 2000/2001 make more sense since I've talked with a beta-tester/programmer that would have worked with Cyan and he said to me he played an early version of URU as early as in 2000 which would tend to be right.
One thing I never understood because the documentation lacks on the subject is the possible 2 or 3 servers running at the same time, one of them being Choru. Is that during the MUPDIE project that those 2 or 3 servers were active?
I found this:
DIRT means "D'ni In Real Time"
MUDPIE means "Multi-User DIRT, Persistent Internet Entertainment"
It's hard to go deep in the History because the available sources are
on one hand: wrong...
...like Wikipedia for instance, stating the start of the open-source as early as April 2011 (but when you follow their source, it redirect you to the "Open Letter to Open Source" infamous post that ultimately paved the way to MOSS in 2012...)
and on the other hand: like old fossils' sayings...
..."Ahhh young lady... I remember
clearly back in the time, I used to play URU Live, oh yeah, what a good time it was! I registered in 2001, or was it in 2002?!? Ah well! It was back when everything was better. Did I say I played URU back in the good old days? Oh it was something to be part of, I'm telling you young lady, it was... I
remember very well in 2003, yeah that's right in 2002!"
So it is hard to get clear & factual real informations out of those really imprecise texts let me tell you!