A friend of mine quizzed GD about the possibility of including a non-Cyan-designed D'ni building in the main Cavern at some point, and this was part of the reply. There are some smallish hints about Cyan's POV towards user-content in here:
"...While your idea is great, it breaks one of the fundamental rules that Cyan Worlds, Inc. will have on user created content - it takes place in an age already designed.
Let me explain. It is our dream that the people who create User content become “The new writers of D’niâ€. What this means is the places are ages or places in ages you have created. We have two reasons for this. First, Cyan has already planned out most of what we would like in the cavern, if we ever get the funding to do so. I wish you could see the designs of the districts we would like to someday have in the game. You would be amazed. The second is a story reason. New writers would not be rewriting the book of Earth to change items in the cavern.
Back in 2005, I wrote this to the fan community:
“Cyan continues to hold out hope for Uru. We hope you guys are all with us in that. The problem is that by using Uru intellectual property (including Age names, characters, textures, models, etc.) you kind of put us in a position where we have to be the bad guy. If we don't protect our copyrights and trademarks, we may have all kinds of issues down the road - both legally and story-wise. So it would be great if you guys could keep your creative endeavors on the original side of things - i.e. make your ages from scratch using your own wonderful imaginations.â€
Well, we are back, and we still want you to create items from scratch."
Guild of Writers
