From my hands

[kaelisebonrai]

We are definitely losing people.

The activity here has dropped since MO:ULagain reopened, and activity dropped even further when the message was redacted.

Cyan's actions of late are not having a positive effect at all >.<

I even decided to throw in the towel and leave, on Friday (or was it Thursday...) I came back at the urging of some friends, because I had projects that needed me to work on them - Because Adam Reith posted his wonderful post in these forums, because a friend in another community came back putting me in a much better frame of mind... but all in all, things are not good here.

Cyan is /driving people away/.

At last guess we have about 2 *years* left before stuff happens. Uru will not be able to sustain itself for 2 years.

When the tool devs leave? The GoW will fall apart, and when that happens, imo, there is no hope for URU. And I don't think this view is limited just to members of the GoW, I've heard the same from people outside the guild. >.<

[BAD]

I forgot to mention that I will continue to work on the story I have been writing for the age I wanted to create. Whether the story or age ever see the light of day, I am simply enjoying the act of writing it when I get inspired to do so. GPNMilano's response reminded me of that. I thank you for reminding me!

[GPNMilano]

We are definitely losing people.

The activity here has dropped since MO:ULagain reopened, and activity dropped even further when the message was redacted.

Cyan's actions of late are not having a positive effect at all >.<

I even decided to throw in the towel and leave, on Friday (or was it Thursday...) I came back at the urging of some friends, because I had projects that needed me to work on them - Because Adam Reith posted his wonderful post in these forums, because a friend in another community came back putting me in a much better frame of mind... but all in all, things are not good here.

Cyan is /driving people away/.

At last guess we have about 2 *years* left before stuff happens. Uru will not be able to sustain itself for 2 years.

When the tool devs leave? The GoW will fall apart, and when that happens, imo, there is no hope for URU. And I don't think this view is limited just to members of the GoW, I've heard the same from people outside the guild. >.<

I can't understand the thinking of some of us when it comes to inactivity:

People complain that the cavern is empty cause there is nothing to do- The cavern isn't empty cause there is nothing to do. People have events, no one ever shows up to them. The cavern isn't empty because there's nothign to do. The cavern is empty because people would rather complain there is nothing to do then go into the cavern and...do something. People would rather complain that there is no activity from Cyan. If you want to complain about the inactivity then do something to warrant activity. Spend time in the cavern, do stuff there. Keep the cavern activity high and the activity other places will be high. At the current time their are 20 people in the cavern's public places. Yet none of us are. Instead we're here complainging about the inactivity. Well drive up activity and there won't be inactivity. Participate in these events. Go to the Guild's fair next weekend. Go to the D'ni music festivals. Events are posted on the Messengers forums yet no one goes to them. Guess what, there is not going to be anything to do if no one wants to do anything.

And not only will you drive activity back to the cavern if even a small amount of us actually participate in the cavern activities. But being down there, will actually inspire us to create. There is a reason we all create places that fascinate us. It's cause we're all inspired by the same places to do so. We were all inspired by the cavern and it's ages at one point. THe more time we spend away from our respective "muses" the more time we will feel uninspired.

The flip side to this is the more time we spend actually fostering activity in the cavern,the more time Cyan's activity within the cavern will more than likely drive up. I'm sure they're feeling just as dejected as we are. But we're all forgeting a very key point to a multiplayer-online uru. You can't have a multiplayer-online uru without the most important part. Those multiplayers, actually have to be online. Crazy how that works.

[diafero]

There just continues to be no public way to play new Ages with people.

We could have that, at any time, as most here know. But for this to actually work out, I think we need support from either Cyan or the majority of the community, and I doubt the latter would happen without the first. Or maybe we should just do it, I don't know.

@Chloe: MOULa is so far away from what online Uru should look like, hanging around there has me even more depressed, actually. It reminds me of what we could have, right now. With some little admin support, a story-writer and an age-builder in the team - you know what can be done. But the more I think of it, the more I have the impression that MOULa mostly serves to keep players from looking for other places to play online. Yes, it's unfair to think that way, but I can't help myself.

[kaelisebonrai]

@Chloe: I go to /every/ Guild Fair and All Guilds Meeting. the only one I missed was the first. And to get to the AGM every month? I stay up until 8am the next day, just so I can be present.

I don't go to the dance parties - They're not what I come to Uru for. They're just not my cup of tea - Some people love them, and that's fine. But if that's all there is to do, in Uru... Uru will be dead before long. It /cannot/ sustain itself on that alone. We *are* losing people. And its a very /real/ problem.

'Fero is right. There is a way to have new content online - and you know there is, Chloe.

We are being held back by Cyan and vocal people in the community. To be honest? It is them who are killing Uru, more surely than the hacking that is often rallied against. Uru is dying an agonising death, of slow, torturous stagnation.

Will Uru still be around when Cyan decides it is ready? Or will the people who can do stuff with it be long gone by then?

Maybe they'll be back... maybe they won't. Cyan is making a big gamble there - Fans who feel they have been treated poorly are not the sort who are inclined to do volunteer work for the company who they feel has treated them badly. Or even inclined to help the community they feel has scorned them...

The people we lose now? They might not come back. You /cannot/ sustain a community on promises alone, forever. When they finally decide to do things? It may be too late.

[GPNMilano]

We could have that, at any time, as most here know. But for this to actually work out, I think we need support from either Cyan or the majority of the community, and I doubt the latter would happen without the first. Or maybe we should just do it, I don't know.@Chloe: MOULa is so far away from what online Uru should look like, hanging around there has me even more depressed, actually. It reminds me of what we could have, right now. With some little admin support, a story-writer and an age-builder in the team - you know what can be done. But the more I think of it, the more I have the impression that MOULa mostly serves to keep players from looking for other places to play online. Yes, it's unfair to think that way, but I can't help myself.

Fero is right. There is a way to have new content online - and you know there is, Chloe.We are being held back by Cyan and vocal people in the community. To be honest? It is them who are killing Uru, more surely than the hacking that is often rallied against. Uru is dying an agonising death, of slow, torturous stagnation.

This is what i'm trying to explain to you guys. Stop thinking about Uru: Complete Chronicles. Focus, on MOUL. It's client. It's game files. Start building servers not for Complete Chronicles but for MOUL. Hoikas has shown that it is possible. Dustin is doing it as well. Put that info out there. Let people know you're building servers for MOUL with limited resources, and you may be surprised that Cyan won't say No. but actually say yes. The have allowed the hacking of MOUL for a reason: So these things can be talked about publicly. They're not going to shut you down for discussing creating fan servers for MOUL. They may actually help as they get their own binaries and server sources ready. Stop focusing on the past start looking towards the future. You want a test enviornment for MOUL? Then build it. It's that simple. MOUL's forum policiys are there for a reason:

HACKING MO:UL - As the plugins and code are released for MO:UL, discussions about the plugins and code are allowed for the purposes of learning and improving MO:UL, its variants (e.g., MORE, MO:ULagain, MO:UL Open Source), its plugins and its program code. The fine line here is if the discussion compromises Cyan's other products (e.g., Uru: Complete Chronicles, Hex Isle, MQO), which is not allowed (see below).
HACKING any other Cyan product - Discussions of or links to or the presenting of reverse engineering or exploits of any Cyan game (MO:UL and its variants expressly excepted) are not allowed. This includes tools used for the modifying of or distributing of copyrighted materials such as game executables, game data and game code.

Notice that people always look to the second and scream about the message being redacted. But no one looks at the first one "HACKING MO:UL" and thinks of the reality of what that's actually saying. You can start building servers now, and talk about it, without being in breach of forum policy. They just have to be for MOUL not CC.

[kaelisebonrai]

Test the theory, then, Chloe. Lets see how long it lasts. =)
Speak up on the MO:UL Forums about Talcum.

Never mind that the MO:UL clients have very real issues that make it less attractive than UCC. (Even with widescreen support, the secure download is awful, the framerate limiter is awful, the physics are atrocious, etc, etc)

Why give up what we have achieved already?

but, hey, post it in the forums. Go ahead. If you don't... what the hell, I might as well. =)

[diafero]

The difference is we have a well-working toolchain for CC - tools to build ages, analyse ages, hack through each and every game file, and a well-tested server. We don't have that for MOUL. Maybe I'm too stubborn or put too much work into Alcugs, but MOUL changed a lot, not everything for the better, and just like CC it can't be fixed by us. I can't count how many work-arounds for small or little issues I put into server and client, but all that work would have to start from scratch for MOUL. And it would be about as pointless.

So as long as MOUL is closed-source, there is *no* advantage whatsoever using MOUL, except for being able to talk about it on Cyan's forums. Oh, and there's that promise that we might one day get the source, but we are waiting for so long now, this is not an argument. On the minus, there's a lot of new uncertainties (let the protocol guessing start from scratch, hooray) and loosing a lot of content (almost all of the fan-ages and the integration we created for POTS, plus the converted ages). Another big issue for hacking is a missing single-player mode. Tools like UruStarter, which are necessary to get a reliable dataserver, have to be re-written (or the engine changed even more than I thought). So I really don't see a good reason to start hacking on MOUL. Sure, if we had the source, that'd beat everything, but until we have nothing but binaries (and for the server, not even them) - a promise is just not enough, not after how we got treated.

[GPNMilano]

Test the theory, then, Chloe. Lets see how long it lasts. =)
Speak up on the MO:UL Forums about Talcum.

Never mind that the MO:UL clients have very real issues that make it less attractive than UCC. (Even with widescreen support, the secure download is awful, the framerate limiter is awful, the physics are atrocious, etc, etc)

Why give up what we have achieved already?

but, hey, post it in the forums. Go ahead. If you don't... what the hell, I might as well. =)

I don't know enough about Talcum to do so or I would. Which is why I'm point out to others that do know enough about it to start speaking up.

This is going to sound harsh, and I'm sorry for that, but sometime harsh is the only way to go:

The difference is we have a well-working toolchain for CC - tools to build ages, analyse ages, hack through each and every game file, and a well-tested server. We don't have that for MOUL. Maybe I'm too stubborn or put too much work into Alcugs, but MOUL changed a lot, not everything for the better, and just like CC it can't be fixed by us. I can't count how many work-arounds for small or little issues I put into server and client, but all that work would have to start from scratch for MOUL. And it would be about as pointless.

So...basically what you're saying is rather than take the information you have now, all the years of work, and put it towards the next evolutionary step in the program that is Uru. And MOUL is the next step, it's the updated version like it or not, you'd rather stick with the old version that you know how to work with ease...because you don't want to work? So what you're saying is you're lazy?

So as long as MOUL is closed-source, there is *no* advantage whatsoever using MOUL, except for being able to talk about it on Cyan's forums. Oh, and there's that promise that we might one day get the source, but we are waiting for so long now, this is not an argument. On the minus, there's a lot of new uncertainties (let the protocol guessing start from scratch, hooray) and loosing a lot of content (almost all of the fan-ages and the integration we created for POTS, plus the converted ages). Another big issue for hacking is a missing single-player mode. Tools like UruStarter, which are necessary to get a reliable dataserver, have to be re-written (or the engine changed even more than I thought). So I really don't see a good reason to start hacking on MOUL. Sure, if we had the source, that'd beat everything, but until we have nothing but binaries (and for the server, not even them) - a promise is just not enough, not after how we got treated.

Like it or not MOUL has advantages over POTS that make it a better engine. It's got faster loading time for ages, support for integrated graphics chips for lower end computers, and updated shading support. As for the minuses, yes you'll have to start guessing at the protocals again. You won't lose all that much content cause A. Most of what was converted was in MOUL. That which wasn't would be easily portable to it, as MOUL, and Myst V/Crowthistle/Hex Isle all shared engine(s) that were much more similar to MOUL than to POTS. As far as the fan ages go, there's a plugin sitting out there, used by more than a few of us in this community with the ability to export to the MOUL engine and do stuff that PyPRP cannot at the present time. While work on PyPRP 2 stands at a standstill cause people aren't "inspired" enough to work on it. So the idea you're going to lose some "content" is bs. All of the fan ages can be converted using Cyan's plugin. I've offered to do this for a few people here in this community, non of them wanted to cause everyone seems to think that as long as they stick with CC we'll be okay. Well you won't. As long as you stay with the older engine, Uru will die. Eventually you have to stop reveling in the past and moving start moving forward. And the more you move forward towards MOUL and away from CC you may just be surprised at how cooperative Cyan is. Trust me on that. I know.

[diafero]

Of course I'm lazy. I don't want to work without seeing any gain from doing so. And while it's true that MOUL has some engine advantages, as I also wrote in another thread, our hacked-together CC has one big advantage MOUL can not outperform - It Works (TM). Are you suggesting to make an upgrade just for the sake of a higher version number? You named exactly *one* argument for switching to MOUL, that is faster age-loading times. And I agree, we can add that to the plus list. All the rest... I did not say we could not convert Myst V, CT and Hex Isle as well as our additions to Relto, Nexus Hood and city to MOUL. Of course it's possible. But it's additional work that would have to be done, costing far more time than the few seconds you save on each link. And concerning fan-ages, calling what you do "conversion" is an understatement. It's basically a re-wiring, if not even a re-creation. Not to mention that you need the blend file to do it. No, the only way we can get our content over is a POTS -> MOUL converter. Have fun disassembling the PhysX format. Not to mention that restricting age building to 3ds Max also heavily restricts the group of age builders to those that are lucky enough to find someone to buy it from, or are willing to work with a pirated version. 3ds Max is already now splitting age builders into two fractions, and for CC we have a working open-source solution. Or, in different words, another *big* minus for MOUL: We rely on a closed-source expensive application for content creation.

For the risk of repeating myself: I agree that MOUL is ultimately the way to go. If we had nothing now, no experience, no tools, no ages, and had to choose the engine, I would vote for MOUL. But you can not neglect the working toolchain (age creation, manipulation, in-game testing, debugging and integration, distribution, well-tested open-source server, ...) on the one side, while on the other side, much of this is missing (including age creation and a server, two core components!). So there needs to be a reason to put work into the MOUL engine. Hint: It's not "MOUL is the newer version".

You promise that Cyan would be more open iff we take this step. It's nice to see people that can still put trust into this company, but I can't.