The purpose of the guild of writers is?

[Tsar Hoikas]

Seriously, Justin and I were just trying to get our opinion across, why did you have to insult us just because we disagree with you? We never attacked you to begin with.

Adam can certainly be blunt, but here? With the "talking to walls" statement, He's basically making the observation that you do not listen to argument, which, as far as I can tell is 100% true. I'll be the blunt one here, in his place: Who is insulting who, in a thread where the people whose hard work makes our age-writing possible at all, are implicitly being accused of being crooks and thieves, apparently hell-bent on ruining business for that there Cyan company, all for doing just that hard work?


Someone mentioned situations where statements were issued by spokesmen of said company. Let me tell you a little story of irony, by breaking down that tale in short points:

+ Rumors began to circulate, that there were still ways to run Uru online, in some form. All was calm and civilised.

+ Under some circumstances, somebody felt a bit left out of all this and decided to express his thoughts about this on forums. A litle bit of steam puffed out to one side of the lid, but the contents of the kettle remained easily contained, the surface of the water barely stirring.

+ At this point some well-intentioned individual, with slighly misaligned logical thinking, decided to cause a a ruckus about the prospect of the rumors being true and possible consequences thereof. This made it hard to maintain the status quo, because the individual proved determined to LET THE WORLD KNOW!

+ The individual wound up contacting Cyan and telling them they MUST DO SOMETHING, OR TEH WORLD WILL END!!!

+ With a ghost image of the cat evicted from the bag, Cyan had to make some form of statement to cover their posterior.

The well intentioned individual did not, as he thought, inform Cyan about an atrocity they had no clue about. What he infact did do, was to force their hand. It's always a good bit of comic tragedy to see somebody's attempts to do good having the exact opposite consequences...

You guys are doing one thing: creating a problem where none exists.

If you wish to have slightly cleaner hands in your age-building, I could furnish you a suite of tools that uses no reverse engineering whatsoever - it'll download in literally no time at all and use up zero storage.

+1

You're a much better poster than I am.

[Justintime9]

Ok, first off, I agree completely that our ages wouldn't be possible without hacks, that's not what this is all about. If it were, I would completely understand Hoikas being annoyed (I know saying the same thing over and over to people who don't seem to listen can be quite maddening.)

However, the qualms I have are with not hacks in general, but with certain ones that do not relate to age creation, and don't appear to be helping it in any way. Of course I do not believe that all such hacks are so terrible (being able to run around in Noloben in URU is pretty awesome, and mostly consistent with canon). I have a problem when something completely foreign from URU's canon is added. (such as the ability to convert hex isle ages).

Hoikas is claiming that he's "talking to the wall", but really, who's not listening here? Where in this post did anyone say claim that "all hacks are evil"? The argument that we're just a bunch of ignorant naive morons that want to stop all hacks (even ones that help age creation) is a complete straw man.

[ddb174]

What does it matter if it is canon or not? As has been said, Uru is itself inconsistent, not only with earlier Myst games, but also with other versions of Uru. And not just because Cyan accidentally missed something, but because they don't actually care much about canon. That isn't necessarily a bad thing: Zelda makers have never cared much about canon either.

I'm very well acquainted with every single fan Age, having completely explored, read the journals, and solved the puzzles. And I've noticed that the large Ages tend to purposefully *not* take place in the Uru universe. E.g. Takla Ma'kan, Sonavio, Olbahnneea. You are free not to install them if you do not want, just as you are free not to convert HexIsle. So why complain that some people will want all these things, when it does not affect you? Do you want to ensure that no-one else sees non-canon either?

[Justintime9]

It is true that URU's cannon has never been quite consistent, but it has always been within reason (with the exception of the UU days, which don't even exist in canon). They've always been small breaks, within the URU universe. For example, Sonavio and Takla Makan don't necessarily go against canon.

I've always thought of them as simply ages written by a certain individual that has it's own side story, completely separate from URU's. They don't contradict anything. Hex isle on the other hand, completely shatters all continuity, and can't be explained in terms of URU. (at least not in the realistic fashion that other breaks can.)

How does it affect me you ask? First of all, It's a mockery of both URU and Hex isle, and has no place in the URU universe whatsoever. (I'm sorry if that sounds harsh.) Second of all, what's even the point? You can't even play the game in URU (hex isle), and it contributes nothing to the URU universe as the MYST v. ages do. Finally, will it stop there? Probably not. It's been mentioned that magiquest ages may be fair game as well (no pun intended). Does this contribute anything to age creation?

[Chacal]

Does this contribute anything to age creation?

Yes. I thought I had made that clear. All hacks contribute to age creation because it is how we gain the knowledge that makes age creation possible.

[Jojon]

However, the qualms I have are with not hacks in general, but with certain ones that do not relate to age creation, and don't appear to be helping it in any way. Of course I do not believe that all such hacks are so terrible (being able to run around in Noloben in URU is pretty awesome, and mostly consistent with canon). I have a problem when something completely foreign from URU's canon is added. (such as the ability to convert hex isle ages).

I'd point you to Dustin's post, earlier, where he explained that HexIsle is implmented using a build of the Plasma game engine (same as Uru) and how we, by studying it, learn more about this Plasma creature in general and of features from that build (which may make it into future UruExplorer builds), specifically. In other words: it DOES relate to age creation.

As for the providing of the conversion tool (which, I'll reiterate, requires you to own HexIsle and to actively opt for the conversion to take place): how does it hurt, exactly?

EDIT: In response to arguments you posted while I wrote this:
1) Don't want? -Don't convert. Can't keep two pieces of fiction separated in your mind? -Don't convert.
2) Depends on your fancies, I suppose. Why restrict the freedom of others, just because I or you don't want something? + response 1
3) Yes; it contributes yet more Plasma lore. + response 1 and 2 If somebody want to visit their paid Magiquest locations using UruExplorer, for whatever reason and however lame I may think it is, who am I to place restrictions on him/her?
EDIT END

Hoikas is claiming that he's "talking to the wall", but really, who's not listening here? Where in this post did anyone say claim that "all hacks are evil"? The argument that we're just a bunch of ignorant naive morons that want to stop all hacks (even ones that help age creation) is a complete straw man.

Possibly. That would, however, be a strawman built out of different perpectives, which in turn are based on knowledge: the developers knows how things are interconnected and in some ways inseparable and how certain things does help. This makes for no strawman, since you can't say "A", without also saying "B". Others amongst us do not know what the developers knows, until it is explained to us, as it was by Dustin and from our limited perspective, there may indeed seem to be a strawman.

Being naive and ignorant is nothing to be ashamed of -- we are all that. The only shameworthy thing would be to refuse to take in knowledge, which I'm naive enough to think nobody here would do.

Then; even if HexIsle WAS irrelevant to age-building; who am I to put restrictions on others?

[BAD]

Ok, first off, I agree completely that our ages wouldn't be possible without hacks, that's not what this is all about. If it were, I would completely understand Hoikas being annoyed (I know saying the same thing over and over to people who don't seem to listen can be quite maddening.)

However, the qualms I have are with not hacks in general, but with certain ones that do not relate to age creation, and don't appear to be helping it in any way. Of course I do not believe that all such hacks are so terrible (being able to run around in Noloben in URU is pretty awesome, and mostly consistent with canon). I have a problem when something completely foreign from URU's canon is added. (such as the ability to convert hex isle ages).

Hoikas is claiming that he's "talking to the wall", but really, who's not listening here? Where in this post did anyone say claim that "all hacks are evil"? The argument that we're just a bunch of ignorant naive morons that want to stop all hacks (even ones that help age creation) is a complete straw man.

OMG I can't believe your making post again..........

I swear this is the last time I am saying this......

Please read Justin.

The GOW is not responsible, nor did they ever claim to care or try to enforce any rules that would protect Uru's canon in any way what so ever. It is not, never was, and never will be a fan groups responsibility to maintain things like that.

Look I even put it in a pretty color to get your attention. Now please stop trolling this forum.

[Justintime9]

Where on here did you say that? Honestly, it's pretty hard to address every single argument people make, when there's a million people trying to argue with me. (and I'm being insulted at every turn)

The GOW is not responsible, nor did they ever claim to care or try to enforce any rules that would protect Uru's canon in any way what so ever. It is not, never was, and never will be a fan groups responsibility to maintain things like that.

Isn't that the purpose of the Guild of Archivists? I know they have not been formed yet, but shouldn't there be a least some regulation on such things? The D'ni GoW had plenty of rules. Rules to keep the art from being misused etc. I agree that a fan group's responsibility is not to protect cannon, but when that fan group is creating content for the game, they should have some standard.

Edit: As far as me being a troll, here's the wiki definition of Troll is:

In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts controversial, inflammatory, irrelevant or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room or blog, with the primary intent of provoking other users into an emotional response[1] or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion.[2]

First of all, nothing I'm saying is irrelevant to the topic, nor is anything intended to be inflammatory, or to "[provoke] other users into an emotional response". And as far as controversial, the very nature of this topic is controversial, so I can hardly be accused to being so more than others.

[Paradox]

I see that this isn't going to go anywhere, and just serves as another reminder that people will always oppose any sort of progress or change.

We don't even need to make that point.
We don't need to listen to the same complainers coming back with the same arguments over and over again like religious zealots, trying to impose restrictions on what we do.
We accept no restriction.
We need no approval.

We hack Uru and will continue to do so.
Live with it.

We are not adding Hex Isle to Uru's canon. We are adding features to a tool that allows content from a version of Plasma to be converted to another. If you chose to use it to add Hex Isle to Uru's canon, that is your decision.

But nobody (including Cyan) has the right to ask Dustin (or anyone else) to stop working on a project simply because they disagree with a potential use of it.

[Jamey]

We are the Guild of Writers.
The guild was created initially by Cyan Worlds.
Since Uru is basically Cyan's game, shouldn't we be following what Cyan would like for us to do? What would you want if you were in Cyan's position?

Shouldn't we be showing respect to Cyan, and what they have done for us?

Let's reverse our positions for a second.

Let's say that Cyan Worlds represents the fans, and the people here on the GoW were the creators of Uru.

We give the fans the chance to create user-created content for "our" game. Cyan/The Fans, create tons of new places to explore, ranging from great to not-so-great. Then we see that the fans are starting to add, say, Half-Life 2 levels. Would we want something like that in our game that makes no sense?

Would we not be concerned about how slowly but surely, the fans are slowly but surely becoming out-of-control, doing whatever they want with a game that "we" put money, hopes and dreams into? Would "we" really want to trust these people?

[/Example]

I've said this before in another topic, and I will say so again seeing it fits very well. I think we should be asking ourselves two questions in these kinds of situations "What would Cyan do?" and "Would Cyan be OK with what I am doing?" and abide by them whenever possible.

Because the fact is, Uru does not belong to us. It belongs to Cyan. We should show some respect to not only Cyan, but the game they created as well.

Does anyone here still care about Cyan Worlds? I know I sure do, without them, I wouldn't be here right now.

If I've upset or offended anyone in this post, I apologize as it is not my intention. It's my hope that you to understand where I am coming from, and hopefully take it into consideration. Please.