The purpose of the guild of writers is?

[Jamey]

Justin, Jamey:

I'll conclude my participation in this thread with a small request.

When debating from a defensive position, it is all too easy to become entrenched. If you don't mind, I would ask you to please quietly reread this thread in a week or two, when the sniper fire has died down and the pressure is off, preferrably with slightly different dogma-to-logic ratio goggles. I'm not saying "revive it", just read.

I'll promise to do the same.

I will most definitely do that. I'm sure through all the fighting and arguments, there was a great deal that I misunderstood.

I wish everyone peace, and hope to work with most of you in the future

[Justintime9]

Likewise for me

[J'Kla]

As a point of order Cyan did give out the original server code for UntilUru OK so at a later date they did pull the plug on it. It was after Ubi Soft reneged on the original project and people could not get into the original Uru Live after buying the original Uru game. You had to pay for a Kagi Key but that was almost a handling charge.

I seem to recall a groundswell of feeling that there was no new content and lot's of people visited but only a few stayed.

Now we have loads of new content that has no interference with cannon And no public shards to share this content.

Counter to my point of order Cyan/GameTap promised lots of new ages to see in MO:UL I seem to recall nearly all of it was the ages we had seen in ToD'ni and Path of the shell released piecemeal in dribs and drabs. These ages were so awe inspiringly new they were old before they downloaded. I am not saying there was no new stuff Mitaka was awesome but four shell ages we have enough new ages all produced by what is largely one man operations using home computers Blander and a few hacked tools.

Cyan have made some quality but have fallen woefully short on value for money. Just imagine if they had lived up to their hype the Game tap experiment just may have worked.

Imagine we were able to do that experiment over again but instead of flapping about getting the odd new age and old recycled ages we were dumped enmasse all of the To'Dni Path of the shell stuff and say ten of our fan made ages (I don't intend saying which ten) Cyan then embed some journeys in those fan created ages and relto pages a couple of clothing items and a few scattered journals with stuff you had to find and read.

Personally the acting thing was OTT and an excuse for a flash crowd.

I want to do this and just can't figure out what's stopping us. Oh yes I just remembered we are stillllllll waitinnniiiigggg for CYAN

[Trylon]

Imagine we were able to do that experiment over again but instead of flapping about getting the odd new age and old recycled ages we were dumped enmasse all of the To'Dni Path of the shell stuff and say ten of our fan made ages (I don't intend saying which ten) Cyan then embed some journeys in those fan created ages and relto pages a couple of clothing items and a few scattered journals with stuff you had to find and read.

Personally the acting thing was OTT and an excuse for a flash crowd.

Yeah, that would be//have been cool. I was pretty frustrated when we spent almost a year waiting until we were through getting all the olf content back, and then the plug was pulled. I was so hoping the 2nd season would be a major improvement over the first.
One of my main points of annoyance was the static environment of Moul. Once an age was released it would almost indefinitely stay the same. All the while, there were so much possibilities for keeping them alive... I mean, there were supposed to be all kinds of people visiting all over the place.... Why not have them affect all the existing ages in some way (like leaving stuff around, changing a few settings, etc). It could've done wonders for the story. All we had now, was some acting, which boiled down to reading chatlogs the day after (though strangely, I didn't consider chatlog reading too boring at that time).

Ahh, the old days of MOULdy bread....


P.S.
Jojon, good job!

[Chacal]

We sent lots of suggestions tp Cyan, but it soon became evident that they had so few resources that they couldn't even manage the suggestions, let alone implementing them.

For instance, I once sent the idea to Ryan (GreyDragon) to have some explorers play the role of DRC workers. You would see them seemingly busy in the City, in places about to be open to the public. Remember the sounds in the City? Clanking noises, tool noises, etc. Someone has to make them. Someone has to actually restore the areas, remove barriers, etc.

Those would be ordinary Joes (jeans, t-shirt, hardhat), not DRC scientists, and they would have some interaction with the explorers, in a "I only work here" sense, perhaps bitch a little about the DRC, etc.

All it needed was a Nexus link to unopened areas for some explorers. And a few e-mails to agree about who should say what. No special privileges or anything. Perhaps put one explorer in charge of coordinating the workers.

GreyDragon's answer was something like "yeah, great idea, quite feasible, I wish I had time to think about it". Which gives you an idea on how stretched out those guys were.

Another avenue we explored was the inclusion of fan work and fan Ages into first MOUL, then MORE, then MOOSE(?).
Remember these?
November 2007: Finding old or making new?
July 2008: 4 models for bringing user content to MORE

[Tsar Hoikas]

Here's a valuable lesson that I learned long ago: Cyan doesn't accept outside help. They might talk about it, but it's just that. Talk.

[Jamey]

Do you think Cyan may be bound by legal restrictions or could it be something else?

[Paradox]

Remember when Cyan had all those meetings with GoW and GoMa to discuss how the guilds would be handling FCALs?
Remember how they announced it, and everyone was working to get ready for it, and then Cyan suddenly went silent again and the whole process collapsed?

Yeah, I've seen that happen a few times, and I can't actually think of any instances where Cyan followed through with what they said. I don't think it's a legal issue, otherwise the discussions probably wouldn't have happened in the first place. I think it's a chronic ignorance at Cyan of how to deal with a community.

[Chacal]

Well, there's the problem of Cyan being led by Rand, who had his definite idea on how Uru should evolve and about the relationship betwwen Cyan and fans. It has been said before, but who knows how it would have turned out if it had been the other brother at the helm?

Also, plain old being overwhelmed. Cyan is not EA, they can't afford to have teams of product managers, community managers and PR people on the roster. What little money they were given had to go in priority to designers, developers and QA. So in the end there were, what, 3 or 4 guys doing anything not dev-related, not counting Tweek, who may or may not have been on the payroll . Remember, the infamous "Cyan legal" has never been more that one part-time guy!

[Dhelayan]

Here's a valuable lesson that I learned long ago: Cyan doesn't accept outside help. They might talk about it, but it's just that. Talk.

Absolutely...our community has so many creative people who could really contribute awesome things to make URU more attractive...but instead Cyan announces one thing after another, and none of it really comes..