Rand's visit and news for Age Creators

[Aloys]

Only it would have been if it was significantly differentt from the solo game. And even beyond that: I've gone through these Ages so many times I just need something new. If you dis regard Jalak and Minkata we've essentially been playing the same Ages over and over for nearly 5 years.. Even the City hasn't changed in all those years. I'm just tired of it.

[Tweek]

Only it would have been if it was significantly differentt from the solo game. And even beyond that: I've gone through these Ages so many times I just need something new. If you dis regard Jalak and Minkata we've essentially been playing the same Ages over and over for nearly 5 years.. Even the City hasn't changed in all those years. I'm just tired of it.

As much as I love Uru I find myself agreeing with you Aloys. Uru always had so much potential but never met it, now it has potential with fan Ages but I fear it will be a long time before that happens.

I'd be happy to be proved wrong. Little updates here and there, even from players would be nice, but Cyan have shown they don't really take player stuff on unless it's DRC contests.

[rivenwanderer]

I've personally been an Uru-skeptic from the start, longing for the days when all we had for canon was Myst and Riven and the books (so much easier to understand!), and people who wanted to make Ages linked Bryce (or Blender :p) renders together with HTML ("uphill in the snow both ways! and we liked it!" ). But seeing Uru come online first-hand this time was inspiring for me, because I finally saw a lot of fan energy in one place (instead of only seeing the teeny slice of the forums I check regularly). It gives me hope that, if/when I make Ages, they'll have an interested and not-completely-tiny audience, which is neat. (Even if I'm not sure that Cyan is likely to do anything useful with that surge of centralized fan energy )

[GPNMilano]

Only it would have been if it was significantly differentt from the solo game. And even beyond that: I've gone through these Ages so many times I just need something new. If you dis regard Jalak and Minkata we've essentially been playing the same Ages over and over for nearly 5 years.. Even the City hasn't changed in all those years. I'm just tired of it.

Sorry, I don't recall playing Delin or Tsogal before MOUL, nor visiting the pods and the updated version of K'veer.

While I agree that MOULAgain is just a rehash of everything we've had for the last five years, it is five years of content that would not exist if it were not for the support of Uru's fans, of which you are one of them.

To no one in particular just a not so friendly reminder to all:

*puts on queen b*tch hat*

I firmly believe that the only chance the game has right now of surviving past a 3d chatroom is the addition of Fan Created Content. Back in the Prologue/Ubi days, when Cyan had enough content built to last one year, I think things would have been different. I believe that if Ubi had not killed the game when it had the most amount of people it's probably ever had, then today we might not even be talking about fan created content. If the original vision for the game when it went from a single player, to a multiplayer game had worked out. And all the To'Dni and POTS content had been released as planned over the course of that first year, and the new ages built as the ready stuff was being rolled out, then more than likely the game would have survived, and probably taken off. But the market at the time for MMO's was very shaky. They were just really just starting to take off in the mass market, and people were not sure they would even last as long as they have. So Ubisoft made a business decision to kill the online portion of the game, and they and Cyan decided to release the remaining portion as Expansion Packs.

Then something truly remarkable happened, WE, not them, wanted to keep the game going. WE poured what WE could into it. We created the start of Until Uru. We hacked the game and tried to bring it back ourselves, and in doing so Cyan, seeing that devotion, believed that there was a shred of hope left for the game. So key employees began to help start servers, Cyan began to pour money into Uru, hoping beyond hope that this thing could still last. They took the money they made off of the remaining content that was repurposed for Myst V.

Off Topic: And make no mistake, that content was reused. The Kveer that existed in Myst V was originally meant for Uru, and the bottom of the Myst V's Descent was a retooled version of the one from Uru. The same models and textures were used, just for a different purpose. I have just about every age from Myst V imported into Blender, and both Kveer and Descent content from Uru was reused for Myst V. They may not have been finished yet, but they had been started. Nearly every single object that is in Descent from POTS (excluding the GZ marker and Watson's journal) is replicated in Myst V. Even the plasma light for the lamp is named RTWatsonOmniLamp in BOTH versions. Myst V used content intended for Uru Live. Plain and simple. And by doing so, by using Uru content for Myst V, it caused Descent to fall under the same loophole that allowed Cyan to use Kveer from Myst V in MOUL. So, legally, Cyan could use the Descent from Myst V if they so choose. but that is a discussion for another thread.

What is important here is what happened, We gave Cyan the hope it had for Uru after it's cancellation. Our devotion to the game caused Cyan to still believe that they game had a chance at some kind of survival. Those who blame Cyan for not giving us enough seem to forgot that we're the ones who inspired them to keep going with the game. They could have been like any other company and shelved the project and been done with it. They didn't, they choose to put more resources into a game that every person under the sun is probably telling them has no shot anymore, and our devotion to the game is what's causing that.

Cyan has made the decision to Open Source Uru. Something NO ONE thought they were going to do. Two years ago you guys claimed up and down that they'd never open source it. Then they do and you claim they'll never release the source. NEWSFLASH if they just open source it, under the kind of license most of us do want, than they have effectively cut off any revenue stream that they will ever have in the future. If they don't gut want can't be given out by them legally, they open themselves up to lawsuits that will bankrupt the company.

I want open source. I want fan created content, I want this game to flourish. But these things take time. Rome was not built in yada yada yada. You can be cynical and think that they won't give out the sources cause they're not doing it on YOUR time table. You can doubt that they ever will. But I ask you, what kind of an *Expletive Deleted* would ask a company to potentially bankrupt themselves just so that a few individuals could have some fun at making their own "vision" of a game free of charge to them and then have the audacity to blast them for not doing it quicker.

* takes off queen b*tch hat*

[BAD]

(I'm not laughing at GPNMillano btw )

[GPNMilano]

:lol:

(I'm not laughing at GPNMillano btw )

Don't make me put my hat back on

[Trylon]

Aww, and you looked so good in that hat

[Aloys]

I know the history all too well Milano. You are preaching to the choir here. The point I (along with other people) am trying to make is not that I'm exigent or impatient; it's just that this fan created content story has been going on for so long and there's no end in sight, and the first news that we have are not what we need to hear.. And as time passes people are leaving the community, and some of those staying are losing motivation. And I fear that when Cyan finally makes uru Open source we'll face a bit of a 'too little too late' situation.. Already many people are leaving for other games (SL etc) and there's more Uru activity going on there than in Uru. How absurd is that?
If there's anything we can do to try and speed things up; to motivate Cyan, or simply to help them, then I think we should do it. That's a constructive way of supporting them.

I believe that if Ubi had not killed the game when it had the most amount of people it's probably ever had, then today we might not even be talking about fan created content.

That's an interesting question. We'll probably never be able to answer it for sure, but even back then Cyan was already interested in fan created content. (it was during the Prologue days that we had the first Garrison stained glass DRC content). If the game would have been succesful who know how it would have evolved?.. I like to think that it would have included fan content at some point; probably just not to such a large extent. And certainly not with open source part of the equation.

NEWSFLASH if they just open source it, under the kind of license most of us do want, than they have effectively cut off any revenue stream that they will ever have in the future

Myth busting of the day: "omg if I open the source of my project my company is gonna die!" Wrong. Especially in Cyan's case.
Do you honnestly think they'll get any kind of decent revenue from the game as it is? They certainly can't sell it to any publisher, and with the current state of the game they can't hope to sustain a decent revenu stream. They are probably getting some good donations, and there is probably a couple dozen fans currently whilling to pay a monthly fee. But in the long run? Paying a monthly fee for the game as it is doesn't make sense. Even for a long time fan.
The real value of Uru is not in its codebase. This thing is years old, and I don't see anyone beside Cyan or us wanting to use it. The real value of Uru is in its IP, and that is not part of the Open source project. The way they will handle fan Ages approval will be important, but not to the point of diluting the IP's value for a potential investor.

It's a vicious circle: to make any money out of the game they need to enhance it. And to enhance it they need money. Weee... There are only three ways out:
1) External investor : That project has already failed commercially; twice. Let's rule that possibility out.
2) Donations : Will that get the hundreds of thousands of dollars they need? I doubt it.
3) Openning the game to fan content by making it Open Source : it's almost free to do, it can be done really fast and we are free ressoruce to help for the technical issues (sorting out the codebase and documenting it).

The re-opening of the game will hit the news on the web for another week or so, 90% of the donations will have taken place by that time. Past that point there is little hope for Cyan to make any more money from this. That's when they'll have to take a decision. If there is no visible evolution in the next three weeks, I'll consider it safe to assume that the OS project has entered the twilight zone again. Unless we try to do something and manifest ourselves.

[I.Brattin]

There is another option Aloys for Cyan that you didn't mention. Expansion Packs, Guild Wars is Free to Play but they sold Expansion Packs when they had new content to add to the game. Cyan could follow this model and add Expansion Packs. All they would need is someone to distribute it for them. That model worked for Arenanet as the original game funded the first expansion. First Expansion funded the second, and the Second Expansion funded the third. And the Third Expansion is funding Guild Wars 2. If it worked for Arenanet it could work for Cyan. All they need is the cash to implement the first expansion.

[Aloys]

This falls under the 'enhancemlents that need money to happen' category.