The mysterious something in the works has been revealed. According to the spokesman review, Cyan Worlds will be putting the future of Uru further into the hands of it’s fans than previously intended, by releasing the source to the game servers, client, and tools, (Weren’t they going to do that to some extent under the MORE plan?) as well as run a dataserver serving the Myst Online content. The difference appears to be that they will not be actually hosting the game servers themselves, but will be allowing the fans to take control of the indvidual servers much as they did during Until Uru, except this time possibly with the ability to further develop the system and fix bugs. 

Discussion of this recent development has begun to accumulate in the various forums, and the news has appeared in a few other places as well. 

Personally, I remain somewhat skeptical, as I don’t see exactly how this would require less work on Cyan’s part than MORE did. However, this is certainly a hopeful development.

Uru Live has been canceled again, yes, sigh, read that again, Uru Live has been cancelled again, and I think it’s really gone this time. I don’t exactly have warm fuzzy feelings for gametap, especially after having them keep posting about how we should stay around for the hundreds of other games they have to offer. :P However, while I won’t be returning to them, they gave Uru a chance it didn’t get before. Almost a full year of service. Still, it was all foundation, and no building. It left one sitting out in the cold in between, while the workers had left for the night.

I don’t expect Uru to continue like it did last time, as it won’t be “Until” Uru anymore, even though the hacking community has much more of a head start than it did at the time of the last cancellation. Two cancellations is not something a game can survive, one would think. There is still another problem though.

This time, the game has left behind more empty foundations than before. The push for guilds in the future has left in it’s wake a number of separate explorer organizations, in various stages of development. What they are, and whether they will continue in some form is a big question. Will they dissolve, or continue to work towards different goals? The Guild of Writers is, at this point, entirely self-sufficient, the only question is whether the motivation to create will remain. Other groups such as the messengers and greeters were entirely dependent on the game, and their future is much more uncertain

On the same note, this site has recently acquired it’s own domain, just days before the announcement of the end. There are a lot of people who put a lot of work and some of their life into this world.

Finally, there is the community as a whole. I have my doubts about how cohesive it will remain without a central meeting place like Uru, but it we will see. For now… I don’t know. The aftermath will now begin.

http://www.gametap.com/forums/thread.jspa?threadID=13953

I may yet show up in the cavern for the last goodbyes. :(

Today was quite a day. The recap is .. well, long. Started out finishing Ahnonay with Robert, and meeting up in K’veer. Then Yeesha and the Bahro link in on top of me, and I record it. (this led me to actually start a topic on the forum) Then I met up with most of the usual crew and we opened the door in Tsogal for somone. (Twice, actually, as they fell the first time) Somehow that meeting ended up with a lot of early uru memories and reminiscing, with a little technical age building discussion mixed in. Then we went down to the hood and started a game of sardines in Ahnonay, Sphere 1. I this place has potential for good games of sardines. It’s not so linear that you can run through it and be guaranteed to enter voice chat range of the hider at least once, but it’s not so open as Minkata, where you’ll never find anything, let alone one avatar. This first round resulted in some cool pictures which I have posted below. ;)

Well, after the servers effectively went down for a few hours.. I managed to get in and get in line for a book. Immediately after, however, I moved on to Isyldar’s Ahnonay, as he was interested to see how the meter would react to multiplayer. Having recently played around in PotS with the age, I pointed out one area which had become surprisingly easy to reach due to the physics change. Later, when Robert and Jan arrived, Izy went out and demonstrated that the islands in the scenery really are solid. :D I’ll probably post some more KI pics on this post later, when we’ve explored some more.

The update for the Season Finale: Episode 9: Exodus has hit the servers. As of this writing, there are 4 days, 7 hours, 17 minutes, and 13 seconds until November 1st 2007. Fall decorations already adorn the hoods, with pumpkins, gourds, and leafy wreaths. A few early notes about the update include a fix for the hood visitor imagers. (they finally update in real time) However, it seems to have introduced a problem with the KI, where it is impossible to operate it’s (clickable) interface while sitting, dancing, raising your hand, or any other animations. (those listed being the most extended, and thereby the most annoying) Oddly, the hood kickables did not entirely reset with this update, instead, only about half of them returned to their original locations.