Have you heard?

Mudpie Parable Myst Online Uru Uru Live Myst Online: Uru Live is back for yet another iteration, MORE¹. Not the outliner from the days when Winer was still relevant and Symantec could still publish useful software; no, MORE is short for Myst Online Restoration Experiment. I suppose I appreciate the candor on Cyan’s part that this isn’t much beyond an “experiment”, but that doesn’t make me worry any less that it hasn’t been thought through much.

I know for a fact that I’m not alone with my opinion, but I remain shocked by how few people share it. The popular type of response to Cyan’s announcement², judging from the average post on MO:UL Forums, is cheerful.

I cannot blame anyone for getting excited. I can, however, ask that people refrain from attacking someone for being critical. So when someone writes:

It is my firm belief that a major contributory factor to the low numbers on MOUL was the vociferous presence on this and other public forums of a section of the player base who felt their function was to complain, at each and every opportunity, that there was no new content [..]

…then I can barely contain my anger. There’s about a thousand reasons Uru has yet to be much of a success, and it is my firm belief that too much criticism is not one of them. Seldom has this been as obvious as with this announcement.

Among the people who do dare be critical is Zardoz, who writes:

At the risk of incurring the wrath of the NCC (No Complaints Crowd), that is one strange press release. It uses the word “roadmap” three times, yet never clearly identifies what the heck the “roadmap” is.

He goes on to quote the release³:

The plan is to start to move the content creation - the “Art” - to you.

You could argue that this is little but a 2008 version of Untìl Uru, at a higher price tag, with a far more mature toolkit. Or that the above statement is a euphemist means of saying “we’re turning Uru into little but a hobbyist project”?

I’m cynical enough that I’m not even quite sure MORE is better than nothing. Depending on how well it goes (and I hold that Untìl Uru did not go well), it may very well end up damaging Uru’s reputation even further, thereby needlessly making it even less likely that there will ever be an “Uru” that remotely resembles the original vision.

But my criticism isn’t that they’re doing this; it’s that they’re making it sound as if they did their homework. Perhaps there’s something significant we’re not being told, but while getting the rights back is an impressive feat⁴, it is a great exaggeration to speak of a “plan”, much less a “roadmap” here. What is MORE but a piece of unfinished technology thrown at its enthusiasts for them to play with?

The hard part of Uru has never been to play it. It hasn’t been to create worlds for it (for lack of experience/motivation/effort, a lot of fans are struggling, but interesting concepts are out there), or to want for it to become popular. If you ask me, the hard part has been to convince yourself that the concept is compelling, capable and coherent enough to, well, actually work. And MORE hasn’t made that any easier. If anything, it has shifted the burden of ‘making much sense’ towards the fans to resolve.

The Uru concept fails as soon as you try to imagine more than 200 people roaming about the city. Or as soon as someone solves any puzzle on, say, Eder Gira. In-story instancing just doesn’t cut it. There likely is no alternative to instances, but it confounds me that Cyan chose to put it inside the storyline. Quite the breach of suspension of disbelief, don’t you think?

Challenges

In fact, popularity aside, believability will certainly be among the hardest challenges for MORE to face, and I can’t help but worry that the leadership of the explorer-based guilds just isn’t up to it. Is anyone actually expecting fans to accomplish what Cyan couldn’t: to deliver a concept you can immerse yourself in?

Closely linked to this is avoiding retcons. Again, this is something Cyan didn’t fare too great at during Myst Online: Uru Live. Examples include “Bevins” (I can hear some people shudder)⁵, or, as mentioned, instances suddenly being part of the story. And in the original Uru already, the drastic change of making linking rules optional was implemented.

Next up: quantity. Oh, I know what you’re thinking: you’d rather have quality. But, see, the most gorgeous, breathtaking place with the most frustrating, tough but rewarding puzzles and immersive, suspenseful, inspiring storyline isn’t going to be worth much when everyone has gotten through it. I’m not discouraging the Guild of Writers from putting a ton of thought and work into what they do; far from it. But when it comes to (most of) Cyan’s content, especially what they did for the original Uru Live, it had quality. It delivered.⁶ What they didn’t deliver on — and, given the low amount of resources they had, I don’t blame them at all — is quantity. Now, while there are naturally many more fans (thus, potential Age designers) than there ever have been Cyan employees, churning out a sufficient amount of content that keeps people busy (and joining!) won’t be a breeze.

Sustainable growth. This was already alluded to with Untìl Uru’s name, but MORE makes this even clearer: Cyan is doing this as an attempted precursor to an ‘actual’ Uru where they get to contribute again. For them to do that, MORE needs to attract two kinds of people: those who have long since given up as well as those who have never bothered to try, or possibly never even heard of it. Growth doesn’t mean someone new joining in every day or two. Growth means having such an influx that everyone — Cyantists, Age writers, guild members and mere explorers — is equally motivated to keep going. Such an influx that, at some point, Cyan can flip the switch and turn this into something commercial again, which — like it or not — needs to happen sooner rather than later. Nobody could possibly want for Uru to remain in the life-support state of MORE.

Example. While Cyan has pushed out a lot of content over time, they haven’t actually shown much of the development process. Conversely, the explorers who are more open about that don’t have anywhere near as much experience. It’ll be a while until suitable tutorials and “Good Practices” guides start appearing.

These challenges aren’t easy. They are difficult enough that Cyan never truly managed to tackle them. They’ll be even harder for the community to work on, given its relative lack of structure compared to a company. That’s probably part of why Cyan emphasizes guilds and authority in their statement, but we’ve seen this fail miserably before with the liaisons. Not because the liaisons failed to try, but because their authority, despite elections, was not taken seriously by community members, as well as because their function and non-function hadn’t been clearly defined by the DRC (or anyone else) beforehand.

Likelihood

You can call me cynical and accuse me of pessimism all you want, but I don’t feel the odds are good. I’ve seen too many failures around Uru, and then too much finger-pointing in the aftermath. And bluntly? I haven’t seen a truly successful product come out of Cyan since Riven. Hard to live up to, but then Presto’s Exile or Ubisoft’s Revelation were probably successes about as big as realMyst, Uru: ABM, Uru: tPotS, Crowthistle, End of Ages and MO:UL together.

I could make my job simple and ask Cyan to think outside the box, but everyone and their son and mom have already evoked that cliché… or have they?

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You have to admire the doggedness Cyan has shown about wanting this to work somehow. But then, you also have to wonder if they’re doing themselves — or anyone — a favor with it. Try as I may, I just cannot stop wondering what would have happened had they not discarded the original, single-player idea of DIRT. Still ambitious, sure, but much more within the realm of what they were familiar with. And the best part? Had it been a smashing success, they could have built Mudpie on top of it. With more money, more resources, and an existing, excited, user base. A user base that — excuse the pun — would have wanted “MORE”.

Et toi, Cyan?

And don’t they still have that option? Sure, they have since retconned the fictional universe like crazy, and yes, End of Ages features much of what DIRT would have, but don’t they still have the opportunity to show us D’ni from a completely new perspective? The Myst Movie purportedly does, by interpreting The Book of Ti’ana in its own right.

As much as I agree that casual games could be a way of getting Cyan’s name back out there, I also believe they shouldn’t throw away their potential of doing something more… grand.

Fortunately, they’re not ruling it out entirely: the roadmap does list a suitable “pie in the sky milestone”. The other very positive aspect of it; one that exceeded my expectations:

Release of the 3DS Max Plasma plugins for creating MORE content. Release of the source for the plugin (only) to the Guild of Writers.

This is great, unexpected (to me) news. Their toolkit likely won’t compete well against Spore Creature Creator, or even just Second Life, but it will be a leap from what has been possible so far, especially for people already familiar with 3dsmax.

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I don’t want to be that guy. The one who incessantly bashes. I don’t criticize to make everyone feel bad, to discourage, to destroy.

Truth be told, I’m scared. I think that’s the right word. I’m scared that, once again, Cyan comes up with a concept that isn’t really thought through entirely, and everyone gets all excited over something that, as it will turn out mere months later, just isn’t going to work. Proof?

Create methods and processes for testing fan created MORE content. How this will work has not been determined but is crucial for fan created content.

If it’s “crucial”, its mode of operation should be “determined”, wouldn’t you say?

I don’t trust the community to simply figure out and fill in blanks like that. I do, however, wish them all the best. Cyan deserves it, the fans deserve it, and the original vision of Uru sure does.

1. Not listing DIRT here because that was a distinct concept. ↩
2. They don’t seem to consider important enough to put on their website’s news page. Instead, a blog broke the story. Does Cyan want to garner attention? ↩
3. Despite its name suggesting as much, it neither has the typical form of a press release — where’s the company description? what does “Shorah” mean to the average person? — , nor has it apparently been spread to any news distribution companies such as PR Newswire. Why not? ↩
4. It should be noted that Cyan did not entirely accomplish this:
   

   [A]t some point, if a commercially successful revival comes about, [Cyan and GameTap] have an agreement on how each will be compensated, he added.

   ↩

5. Previously, Bevin was one single particular neighborhood; now, it has become the template of a particular common kind of neighborhood. Not quite the same. ↩
6. Arguably, not a single of Uru’s ages were quite as magnificient as Riven, but then that one’s going to be hard to top. ↩