Cyan Worlds Announces "Myst Online: Restoration Experiment"

[woxel1]

Third time's a charm, eh? After bouncing the well-intentioned but poorly executed Myst Online (URU) between two publishers, the rights have returned to the developers Cyan Worlds. Now they're bringing it back, but this time they're opening Myst Online up to the fans!

Cyan's Letter to the Community

Myst Online: Restoration Experiment Roadmap
+ MORE servers will be restarted. These will be run by Cyan and run on machines that are either owned or leased by Cyan. The software and game assets will be as it was when Myst Online was shutdown on the GameTap servers. However, all accounts and avatars from the GameTap servers will not be available and will have to be re-created.

+ There will be some restructuring of MystOnline.com to accommodate the new direction of MORE. Including the forums and the policies running the forum.

+ Release of the 3DS Max Plasma plug-ins for creating MORE content. Release of the source for the plug-in (only) to the Guild of Writers. This will allow for the easier creation of fan created tools as well as being able to use what Cyan used for creating Myst Online content.

+ The Guild of Maintainers (in conjunction with Guild of Writers) will act as an agent in approving fan created content creation for MORE.

+ 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. Then a process will be created to bring Guild of Maintainers final approved and tested content forward to main server for all users to enjoy.

+ Release binaries for a few front end servers to be run on fan run servers (front end shards). These fan run servers will have to be registered with the Cyan server and will help alleviate bandwidth issues. These front end processes will be limited to game servers and file servers. All authentication and avatar databases would still be handled by Cyan servers. This way a user needs only one account with all their avatars, no matter what front end shard they connect to. As a matter of fact, accessing the front end shards will be seamless for the user, and they may never know (or care) which one they are running on.

+ Create processes and release binary updates to the front end shards so that shard owners can host specific age game instances (such as a particular Neighbourhood) and be able to control the states of that instance. End users will not have to do anything special other than link to that age and they will be routed to the shard that is hosting it. This will allow the front end shard owners to provide unique experiences on the age instance that they host. (By the way, the states the front end shard owner's change will only affect the instance of the age they are hosting and will not affect other age's states, even if it is the same age.)

+ (Pie in the sky milestone!) Cyan Worlds will create new content and storyline. This may be done solely by Cyan or in conjunction with the Guilds.

This is very good news for long-time Cyan aficionados such as myself, the ultimate hope being that support for MORE will allow Cyan to focus on more profitable enterprises... If anything, Myst Online will have to stay classy for the time being

Finally, for any remaining questions there will be a live "Press Conference" at Thursday July 3, 2008 at 9 AM Pacific Daylight Time (Noon Eastern) in #CyanChat. See all you Adventure GAFers there!

 

[woxel1]

Just a reminder, the chat with Cyan Worlds is starting here in a half-hour. I'll post the highlights once everything is sorted out.

 

[Prime crotch]

I still don't get how this will work.

 

[woxel1]

It's like a closed-party Second Life, now with more puzzles!

Serious answer though... it's a way to allow people to live out their Myst fantasies without being dependent on the developer (or the publishing model, for that matter), since content will spring from the fanbase directly now.

 

[woxel1]

When do you anticipate the servers coming back online?

I was waiting for that question...heh. As soon as we can. There is just Randy (not Rand) and I working on bring it back up. We want to do it as soon as possible. It is possible that it could be in months (ducks head).

Which countries will have access to the new Myst Online?

We hope to have the entire globe have access to MORE, meaning all countries!

What is your position on storyline related content from Cyan's part? I know you guys have said that Cyan content is still "pie in the sky" but what is your stance on continuing the storyline?

We definitenly want to continue the storyline. There will be story guidelines post by Cyan that for the user created content to stay away from so that we can continue.

A lot of good information came out of the conference. There's no need to post it all, but an edited ver. of the Q&A has been provided here for your convenience. I can't wait to explore the cavern again!