As someone in my office said (as I’m sure was murmured countless times across the country…), happy super fat Tuesday. Enjoy the pancakes and enjoy the exit polls, I’ll probably be skipping both.
And in good news, 18 and one!
And in more good news, the rumor is that the writers strike will be over very soon (like Friday)!
And from the good, to the bad:
Very sad news today, Myst Online: URU Live has been cancelled. No more season two, no more Cavern, no more URU. I sometimes think it could come back again, but after two cancellations, I really don’t see it happening, which is very sad indeed. So much of URU has been like Firefly/Serenity, and it was wonderful to see both get a second chance, but a third is probably pushing it.
URU really is (for 60 days at least) wonderful, in a day where critics praise Mass Effect for offering something new to video games, mainly a dash of ethical decisions, it’s funny that never once in those articles are URU or the Myst series brought up, when they are packed with ethical and moral choices (pride, slavery, domination of an entire race, power, corruption), but who am I to say what game critics are right about?
URU Obsession will stick around, we never go away. Although it will be a little strange to say the least (but then again, we’re all strange anyway). I’m sure we’ll change and adapt, we always do, who knows, maybe we’ll branch out into other games (GRIMM and Sam&Max are up there for me, well, if I could get Sam&Max to run…), although chances are, Cyan will come up with something else for us to obsess over (and the pending release of Myst DS in the US, along with rumors of Myst Wii and Riven DS). But of course, I’ll miss the people, seeing them in The Cavern, talking with them on my lunch break, working on promotional plans (Grassroots 2.0 is now dead in the water, sorry) and discussing the newest Ages over the Lyst (ok, so I just lurk, but I love reading every bit of it, even if I only post once in a blue moon).
And of course I’ll miss going into The Cavern, if only by myself. I always loved sitting in the Great Zero, watching it spin. And the new Ages Cyan gave us this time around, I loved the team-building garden Ages, and the sandbox area of Jalek (and the sandbox of Minkata), and it’s sad to think of how the Guilds will once again fall apart (if they hadn’t already, Messenger meetings made my head hurt).
We’ll still have the original cd-rom URU, but it won’t be the same, and we know that, but it can at least fill the void if we ever need it. I’m going to try to fill out my URU Live gallery before the end (so weird to think we’re coming up on another end, that wait is always awful).
But in the spirit of Atrus, let us not forget that while this is sad and heart-wrenching (funny how something can get under your skin and bring people together to form a community), new things will come about. I for one and excited and hopefully that we’ll finally get to see latus (I also still think that it’s some sort of GPS device, like a KI, that puts people in the game in real time, in real space), or maybe something completely different, I’d love to see what Cyan could come up with, maybe something more futuristic.
But for now, we’ll digress, we’ll discuss, we’ll mourn and we’ll stay close. The next 60 days will be tough, going past the one year anniversary (party still going on as far as I know) and even harder as URU draws to a close. Maybe we all sleep a little sounder knowing that we were a part of something new and amazing, something that pushed the boundaries over and over again, and ultimately, was a success, due to the content, the choices we faced, and the fans. Enter The Growers.
