As you may or may not know, a few years ago, Cyan Worlds released URU. It was always intended to be an ambitious mmo set in the D'ni universe, but Ubi Soft asked Cyan to make a single player component at the last minute, then cancelled the online component just before it launched to the general public, citing low projected subscription rates. However, later this year, Uru Live will be resurrected as Myst Online:Uru Live on GameTap. I think that, as this is the only mmo of its type, it would be interesting to make some predictions and discuss this a bit. What can the appeal of a mmo adventure game be? How will it fare commercially? Etc. This discussion might be useful to analyze the merits of mmo adventure games as a genre. I think it can draw in a more general audience than most mmos. The game is inherently less threatening than an mmo with a steep learning curve and frequent dying. Also, though Myst is in a fantasy world, it is "family friendly" while still having plenty of conflict and being suitable for adults. I'm fairly new to the MMO scene, but the presence of advanced physics (the original used Havok) and great graphics (Cyan has some of the best artists in the industry, and their graphics are STILL the best I've seen out of an mmo) will also make it attractive to prospective buyers IMO. Sitting on the shelf for a few years has also made the minimum system requirements much more common. I DO think it is doomed to commercial obscurity, though, with the declining value of the Myst franchise and the fact that adventure gamers might not WANT to play an online game. How will it appeal to the users? 1)For explorer types, this game should be orgasm-inducing. From the fact that Cyan always intended to provide new content, to the libraries with hundreds of books on D'ni history, to the behavior of creatures in the new worlds, to new languages (with actual rules and meaning) that the fans have been collecting data on for years, the game should have extreme value to these types of people. I don't know if any other mmo opens up new areas of the world and adds new worlds as part of the experience (other than expansions of course) but this is a selling point here. 2)Controller types will be out of place here, imo. No player-player violence. In Uru there were things like board games, obstacle courses, scavenger hunts,and other competitive activities, however. This could be expanded upon a bit. What are some ways you can have competition between players without having them fight and presumably without having stats? 3)Socializer types should appreciate the game too. The Myst fan community is very tightly knit and friendly, and adventure gamers are less likely to be like the people on general chat in WoW. Guilds, cooperative exploring, competitions, etc. will all add to this aspect of the game. This is of course aside from the social aspect inherent to any online game with a chat function. 4)Achiever types might have to wait in order to get the benefits they need. User created guilds and user created worlds would do the trick, but they might not be there at launch, which is unfortunate. Now, what will keep people in a game like this? Adventure games like Myst are dependent mainly on two things: Their story and their puzzles. Puzzles are puzzles, but they should be designed to require or encourage cooperation. Once they're solved, they have little replay value. However, the same can almost be said for the numerous bosses and dungeon quests in a traditional mmo. New content from Cyan would make this less of an issue. The storytelling system in Uru, from what I've heard, was rather unique. Rather than have every user do the same set of stock quests, there were characters of different alliances (like the Human DRC, who in the game's lore, found the underground civilization and is excavating it) and Yeesha, the daughter of Atrus from the Myst series who would be in the cavern and interact with the users. If I'm correct, these major characters would be Cyan employees that were actual people rather than NPCs. They would trigger major events in the world, or say things that allude to an oncoming conflict, or whatever. Like in the Uru Live Beta, I heard that discontent with the way the DRC was running things caused one of these "actors" to round up a mob of players to tear down a barrier, opening up a formerly inaccessible area. This raises two questions. The first is of new users who do not get to see these events. I hear that they are making a great library area with recorded instances of these important events. Do you think this will work? The second question is of players affecting the story. There will naturally be some of that, given that the characters are actually people playing the game too. One of the journals of the Cyan employees discusses encounters with several players by name, for instance. To what extent will players affect the story, though? Cyan's plots have always been linear, with one "right" ending, and a clear villain. Will they think of their stories in a less linear fashion or fit their scripted plotline onto the world? If the story can take a number of directions, how does that affect the developer if they have a number of shards taking different directions? What does everyone think? What benefits and drawbacks are there in a world with an ongoing story like this? There is certainly the reward for time investment. If one plays the game more, they are more likely to see such an event, and more likely to be acknowledged by the key characters. The downside is that even hardcore players can miss a turning point in the story. The upside to having an open ended story imo is that the players will take their actions more seriously if the consequences have a permanent affect on the world, but the downsides are that it might be too complicated to manage a great number of stories for different shards, and that it would possibly take away control from the writers, which in this particular instance of the adventure mmo, might be detrimental, as Cyan's stories are always pretty strong, and they have taken on somewhat of a literary flair since Uru Prime.