I love how Myst Online refuses to die :-D

In the world of online games, usually the plug that gets pulled by the company means the customers are well and truly out of luck forever. In a complex place like Uru, where the players develop great love for the interactions and general style - so much so that an identifiable Myst diaspora spread out across the internet into places like There and Second Life - it's like exile. Once the place was home - now it's gone forever: the sadness of avatars is that they live inside a company, and decisions are made based on company health and prosperity, not avatar rights (it is difficult to see how avatars could have a right to exist, although in our little electronic pipedreams we wish we could have that).

I think it was like this: Cyan developed Myst, put in online, shuttered it, but players resurrected it, then Cyan got back in the action, then it went down again, and now it's back up again, and free. Although I'm not much of a Myst Online player* some of my dearest friends are, and must be rejoicing a bit. Their servers are being hammered at the moment, which means there's interest; I hope the donation effort carries them through this rough patch and into solvency.

* I tried it and just couldn't like the fly-eye thing. My earliest Myst memory, though, is before it was online, as Sam had the game. That was back in the simple, crude game days of the mid-90s.

Labels: Better late than never.