Before I get started here, I'd like to ask everyone to ignore the fact that my text is green. This is coming from me entirely without support from Cyan, and should not be seen as any more official than if it were posted in black.

Almost makes me want to have a member-only account so I can blend in again .

macnbc wrote:

C'ristan wrote:

The storyline will likely have been planned out in parallel to the design of the physical content, so that clues and details can be included in the age designs, but it may well be that it requires several of the new ages to be released to form the stage for whatever will occur.

First impressions are the most important. If they're planning something that requires many new ages in order to work, they should've held off on launch until all those ages were ready. You only get to launch once, and launching without a story ready to go is very damaging to first impressions.

If I may...

Let's try to remember that what you're playing is an ongoing story. You're not getting a package delivery of content + story like you're used to receiving in the other Myst games. The DRC has opened these Ages, and there's some oddities and mysteries involved in them that currently have no explanations. That is not at all to say that said mysteries will never be unveiled, or that the puzzles make no sense other than to be there. The story simply has not progressed to the point where those mysteries are going to be made clear. If the content drop came complete with the whole package of story designed to be experienced with said content, people would be done with it in a matter of days, if not hours, and then spend the rest of the month+ bored. The way things seem to be playing out now, there is content, and stuff to do, and some things that we don't yet understand. People seem to be having endless discussions about these things, and I think that's exactly what Cyan wants... to get people talking about the stuff in the game in an effort to try and flesh out what Cyan is up to. As time moves by, the story will undoubtedly come out surrounding these elements. Just don't expect it to be delivered in one fell swoop... that doesn't make any sense when you're playing the game's events out in a realtime format.

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C'ristan wrote:

I certainly don't think they owe it to use to tell us anything about what they have planned ... more than that, I don't want to be spoiled about it.

We're paying their salaries now, or at least Gametap is and we're the ones funding Gametap, so yes, they do owe us something.

I don't want to be spoiled either, I'd just like to know that story is coming, and coming soon, and future ages will include the story. Does it spoil that much for them to say that?

What has possibly given you the indication that this is not, in fact, the plan? As I said, just because things haven't been explained yet doesn't mean they never will be. Cyan has repeatedly made mention of their dedication to story in Uru Live. What needs to be remembered, I think, is that cooperative, multi-player storytelling in a real-time format like an MMO takes longer to play out than traditional computer game stories, which in the adventure game category, usually run about 40 hours if you stretch the gameplay a bit.

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C'ristan wrote:

You are disappointed that Live isn't hitting the ground running with a full on story to get stuck into, but unlike the original design and storyline development of Uru:ABM consider too that they haven't had 6 years to come up with this. And they have much fewer staff.

While they have fewer staff, and I have tempered my expectations to content because of this, they have repeatedly advertised the player-interactive storyline for THIS VERSION of Uru. They talked about the hypothetical lighting of the cavern, they talked about the Sharper events from Prologue. Nothing remotely similar to that has occured in MOUL yet.

No offense, but you don't seem to have tempered your expectations at all if you're expecting massive community-driven events on the scale of re-lighting the Cavern within the first 15 days after the official launch of the game. The only time I've ever seen the scenario of re-lighting the Cavern mentioned was in the OOC forums at the DRC's website, and that was, as you said, purely a hypothetical discussion of what Live would be like once it hit full steam, with RAWA even going so far as to actively dissuade people from anticipating something similar for a while. We're not at full steam yet, and I think Cyan has done everything in their power to get that point across. For the time being (and I do stress that point... as Live ramps up, so will Cyan's capabilities), content drops seem to be carefully managed so that content and story doesn't get burned through faster than Cyan can produce it. This is an incredibly voracious audience... there need to be roadblocks to progress, I think, or everyone would end up even more bored than they may already be.

As for Sharper... give it a little time... things weren't exactly steaming ahead when Prologue got started either. It took a while for events to really start happening, and the same is true here... things are happening, but they're not as frequent as they were when Prologue was at its peak... again mainly because of the reduced staff.

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C'ristan wrote:

And what have you paid for this so far? Probably 99 cents ...

I paid $60 for it back in November. I paid for a game with an intriguing story blended with puzzles. I've only received half the deal. If I had known it would be like this I wouldn't have handed it over so readily.

I hasten to point out that you paid $60 for a full year of Uru Live, not 1 month. I don't think it's entirely fair to claim that you haven't gotten your money's worth within 15 days of launch when you don't have to pay for anything else until this November.

Now, if things haven't gotten better by November, I'd say you have a completely legitimate reason to complain about having wasted your money.

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C'ristan wrote:

Live did not arrive on February 15th as a fully formed entity, I'm sorry but you have got to accept that.

I have accepted that. Problem is its nearly a month later now, and its still not even remotely fully formed. First impressions....

Simply looking in on things from the outside as I'm being forced to do sue to hardware incompatibilities, I'd venture to say that this iteration of Live has been far more complete than what we saw in 2003/2004. It's not 100% yet, but it's a far cry from the limited interaction potential and nearly complete lack of new content that permeated the game for over 3 months. In 3 months, the only really new thing to come out after the closed beta test was the Great Zero (and maybe the Wall, but that's almost pushing it), plus a rather involved but difficult-to-participate-in story revolving around Phil Henderson. This time around, there have been 3 new Ages and numerous in-game events with a number of DRC members and staff in less than a month and a half. Story has flowed a little slower than it did during Prologue, but I think many forget that aside from the 3-to-4-week burst of activity surrounding Sharper and Phil, nothing really happened.

Again, I think you've been fairly unsuccessful job of managing your expectations. Cyan has repeatedly made mention of the fact that they've had to start the content pipeline up practically from scratch, and has only been working on new content for about a year now. I'm not entirely sure what magical switch you expected them to throw to enable them to start generating massive Ages with hours and hours of story and gameplay behind them the day of Launch, but I can tell you pretty confidently that that switch doesn't exist. The most important thing to have right now is patience... Live was gone for 3 years, yes, but Cyan wasn't exactly working on Live in that down-time... they were making expansion packs and End of Ages. The expansion pack content is being recycled and re-integrated into the story, which is mostly likely part of why you haven't seen them in-game yet. If Cyan were ditching story development at the expense of dumping as much content on us as possible, I don't think they would have fast-tracked 2 new tiny Ages and 1 old "pod" Age when they have 2 massive Ages sitting in the wings.