The Uru community is not worth cat herding right now, not worth trying to inspire, not worth wrangling.
The *MYST* Community is. The D'niverse community is. The people for whom the D'ni Universe is about more than an online multiplayer experience... THAT is the community that has endured for 15 years, that will continue to endure even if Uru never comes back in any format.
Uru has become, in many people's eyes, the be-all and end-all of the D'ni universe. That without Uru the community collapses, fails, the dream dies. Uru fell, so D'ni falls.
Bullshit.
Uru is just one iteration of the story, just one expression of the Mytholody of D'ni. There are a thousand other ways that Mythology could come to light, via Cyan, or other sources.
It doesn't matter if we never get Uru back. It doesn't matter if we never gather in the cavern again. If we're that hot to see each other in the digital flesh, there's a dozen other ways to do so.
What matters is keeping the dream, the stories, the soul of D'ni, alive.
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3 comments:
It endured because it has had new Myst releases fueling it over a great many years.
When Uru closed down the first time traffic at a lot of the Myst sites and forums dropped greatly, a decline that has been continuing since, whilst things picked up a little with Uru Lives release again the traffic dropped when things ended.
When I first dipped my toe into the community 10 years ago there were big debates about Rivenese water, linking theory and all sorts of other items regarding the D'niverse, there was emails and chats from Cyan folk, there was news about coming releases, teaser screens etc. All things that kept people busy, conversing etc.
All that has gone, Urus first failure resulted in Cyan clamming up so much it probably did more harm than good IMO, there are no new games and, whilst Cyan may prove me wrong, I doubt they will be new ones. No more debates about D'niverse mechanisms as they have been talked to death about.
All these things combine to make things less interesting for people.
I don't see the community collapsing, even if there is a single forum with 20 chatters on it's still a community, but the community will drop a lot of weight as people get bored and move on.
(Here via Mystblogs)
I got into online fandom during the Rivenguild era. College took me out of fandom for about the same period of time as when Uru/UU was running. Coming back into fandom has been a bit of a mixed bag for me so far, and I've done so mostly with the attitude you've described--that Uru was probably interesting and might be interesting again, but it's not where my energies need to go. There's so much more out there to explore and create. And I hope that fan creativity in the D'ni universe as a whole, not the constant distant faint hope of renewed Uru content, can be the thing that energizes and sustains the community. I guess we'll see :)
I've never been able to get into the online aspects of uru. I played the offline versions, and untÃl uru and couldn't keep up with it.
I'm an internet surfer with no internet to call my own and now I'm wandering with a laptop that can't play online games. I'd like to see something else, something different. Uru was cool, Uru was fun, now how about something else?
10+ years ago I doubt the Miller brothers were thinking their final goal would be Uru.
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