Cyan Worlds CEO Tony Fryman has issued a statement announcing the company's plans to release Myst Online: Uru Live as an open source project.

Now, Cyan Worlds CEO Tony Fryman confirms that "Cyan has decided to give make MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project."

"We will also host a data server with the data for MystOnline. MORE [original emphasis] is still possible but only with the help from fans."

"This is a bit scary for Cyan because this is an area that we have never gone before, to let a product freely roam in the wild. But we've poured so much into Uru Live, and it has touched so many, that we could not just let it wither and die," Fryman added.

Read more here.

OMG true player created content?Is this what im reading?

Cyan worlds you got BIG ones thats for sure.This cant be anything but good for the mmo genre.Hopefully this will lead the way to nongeneric gameplay and true innovation.Too long has the standard for a dull mmo been upheld by developers.

Originally posted by Szark

by releasing the source code for the servers

That's one thing that's not been readily available to devs and hobbyists, server src code to a commercial mmog.

Well to be honest,

It really depends wich code they going to make Open Source.

Myst Online: URU live failed for very obvious reasons.

It was boring and it brought nothing new for the fans who already played the previous Single player versions, especially URU.

Myst Online was basically a small central hub where people actually could gather onto wich they slapped the zones and puzzles from the single player games.

Add to that an extremely poor User Interface with a joke of a chat system.

Not to mention the extremely poor performance.

So all in all, it wasn't really much of an MMO and in the state it was released it was just bound to fail from the get go.

In a nutshell:

It was just tthe same as the single player games, just connected to the internet with a poor interface, so you could play the previous games an solve the exact same puzzles again, but then with some other people.

So to make it work, they will need to put all the code online, so the whole game can be completely revamped form the ground up to make it actually look like a MMO with a proper interface. Not to mention a jitload of new content that need to be added to bring something new.

Don't get me wrong. I loved the single player games from Myst all the way to URU. But I was severely dissapointed that Myst Online was so cheaply done, with hardly any new content at all! Just the same stuff from the single player games.

Cheers

Puzzle games do not a good MMO make, in fact they make rather bad MMO's.

Originally posted by Ozmodan

Puzzle games do not a good MMO make, in fact they make rather bad MMO's.

We don't know that yet. From the evidence we've seen, I'd say pure combat games do not exactly make good MMOs, either.

I'll admit the idea behind URU Live was not well implemented, but I'd still take a failure like it over a run of the mill gear-and-combat MMO.

I'm happy to read this news. :)

I had post this in the boards awhile ago. >.>

Well hopefully they have read The Cathedral and the Bazaar, sounds very interesting to see this game going open source. :)