This evening I was going through some old images I had saved to an external hard drive, when I came across some screenshots from the virtual world created by Cyan called Myst Online: Uru Live (or MO:UL for short). Actually, I would probably classify MO:UL as an MMO/MMORPG, instead of a virtual world.
Cyan, of course, is famous for their line of cerebral puzzle games starting with Myst, where you tried to piece together where you were and what you were supposed to do to solve fiendishly clever puzzles. By 2003, the Myst franchise had sold over 12 million copies of its games worldwide, with Myst representing more than 6 million copies in the figure. The game was the best-selling PC game until The Sims exceeded its sales in 2002.
MO:UL is still probably one of the most beautiful virtual worlds that you can visit and explore. Here are some screenshots I took in 2011 (please click on each of these pictures to see it in a larger size):
I couldn’t remember my old username and password, and I figured that they probably weren’t saved when Cyan shut down the MO:UL servers sometime after 2011. But according to their website, Cyan has made Myst Online: Uru Live available again, and for free! So I tried to see if I could resurrect my old account. And I could!
But when I logged in again after seven years, all my previous setups, the house I had built after solving all of the puzzles that MO:UL had to offer, was gone. And I just didn’t feel like starting it all over again. Also, the software has not aged terribly well and it wouldn’t play nicely with my Windows 10 computer. So in the end, I uninstalled it.
But for a time there was a real sense of community in Myst Online: Uru Live, as players helped each other to solve the various puzzles and achieve their goals.
