I guess that completing Yeesha’s path, even if it is for a second time, is something worth noting. All four sets of tapestries have been found and touched; all four lessons have been learned. As before, I’m putting Yeesha’s paths aside for a moment as I work on calibrating the Great Zero Machine with marker hunts.
These views, all along Yeesha’s path, struck me as worthy of pictures. Ignore the viking helmet. ;)
Two Ages comprise one mission, one quest. Two books appear in the library in my Relto, but they are linked to one pillar. They were once one Age, but because of a king’s pride, they were torn asunder. The Least were sent to dwell in the rock-and-steam Vulcan landscape, while the King was left his beautiful, if burdened with unstable weather patterns, garden. He was no longer bothered by the Least, nor was he bothered by the sundering that he had done.
When the linking books are written, are they creating and modifying worlds, or are they connecting across the vast quantum multiverse to places, worlds, and times that might exist or might have existed? I’m not sure that any of the explorers here will ever know, let alone me. I doubt that it’ll stop me from trying.
I love that I’ve gotten Myst Online to work faster and smoother on a Pentium 4 desktop with 1 gig of RAM under Wine on Ubuntu than on my Windows 7 laptop with a dual-core processor and 3 gigs of RAM. Then again, the desktop has a dedicated 256 meg video card, and the laptop is using an integrated video card. *shrug* Now if only the audio would work in Wine.
I’ve been walking in Yeesha’s steps again, re-learning about the Least, the Bahro. I’ve been remembering the puzzles, their solutions, and their meanings in a story that I thought forgotten. Because I’ve done it before, there is a feeling of breezing through things, of worrying more about rote than the experience.
I’m hoping that once I complete all that I completed before, I’ll be able to drop back into the in-Cavern mode, and begin writing from the character’s perspective again. I continued that tradition with EVE, and it’s a lot of fun.
Family
I’m knocking on wood when I say this… it appears that we are out of the woods. Neither Hunter nor Nikki have had regressions into the land of Flu, Aidan has successfully been transferred to his father’s house without any more butt explosions, and my feelings of nausea and exhaustion have mostly faded. We’re settling back into our usual routine of frantic. Instead of the other routine of frantic. Um. Yeah.
Mom and Dad are on vacation, and I hope that they’re having a great time. I foresee souvenir spoiling of the grandkids in the near future. ;)
Spent the weekend with Nikki’s sister and family. This culminated in an epic bowling outing that involved four lanes of bowlers. I missed bowling quite a bit, it seemed, and I hadn’t lost my barely-break-100 touch. Heh.
Oh! There are new photos up on Flickr from Yule.
Games
Once again, I unknowingly went a week without logging in to EVE Online. I logged back in last night, and I’d lost the auto-offered mission. The training agent won’t speak to me. I’m really thinking that EVE requires a more active player, and that it’s not really designed for the casual level that I play at. I mean, at this rate, I’ll never finish the training missions for the different careers. So, I’m seriously considering not buying more time.
On an unrelated and yet surprisingly opportune note, Myst Online: URU Live is back up and running. They’re calling it MO:ULagain, and the server’s being run by donations. Cyan once again owns full rights, and it’s nearly exactly the same. There are some more helpful clues lying around, like an explanation of D’ni time, and a clock in (I’m guessing) every neighborhood instead of just some. Either that, or I’m one of the lucky ones to get the clock.
If EVE doesn’t pan out, I could definitely see my way to donating my monthly fee to Myst Online.
Got my speakers set up at my desktop as well. I even found my media hub from Xmas at Liquid Web. Switches perfectly between headset and speakers, and the volume control works. Not bad for spending several years in basements and storage areas.
I have placed my palm on the shifting image in the book of Myst. I have fallen through the rift of stars to finally arrive on Myst Island. I have solved the riddles and discovered the twin treacheries of the brothers, Sirrus and Achenar. I have visited D’ni, and then Riven, and then Catherine’s impossible world. I have trapped Gehn and fallen once more through the starry rift, aching to return home. Now, ten years later, my good friend Atrus has invited me to his home. I long to see him, his wife Catherine, and their new baby girl, Yeesha.
He says that he has something grand to show me. He says that he has finally written an Age worthy of the remnants of the D’ni. He intends to show me this Releeshahn, I think.
—
I’m in an Age that I’ve never seen before. Some lunatic used a book to enter Atrus’ study. He lit curtains and tapestries on fire, stole the book to Releeshahn, and linked back to where I am now. On an impulse, I followed him. I could not catch up to him before he locked himself in a structure near the center of the island. (Why is it always islands?) I will search for other entrances.
What’s that? Cyan Worlds has retreived rights to Myst Online/URU Live from Game Tap? Oh yes.
http://www.spokesmanreview.com/blogs/txt/archive/?postID=6114
http://www.massively.com/2008/07/01/cyan-aquires-myst-online-opens-game-development-to-fans/
Thanks to
They’ll be throwing open the doors for user-generated content, as well. I’m wondering what tools will be available for it… and then I realize that I don’t have the art skillz needed. It’s Myst, after all. It’s got to be shiny.
In any case, I can’t wait.
From mystonline.com:
Hi Everybody,
I have some news that some of you have probably not been looking forward to. GameTap has decided to discontinue the operation of Myst Online: Uru Live.
The decision was a very difficult one and was made for business reasons rather than due to any issues regarding the design and vision of the amazing world that Cyan Worlds and Rand Miller have brought to us. Despite the great Myst Online experience coming to a close, Cyan is still a very valued partner of GameTap, we are on excellent terms, and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the future.
Many of you have made good friends while playing Myst Online, so here is the bittersweet part. Although Myst Online: Uru Live will be completely shut down in the near future, the game servers will remain live for the next 60 days. During that time, both newcomers and existing players can continue to experience the amazing world of Myst Online, explore the game’s many Ages, and interact with other players in the game and on the MystOnline.com website and forums. After 60 days, the title will be removed from the GameTap service, though MystOnline.com will remain live and active for fans to continue to share their passion for this important game franchise.
I know this is not the news fans of Myst Online wanted to hear. I want to thank all of you who have been extremely supportive of the game and made this grand experiment in an alternative MMO format so much fun. All of us at GameTap also want to thank you again for your tireless enthusiasm for the title.
There has been a clamor for information about the status of season 2 for some time, and the reason we haven’t announced anything sooner is because we have literally been examining a wide variety of possibilities for maintaining the game, but in the end, we had to bring the exploration of the great cave to a close.
So thanks again for supporting us as we launched this truly unique game. GameTap is still committed to exploring new genres of gameplay and encouraging bold visions. If you haven’t already tried Season 2 of Sam & Max, give it a try, it is as anarchic as one could hope. And I can tell you from first hand experience that the upcoming Grimm is novel and exciting experiment as well.
Ricardo Sanchez
What do you do when your legs are on fire from learning how to walk (climb) around San Francisco, and you’re looking to hang out away from people for a little while?
Myst Online, of course! I explored some of what was new since the last time I’d been down there, and some that I hadn’t thought to explore.
I started wandering again, just like I used to. From my Relto, I went to my Bevin, and noted that only one other explorer has visited in months. I wonder if new explorers get added to old Bevins. From there, I went to the Nexus and to the Watcher’s Pub. The DRC still hasn’t cleared any more Path of the Shell Ages, so I was still on pause, as far as learning Yeesha’s ways, and following the Paths that she’s set out. I headed back to the Nexus and found a new link there, to a place called Kirel. Kirel seems to be a Bevin, but completely flipped, right-to-left. It’s a mirror image of all of the neighborhoods that I’ve seen, but missing the gaming table, no access to the “silent” room, and only a link back to the Nexus in the Book room. Scattered about Kirel are five tables, each with a stack or box of t-shirts of a certain color, with the DRC Guild logos on them. Each table also has a sheet of paper with a short description of each Guild. Apparently, the DRC is encouraging explorers to proclaim loyalty to one Guild or another before they actually bring the system back. And being who I am, I picked up a Guild of Writers shirt. Lucky me, it’s even black!
The short explanations of the Guilds had also included a note that wearing a Guild’s t-shirt would give you access to their Pub in Ae’gura. The Writer’s Pub is shown here, and seems to be laid out exactly like the Watcher’s Pub, only decorated more richly. All of the side rooms are blocked by rich, thick curtains, and the imager in the center is actually on. There are quite a few notices, and reading them makes it sound like the proto-Guild is attempting to be a full Guild as soon as possible. I only ran into one other Writer there, and he linked out before I took this shot.
While I’m not the biggest fan of the Guild system after going through Yeesha’s first Path, I figured donning the Writer shirt was appropriate. I mean, the reason that I’ve been trying to keep to Yeesha’s direction is so that I might learn what she has learned.
A trip to the Guild of Greeters neighborhood triggered something that
I took a glance at the notebook on the left of the Minkata Age book, and boggled. There were a ton of D’ni numbers, written inside compass points, with their Arabic counterparts written inside of the diagrams. Most had a part of the compass point highlighted in a light green. I remembered
This banner, whipping in the wind, has a number on it. It’s hard to see, and looks to be aged pretty badly. But the banner itself is flapping in a direction that the wind isn’t blowing. The three banners that were on the cage were all flapping the same way, but this one is pointing in a totally different direction. I also noticed the shadows. Both the flag and I seem to have three shadows of varying brightness, though I could only locate two suns going through the sky. So, I followed the direction that the banner was flapping, and came upon two more, that were a few feet apart from each other. Each of these was flapping in the same general direction, so I took off that way.
I remembered that there was a hole in the ground, instead of the weird knobby reverse-craters that were all over the place. That hole was supposed to trigger a switch from night into day, I think. So, I ran. And ran. And ran. And, I ran some more. Eventually, you get so far out into the sandy fog stuff, that you can’t get back. I was pretty sure that I pulled a 180 when I decided to try to make it back to the cage, but the stuff never let up. So, I linked back to my Relto. I’m going to pay more attention to the math this time, I think. I may try to use the KI pictures and notebook for this, but the tried and true paper notebook might be the least clumsy way to go about this. In any case, it looks like there’s some base-15 (or was it 150?) math in my future.