Internet Culture

It is old news to anyone that was paying attention that GameTap is shutting down Myst Online: Uru Live on 10 April. There have been plenty of people involved with either the Myst community or the game industry and media who have already written about why Myst failed as an MMO, twice. The conversations have gone everywhere from "the world was not ready for a game like Myst" to "Cyanworlds was not ready to present Myst." The short version, or at least the most official one that the community received was that the game just did not attract enough players and GameTap could no longer justify having the game. In all honesty, the game is already shutdown. While the servers are still up and accepting connections, there has been no new content since the end of the last episode, late last year. With the closing of Myst Online, I find that I do not have an online game to play. Several weeks ago, I started looking at what other games had to offer. I have tried to talk to people I know who do play various games about their experiences in their current game of choice (or games, as the case may be). I am shopping around and looking. One part of this, at the end of February, I started playing the trials of a couple of games. At the end of the demo for Myst Online, back when it was first available (then just known as Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and Uru Live), about an hour, I was hooked. I could not wait for the beta to be over, and the game to open. (You can see how clueless I was about how games like this actually work). I figured that if what become Myst Oneline could hook me in under an hour, then a mature MMO should be able to do the same thing in a couple of days to a couple of weeks. So I started. The first game up was The Matrix Online. I actually have some idea about MxO. I work with some people who have been playing the game since its begining. Now, MxO does not actually have a trial. I figured out how to get into one by poking around the Sony Online Entertainment site. This may be important. The lack of an active trail period means that the only people playing MxO are people paying for MxO. And that means the commuity in the game may not actually be used to new people showing up and just learning the game. There were a lot of things I liked about MxO. The skills and abilities system seems really very flexible. It seems that in other games, it is possible to build out a character in such a way that the character is functionally unplayable. MxO does not have that problem, as a player can always go back and just build or buy the abilities they want, and not load the abilities that they want, even if they bought them. This seems interesting, in that any character can possibly fulfill any any for any purpose. It is also possible to build a hybrid character that mixes abilities from more than one domain. So, no really rigid silos. As I know people who are passionate about their characters in the game, I have seen what the community in the game can do, at its best and worst. I did not tell them I was going to try the game. I tend to play on my own, and honestly, it bothers me to have to rely on others for my own entertainment. Playing on my own, I really did not get a good view of the community. In fact, when the people I know did find out I was trying the game, they suggested I stay away from certain areas. This was not because the game was too hard there. It was because the people I would find there would not really be the kind who I would want to deal with. Too bad that this is the only area in the game where I actually ran into groups of any size. Short version, the MxO community may have some really stong people playing, but I didn't meet any of them. If the beginner areas of the game are populated with high level people (at the cap) who seem to have nothing better to do than to sit around one spot in the game and cyber all day, and that's what a new person sees, I'm sorry. And the parts of the story that new characters are exposed to are from the begining of the game's run, not the current state. And after I was told there "wasn't anything to do until level 50," I came to terms that no matter how much I liked the movies and things built up around them setting, I was much happier with MxO not ever having played it. Would my experiences have been different if I had been shown around by my coworkers? Or even just dropped their names with the groups I did deal with? Maybe. But I did not want to play in a game where I was only going to be taken seriously in relation to an in-game celebrity or really popular person. I only played 10 days of the 14 day trial I had managed. On the 10th day, there was an update to the game (the release of the Dataminer area) that prevented me from playing the last four days. Seems fitting. Even the game, itself, did not want me involved. I had Good Friday off. I have all this coming week off. I figured I would try at least one more game trial. Friday I started trying Eve Online. Today I decided I was not going to continue with the trial. I have been a little concerned about Eve Online since hearing about an incident where a member of the game's team had the way Myst did. I want to be able to escape and loose myself in the story of the game, not just mash buttons and watch the game do things. To be honest, Myst Online: Uru Live did not deliver what I was looking for either. While I was much more invested in Myst than I was or will be for any game that I am may try, the game was lacking a cohesive story. There is another post in that idea. This one is long enough. If anyone is actually reading this, and knows of any games that have trials that might suit me, please try to get in contact with me and suggest them.

I started using Skype a while ago, when they did the six months of free calling to US phone numbers. It proved to be useful to me, and something that I could use. I called work people. I called family. I called Natalie.
When the deal eventually ran out, I switched to just using Skype to call 800 numbers. That still covered a good number of work things, but a lot of my phone activity is calling people at their desks, and not always on conference lines. And it is sometimes a bother to arrange to get someone to call the house. I'm also more comfortable using the computer headset than I am the phone for long phone calls. And I get better sound over the computer headset than I do over the phone. So I like using the computer for making a lot of my phone calls.
Yesterday, I upgrade to a new version of Skype. And after a day and a half of fighting with it I finally think I got it to stop switching over to the soundcard in the computer and switching away from the USB headset I have here at home.
I guess it was following the directions on how to use a USB headset, 100 times. I eventually just went through each page of the preferences screen and I think I have it doing what I want it to now.
Of course, tomorrow I will more than likely find out that I am wrong and it is still not working. And I'll need it tomorrow, when I work from home.
There is something about Skype that bothers me.
I use it for mostly calling phones, not other Skype people. I actually only have one other Skype user in my contact list. But that was more something funny when I showed everyone Skype installed on my cell phone. Recently the problem I have been having with Skype has been the number of "sexy" whatevers spam chatting me. Usually it's an short meaningless message from somemone with profile picture that has barely covered and contained breasts. And the name is always sexy or sexi or something like that. And if you do happen to respond, it's "My webcam doesn't work with Skype" followed by a link to what could only be an sex site.
I've just been blocking the users when they pop up on my screen.
I have recently set my preferences so that only people on my contact list can chat with me, but I do have to wonder about one point. Are the odds of finding someone that will actually accept and follow the link actually that good?
Sorry. If anyone is out there and does really want to talk over Skype, please contact me via the contact form.

Based on the fact that I've received about 300 email bounces in the last 12 hours, I'd say that someone is spoofing SysMango.com to send SPAM again.

Looking at the mail headers of the messages/bounces that include them, it's some kind of botnet running against open mail relays and not the messages that originate here or from the website hosting company.  If you're following the e-mail domain to this site, these SPAM messages are not originating from the server hosting this site, or the server hosting my internal mail.   

This is like the 26th time this has happened since the site went live in 2003. 

There are still a lot of bounces hitting my inbox today from what appears to be someone spoofing the sysmango.com domain in spam e-mail. I say this because when I look at the headers of legitimate e-mail, the sysmango.com servers are not receiving mail under that name because of how the hosting is setup. There is never mail recevied BY: sysmango.com, only FROM.

Had a pleasant surprise tonight while I was looking at the statistics for sysmango.com.

About once a month, I take some time and go through the logs produced by the web server. I used to post the findings once a month, but I have not done that recently. There are sometimes interesting things buried in web logs.

This month, the interesting thing was a number of inbound links from an article at apple.com. The article is part of Apple's support for GameTape and Cyan releasing a version of Myst Online: Uru Live for Macs. On page 3 of the article, there is a quick introduction of In Cavern v Out of Cavern perspectives in Myst. Guess what site they picked as an example of In Cavern?

One of the statistics packages I run reports only 18 links from apple.com. Another reports only 9. I was only able to find 5 in the raw log, but that only represented 23 March to 24 March. Still it was interesting. Only greeninkforall.com has provided me with more inbound hits.

And here I thought nobody was even bothering to read that content.

I do have to wonder when they made the decision to use Sysmango.com's IC feed as their example. I haven't posted anything since 08 February.

Looking at the statistics from Google Analytics, I have had zero real traffic over the last couple of weeks. Just getting a casual mention on big website does not automatically mean your site is going to get killed by all the hits. Mostly because there have not been any.

I actually woke Natalie up to show her the page.

I am just really surprised. There are a lot of Myst websites. There are about thirty-two other Explorers registered via Uru Blogs as having In Cavern blogs or content. Honestly, there are other sites that are more active and better focused than what I have posted In Cavern, with authors that are a lot more involved in the happenings in the Cavern and the community.

Is it enough to just say that I am amazed?