Obsessions

Tonight, at 00:01, is the shutdown of Myst Online: Uru Live. 

My goal for the next few hours is to spend time in the game with the rest of the community that have stuck it out till now.  It is hard to avoid the cliché from the Myst games.  Within the games, and the community, everyone wants to say that "the end has not yet been written." 

With the game shutting down, for the second time, with the second publisher, it is hard to see how MOUL will ever be anything more than a curious oddity in the history of online games.

For the last five weeks, there have been a number of forum posts, blog posts and articles by members of the Myst community and the gaming industry, that have talked about the end of Myst.  There have been passing remarks on yet another game being canceled or closing.  There have people wishing for, demanding and begging for a restart of UntilUru.  There have been wild, impossible plans for continuing the game without GameTap and even without Cyan.  Like I said: impossible.

There have been discussion about how the game could have been run.  How the very essence of the game was changed by Ubi's insistence that at least part of the game (the Prime ages) be available as a standalone game.  There were arguments and debates about how the Cleft, the hoods, even the city and ages should have been organized, instanced and delivered.  The value of Yeesha, the DRC, various community organizations, role playing & playing Uru in character (cavern) and playing Myst out of character (cavern) all have been debated. 

The community has talked about what happens next.  What we can do. Where we will go after the sound of the last link fades in our ears and the stark reality that it was merely just another game, and now it is over.

And through most of this, I have been somewhat quiet.  Unless, of course, one was listening on CyanChat.

What is left of the community has started gathering together in the places we hold dear.  The last in cavern meetings are being organized and everyone is saying their good-byes. 

Not really good-bye.

This community has been together in one form or another since shortly after the release of the first Myst game in 1993.  Here we are, fifteen years later, gathering together both in and out of the game, celebrating what we all hope is not really the end.

Friday I came to terms with the fact that I was going to have to deal with the loss of my main Windows machine here at home. What exactly does the loss of this machine mean? Right now, I am using the SUSE Linux box that up until early September was the main Windows box I used around here. It was running Windows 2000, and I seemed happy to let it be. Vista is coming, and maybe next year after the confusion, problems and insanity that Vista's release will surely cause in the home computer market, I would be able to afford the next box for home that will last me forever.

The death of Windows 2000 on that box, and the inability to get 2000-64bit or Vista's RC or Beta to run on any hardware I had (I only tried 2k-64 on the Shuttle) forced my hand. Why not return the Windows XP Home that came with the Shuttle back on the Shuttle. I knew Linux would run great on old Dell. And right now, I am sitting here using the old Dell as a Linux desktop, because I have no other choice. The Shuttle died.

Now we can get into what this means. For me, this is not a significant issue. I have transferred the most important data to Natalie's laptop (the first thing I did after the death of the Shuttle). I have started to use the Linux box as a desktop, and with the exception of the fact that I have not taken the time to configure convenience features of the mouse and keyboard under Linux, everything seems to be working well. Natalie's laptop was already the home of most of our pictures and other important stuff. All of our e-mail is on the server, accessed via IMAP. Nothing lost.

The boys have a machine of their own. It sits in one of their rooms and they use it mostly to play games. It is nice that one of them an be on the game console, and the other playing video games on their PC.

I have two work laptops, so my ability to work from home (once a week) has not been eliminated or even affected.

What I do not have right now is the ability, right this second, to get into GameTap. The only machine in the house that can run GameTap is the boys', and right now, they are sleeping.

Soon, I hope. Soon. Something can be done.

But can it be done soon enough?

Today was the last day of the current phase of the Uru Live Beta or Preview or whatever they were calling it when they let the rest of us on. The next phase, if not the actual go live, starts on 21 December. And at this point, I do not believe I will have a machine to play it on. The preview ran outside the GameTap client, so I could use Natalie's laptop (until she took it away from me). But every indication is that the next phase and the Live (if they are different things) will require GameTap to access. That means I have to use the boys' machine. And I really cannot do that while they are sleeping. Taking the machine away from them JUST SEEMS WRONG.

Soon, maybe, I think, soon.