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Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121687
09/10/03 01:03 AM
09/10/03 01:03 AM
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gatorlaw Offline OP
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OK for all those who have been wondering what is it like on the inside at the URU beta test - URU Live has released an interview with one of their own. It's really interesting - though of course it doesn't give a ton of details about URU, but enough to really get your interest going. It sounds very good to me. smile

UbiLive Interview with Alahmnat, a URU play tester

Enjoy!

Last edited by looney4labs; 06/22/07 02:16 PM. Reason: updated link




Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121688
09/10/03 08:00 AM
09/10/03 08:00 AM
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Becky Offline
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What can I say? The adrenaline is already pumping. I can't wait!

I thought this was interesting:

Quote:
Best thing to say to everyone who's still reading, is that as the game gets closer to launch, they'll be letting more and more people in to get a feel for the server stress level
This is wise, considering that they apparently can't sustain the bandwidth on their site just for people downloading the most recent demo! Has every multi-player adventure-like game initially experienced the problem of inadequate servers? (EverQuest, Ultima Online) Why is it so hard to figure this out?

It's interesting that the beta tester would agree with Jonathan that playing the game is a substantially different experience than playing the original Myst trilogy. Here's an excerpt from Jonathan's report after seeing the game at ECTS:

Quote:
Uru is a very odd beast. It could have been beneficial for Cyan Worlds to drop the Myst theme, and pass it on. Uru does not feel like a Myst game. At all. The single player mission I experienced (from a dusty canyon with a guy and his mobile home, to a lovely landscape with rusting machinery) was fun, if a little tedious.
Will gamers adjust, I wonder? I am getting the impression that what grounds URU in the Myst gameworld is the background story more than the graphics.

Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121689
09/10/03 06:41 PM
09/10/03 06:41 PM
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mystmum Offline
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Knowing Alahmnat (he and I mod the Exile forums at Ubisoft), I'm thinking he's actually pretty excited about Uru and is just making sure he doesn't say too much.

And I really hope Ubi has better servers for Uru than they run their forums through or it could turn ugly.


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Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121690
09/10/03 07:16 PM
09/10/03 07:16 PM
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Becky Offline
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Mystmum -- are you pre-ordering the game? I'm trying to decide if I should.

Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121691
09/10/03 08:28 PM
09/10/03 08:28 PM
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Virginia's wetland dimension
Salar of Myst Offline
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Becky, if you check my largely ignored thread giving info on the new Uru trailer and preorder offer from Ubi, that may help out.

Alahmnat is a good guy & a major Myst fan. I have known him for over 3 years. Wild to think he was a teen when I met him and now look! heh.

Its a good interview. It surprises me that they put a tester interview up though. Anyone ever see that elsewhere?

Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121692
09/10/03 10:00 PM
09/10/03 10:00 PM
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Becky Offline
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Salar -- like (hundreds?) of other people I clicked on your link to Cyan. I tried unsuccessfully to download the demo/trailer.

I'm still hoping that I get another shot at this demo/trailer. I downloaded the previous demo/trailer and it looked great.

The reason I asked about preordering is because of this information from Randy at Just Adventure:

"Myst on DVD? Well, sort of. Ubi Soft has informed Just Adventure that gamers who pre-order Uru: Ages of Myst from Electronics Boutique (and other select outlets) will receive a free DVD featuring a 20-minute exclusive interview with Rand Miller discussing the umbrella of Uru present and the Myst franchise future. The Myst DVD is a freebie that is being used as an incentive to get gamers to pre-purchase Uru and is, we are told, a 'must-have' for true Myst fans!"

Is this Myst DVD different from the one you described that contains Myst ME, Riven and Exile? Are they giving out DIFFERENT Myst DVDs depending on if you preorder through Electronics Boutique of if you preorder through Ubi Soft?

It's confusing.

I've never seen an interview with a beta tester before, though it makes a lot of sense. Sometimes on the board I've seen beta testers from other games giving some of their impressions of an upcoming game. I always follow these closely because it builds anticipation and I like feeling that something new and exciting is just around the corner, like good news from a far country.

Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121693
09/10/03 10:46 PM
09/10/03 10:46 PM
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Salar of Myst Offline
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Shorah Becky,

Yes, I know that vanished but I listed 3 places to get it as I learned of them. Looks like the Gamespot link is still there. Hopefully the new trailer will be back up in other places soon.

It is absolutely wonderful, including flybys thoughout the cavern city & several Ages. And the graphics! WOW! happydance

I am very sorry to hear you didnt catch it. I had to work a bit to get it myself (Im still on dialup).

Quote:
This is wise, considering that they apparently can't sustain the bandwidth on their site just for people downloading the most recent demo! Has every multi-player adventure-like game initially experienced the problem of inadequate servers? (EverQuest, Ultima Online) Why is it so hard to figure this out?
I saw that one coming when I posted about it disappearing. eek As I said then, CyanWorlds has always been on an older server maintained & paid for by Cyan alone. To the best of my knowledge this has not changed. The trailer hiccup then would have nothing to do with how Uru is running.


TRAILER & new URU pics

I also mentioned that Gamespot had new screenshots released about the same time as the newest trailer. Here's that url again where you can see both trailer & those pics


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Pre-order Offer

I listed the direct links in that thread on the pre-order from Ubisoft's site. Here it is again:


The link to the Myst 10th Anniversary DVD on the Uru preorder page goes here:


where it says that the DVD has Myst ME, Riven, AND Exile on DVD as well as an exclusive interview with Rand Miller

If there is still confusion maybe we should email Ubisoft?

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~


I was very surprised not to see much response to the thread, I thought these were cool & definitely new announcements relating to one of the biggest games of the upcoming season & a unique release in adventure gaming. Maybe frustration explains it. Thats an emotion I can relate to right now. lol devil

Thanks for reponding on the beta tester interview thing. I was truly wondering about that.

Overall, though all these things add up to a LOT of great news IMO!

Susan laugh

Last edited by looney4labs; 06/25/07 09:24 PM. Reason: remove broken link
Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121694
09/10/03 10:57 PM
09/10/03 10:57 PM
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gatorlaw Offline OP
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Shorah and thanks to you Salar.

OK we have the link to Ubi-soft - which is probably what I will go with. The 2 day shipping for free is hard to beat. Plus all the other goodies.

But the word is that EB Games, Gamestop and Amazon are honoring the same pre-order special except for the shipping.GameStop and EB Games:

Amazon has free shipping also. However it doesn't show at EB, Amazon or Gamestop specifically that the pre-order package includes the three prior games DVD(s) I am sure that wil be specified in their game ads prior to November 11th - the projected release date - which I have no doubts Ubi-soft/Cyan will meet. smile





Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121695
09/10/03 11:10 PM
09/10/03 11:10 PM
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Virginia's wetland dimension
Salar of Myst Offline
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Yayness! its great to have more options

I asked Gamestop & EB at my local mall(well...semi-local. Its 45 min away) last Saturday if they had any preorder specials for Uru and they told me "no" BUT they did have it in their computers already. I asked if maybe it was too early for such details, they said "probably"

So it sounds like the pre-ordering stuff is shaping up right now!

Now if we could just get 'em to cough up that plush squee they were going to have for the Exile DVD collectors ed....

Hey I can dream!

Salar laugh

Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121696
09/10/03 11:14 PM
09/10/03 11:14 PM
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Becky Offline
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Thanks Salar and Laura. I'll preorder at Gamestop if they have the same deal as elsewhere.

You have to be a Gamespot member in order to download the trailer/demo. But the new screenshots are available for free, and they look tasty (especially the mushroom things).

My comment on Cyan not being able to support the bandwidth for the large numbers of people interested in the trailer/demo wasn't meant as a particular criticism of Cyan. I'm sorry if it appeared that way.

I was thinking about how so many developers can't accurately estimate the interest in a game before it's published. (Actually, this is probably true of a lot of products, but in an online game, misunderestimating becomes particularly glaring somehow -- you immediately hear enraged gamers posting all over the net that they can't access a product they spent good money for.)

Letting more and more people into the beta to test the servers seems like a good way to eliminate at least some of the initial problems.

Maybe someday this will be a science. You will take the numbers who downloaded the demo, multiply by X and you know exactly how many people will be accessing the game when it's published. Until then I guess if you're a developer you just hope you're guessing right.

Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121697
09/10/03 11:43 PM
09/10/03 11:43 PM
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Virginia's wetland dimension
Salar of Myst Offline
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Becky, your comments about the server made perfect sense to me. I expected people to have concerns if they didnt know about Ole Cho, Sirrus, etc (ye olde cranky community servers) & the seperate arrangements for Uru.

& You are absolutely right about the teething problems of the massive multiplayer online games so far. (MMORPGs?) A lot of them apparantly expected to be far less popular than they were! I find that to be perversely amusing actually.

("Whaddya mean the crowds we advertised for actually CAME? What were they THINKING??!!" lol )

Not being the first & all this testing should give Uru a better start. yep yep

I thought Id mention that basic membership at Gamespot is free & you can get the trailer with it. I joined and so far I havent accumulated extra spam from them.

I guess Id better take my delightedly bouncing self off to rest.

Night & pleasant dreams to you guys too!
Susan laugh

Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121698
09/11/03 12:06 AM
09/11/03 12:06 AM
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Becky Offline
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I didn't know Gamespot membership was free. Thought I'd read awhile back that they were going to charge for it. Very glad they aren't.

It is just a matter of time before I will feast visually on this trailer!!!

Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121699
09/11/03 01:31 AM
09/11/03 01:31 AM
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mystmum Offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by Becky:
Mystmum -- are you pre-ordering the game? I'm trying to decide if I should.
No, but only because I can't. Ubi doesn't ship to Australia <img border="0" alt="cry" title="" src="graemlins/cry.gif" />


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Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121700
09/12/03 09:32 AM
09/12/03 09:32 AM
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I'm wishing Cyan the very best but I'm still deep in the dark as regards what Uru is going to be like.


Used to answer to "Peter Smith", now answers to "Peter Rootham-Smith"
Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121701
09/12/03 09:08 PM
09/12/03 09:08 PM
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gatorlaw Offline OP
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Quote:
Ubi doesn't ship to Australia <img border="0" alt="cry" title="" src="graemlins/cry.gif" />
That stinks. frown Doesn't EB or Amazon?

Peter, I think we will all feel the darkness lift in another month or so. smile





Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121702
09/13/03 05:23 AM
09/13/03 05:23 AM
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mystmum Offline
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Quote:
Originally posted by gatorlaw:
That stinks. frown Doesn't EB or Amazon?
Nope.


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Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121703
09/14/03 08:09 PM
09/14/03 08:09 PM
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I googled for Uru:Online Ages of Myst & Australia shipping and got:

http://www.gameswarehouse.com.au/longpage.asp?gameid=8524



But I can find no mention of the Myst 10th Anniversary DVD offer on the Australian sites.
Sorry frown

Last edited by looney4labs; 06/25/07 09:25 PM. Reason: remove broken link
Re: Official Interview with an URU beta/play tester #121704
09/15/03 07:17 PM
09/15/03 07:17 PM
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Becky Offline
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Well, I've watched the trailer over and over and don't quite know what to think. It plays in a small window. I streamed it because I didn't want to have to install special software just to download it. Quality with streaming was not very high -- lots of pixelation.

I got something of a sense of the game from the trailer -- it was helpful to see various characters moving about in the various locations -- but I think I got a better sense from the screen shots, which are beautiful.

I'm not sure that it was worth registering with Gamespot, which requires giving out certain personal information, just to play this.

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