Just days prior to the one-year anniversary of the launch of Myst Online: Uru Live, the publisher responsible for bringing Cyan Worlds' MMO to the masses (well... ) has announced its termination. GameTap's Vice President of Content and Creative Director Ricardo Sanchez broke the bad news to fans on the game's official forums, writing that the MMO has 60 days to live, at which point the game servers will be shut down and tears will begin to shed.
Just goes to show you that if you are not World of Warcraft, you wont succeed in MMOs. Or something.
That sadly didn't last long. I remember seeing commercials (and still do) of this game. That's the problem with online games. Unless you have a constant market for it, the players will quickly dry up. I have seen games that had some good ideas in the beginning, but in the end they would always fall short of a great game. On the other hand, WOW has a huge fanbase that began with the original warcraft games as well as the starcraft games. Heck, games like secondlife last because: 1) its free, and 2) you can do a lot in the game (to which it has built up, in its own way, its own fanbase). How long it will keep that fanbase however depends on the players and if they ever get tired of playing.
ReplyDeleteAnother reason MYST Online didn't last long might be because the creators started running out of ideas for puzzles. Not only did they have to create the puzzles, but they also had to do the animations for the puzzles and even the environments around them (which in turn costs a lot of money to do as well). Thus with gametap's price and the cost to play it being free, i think they might have had to close down due to finances.