Sorry about the Change and Closure

Alien · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:03 pm

m.a.x.2.0 wrote:

But yeah, maybe
some Guild Forum, with a 'dedicated' MOULa section could be suited for that purpose...

/ Max

These forum styles (ie vBulletin type of forums such as the one you're reading this on) are on their way out just like how vinyl was superceded by CDs which were then superceded by MP3s. Yes vinyl and CDs are still around, but not the media of choice.

Many of us *could* easily set up a forum for the MOULa community, as you know, the Sleepers had one, and I honestly think that now, at this time, it'd never take off, much better to migrate to an existing one, like OpenUru.org, if Discord is not your thing.

Also, don't forget there is still forums.cyan.com ... I don't think Cyan are shutting that one down any time soon.

m.a.x.2.0 · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2020 6:29 pm

Hmm... from Tor'i's posting in this section [at top] on this very topic and also over at Cyan Forums... [my underscore]

/... / On Tuesday, February 4th, Cyan will be archiving the Myst Online and Cyan Forums and they will become Read Only. This means you will continue to be able to read through the forums, but no longer be able to contribute to them. This also means registering an account for the forums will be turned off and this is effective immediately.

On Tuesday, June 16th, Cyan will archive publicly-accessible forum topics on the Myst Online and Cyan Forums for static perusal, and we will no longer host/serve our dynamic forums sites. Because of this, we encourage users to archive any direct messages or specific forum threads they wish to keep personally before this change takes effect. /... /

/ Max

p.s. I'm very old school... I still have vinyl LP's and read printed books... [I'll get my coat on my way out...]

Alien · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2020 7:16 pm

My mistake, I thought it was this forum only.

AdamJohnso · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2020 7:18 pm

It's unfortunate that this forum is being abandoned in favor of a platform that reverses the progress made here in terms of ending the nonsense of vendetta-based moderation. That being said, the largest and most active URU community-run forum at the Guild of Writers is available to any who desire a place for open discussion and nonintrusive moderation.

Jamie Marchant · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2020 8:02 pm

I too will miss this place

.

For those who care, I will be preserving the important(story) bits of Myst The Comedy Text Adventure on the Heritage Night blog(https://heritagenight.wordpress.com/) before this one goes poof.

Morgon · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2020 9:28 pm

I see sort of a problem with the game play discussion of upcoming new games from Cyan if there is only discord left for communicating with each other.
E.g. if I am looking for a tiny spoiler for a puzzle I'm stuck on, I have to search the complete conversation in the appropriate (spoiler related) discord channel instead of just looking for the correct forum thread. In addition I am likely to read spoilers to other puzzles I'm not working on yet and don't want a spoiler for at that moment, but due to the linear character of discord I have no chance of avoiding them, spoiling the whole game for me.

Like Christian already stated, discord generates too much noise for me to follow the interesting discussions with the limited time I have.

On the other hand I can understand the problem with maintaining too many different kinds of social media, especially with a small team, but completely shutting down all forums might backfire in the long term.

Morgon

korovev · **Posted:** Fri Jan 24, 2020 10:01 pm

Finding places to discuss from now on is not a problem, there are the OpenUru forum, the GoW forum, the GoMe forum, various Facebook groups and pages, IRC, etc. Discord is just the latest, fashionable new channel.

The real worry is losing access to a large piece of history of the Uru community. Hopefully there will be a way to archive it in an accessible way, somehow.

Stone wrote:

"Cyan will archive publicly-accessible forum topics on the Myst Online and Cyan Forums for static perusal, and we will no longer host/serve our dynamic forums sites. Because of this, we encourage users to archive any direct messages or specific forum threads they wish to keep personally before this change takes effect."

Which means if you have any forum topics important to you that are not publicly accessible (which means anything viewable without logging in to your forum account), those topics will not be viewable after the 16th of February unless you locate and save them for yourself.

All Public forums will be viewable, but the exact nature of their future format has not yet been determined (more meetings! Yay!).

Tomala · **Posted:** Sat Jan 25, 2020 2:42 am

adi wrote:

You of all people that have been here since the board's early days and the game's countless ups and downs, should (SHOULD) understand that it's not about the actual forum itself or its 3 posts per week, it's about the fan community and what it means to each and every one of us.

And more people should (SHOULD ABSOLUTELY SHOULD TIMES INFINITY) realize that Cyan is a small company. Companies big or small sometimes have to make decisions that involve sacrifices, sacrifices usually involve looking at how to properly utilize resources. Running and maintaining a forum (or any kind of website) takes time and money. Maintaining the database(s), backups, upgrading software packages for your forum software as well as other dependencies that are required to run it, SEO optimization, all of it requires time and money that Cyan needs right now to actually make something that isn't the exact same game we've all known and loved for over a couple decades re released for the 237th time.

adi wrote:

Cyan has been asking for years for people to spend their hard-earned money either on new releases of the same old games we've played before or overpriced and overhyped new games in hopes to re-establish themselves as a respected company in the gaming field, and people ALWAYS respond.

Sorry, but despite Cyan making quite a few fun games I am not a blind faith believer in the church of Cyantology. Not once have I blindly agreed with a company on everything they have done despite how great their products are, and I know I'm not the only one. There were a few of us that were able to both love and appreciate Cyan's work on Myst, Riven, etc and also look at their re releases as well as their newer games and know when to buy and when to pass. Despite what most people in this community might think you can love and criticize something at the same time. Good companies usually take that criticism and generally try to improve their craft... whereas a community of blind lemmings that are more than happy to purchase the same game over and over again (even for the same platform) are basically telling that company that if they keep re releasing the same thing over and over again we'll be perfectly fine! (Note: This strategy only works for Skyrim and Call Of Duty unfortunately). While Obduction isn't exactly what I would call perfect, they can at least say they did try something new, which is better than mucking in the same mud puddle for almost three decades.

While Discord is nowhere near as good as a forum, it is what a lot of gamers are using nowadays just as people used XFire back in the day for communication (it was even provided by Cyan for awhile!). They stand a better chance of reaching new people, potential fans of their new games and maybe even discover their older stuff. Who knows? Maybe they'll become successful enough to put up a forum again.... is this that thing you guys, uhhh what did you call it again... Cautious Optimism? :shock:

Though when it's all said and done I'm probably not going to go over to the CyanChat Discord (cue sighs of relief) anytime soon. Having studied this community as well as other communities for other games I find that my blood pressure is better in one's that don't have a favoritism thing going on in them.... heck I've been on FPS boards with communities that are like teddy bears compared to this one.

Thanks to places like The Guild Of Writers though we at least have other outlets to go to... well unless you despise any content that isn't Cyan's and would rather play the same vanilla game for another 40 years. In which case... have fun with that! They can pick up the slack while Cyan tries to wow us again, as they've done on more than one occasion over the years.

JWPlatt · **Posted:** Sat Jan 25, 2020 3:48 am

"Luke, you switched off your sarcasm computer, what's wrong?"

or

"A pity they let the old forums die... Was a time moderation found you hanging by your thumbs in the caverns... God, I miss the screaming."

Acorn1 · **Joined:** Sat Jan 12, 2013 8:46 pm **Posts:** 985

Jamie Marchant wrote:

I too will miss this place

.

For those who care, I will be preserving the important(story) bits of Myst The Comedy Text Adventure on the Heritage Night blog(https://heritagenight.wordpress.com/) before this one goes poof.

Glad to hear, Jamie, we had fun back then!

I don't find the Discord UI easy at all, and when there are 50+ new messages to get through in each category, unsorted, in a variety of topics, you lose the will to bother.

So I'm hoping that the OpenUru and GoW forums pick up the slack.

It has been obvious that the Cyan forums were on the way out, as hardly anyone posted there any longer. But the Myst Online forum was still well-used. I'll miss you all!

Emor D'ni Lap · **Joined:** Sun Aug 12, 2007 6:15 am **Posts:** 587

Well this is not good news. I think it signifies yet another step in which Cyan is letting go of URU. You can imagine what the subsequent steps may be.

These forums, though they're unquestionably a fraction as active as they used to be, remain the central go-to place for URU info, discussion and updates. While other forums may pick up the slack, it'll result in an inevitable diffusion among those of us remaining.

Like Christian Walther, I don't feel the transient Discord to be a genuine replacement for the functionality of these forums, and keeping up with things on Discord requires more realtime monitoring than I have time for. Regarding the Cyan Discord channel: its "Mods Are Gods", "don't-even-think-about-questioning-our-edicts" policy has meant that I've never registered in that channel - and never will.

adi · **Joined:** Sat Apr 03, 2010 10:37 am **Posts:** 383

Tomala wrote:

...

I see your point

Though I can't say I understand the sacrifice thing (the very definition of this word doesn't apply here the slightest) nor the small company argument (we're fans, not executives or even employees, we don't care how they're managing their business. And just as they're free to proceed as they choose, we are free to criticize

).

At any case, whatever will be, will be

I don't plan to move elsewhere just because I was told to, I'll wait and see where "I need" to be.
It just would've been nicer if things were left to run their course with time.

Robin · **Posted:** Tue Jan 28, 2020 3:58 am

Sorry Cyan, Discord IS NOT a suitable substitute for any kind of serious forum. And just because others are doing it, doesn't mean you need to jump off that same bridge as well. "New" isn't necessarily better.

While Discord has some interesting features, the user interface does not work well for keeping track of or finding useful information. All I find it good for is asynchronous chatting and the occasional notification. Mostly I consider it a waste of time.

If you no longer want to support it on a regular or ongoing basis, put the forum on an old PC, stick it in a closet, and just have someone reboot it whenever someone lets you know it's gone down on Discord. That, or hand it over to someone you trust in the community.

Lord Chaos · **Joined:** Fri Sep 08, 2006 1:57 am **Posts:** 1337

The weak point of an Internet forum is longevity. Software changes, operating systems change, companies change. All of those make maintaining a public forum a real headache for those managing them.

Think of a forum as a Wiki. You start with very little, and through the years the topics add up and it becomes a rich repository of history, and it can be searched. If you want to find out what events were going on in 2006, with some patience you can discover this.

I think history is important. It's not only useful for discovering mistakes that have already been made, but also for finding out where ideas came from. It's also good for refreshing one's own memory as the years accumulate and press the past into ever thinner and harder-to-perceive layers.

I have often used this forum to remind myself of things that I, and others, have done. Now that resource will disappear... as have so many others. Uru Obsession took a lot of my personal history with it (somewhere around 2000 posts), and A Joy Forever (over 3000), and the Great Tree Shard forum (a few hundred). I've tried to archive some parts of forums but that doesn't work very well. It's not easily searched.

So, thing change. We move on, shaking the dust of the past from our feet. Offer a salute to what went before, turn around and walk forward into the fog.

Post #1336 - MOUL Forum

Jmp12 · **Joined:** Sun Feb 04, 2007 8:16 pm **Posts:** 101

I'm alright with their decision. They're archiving it, so we'll be able to look back through the topics and refer to them for historical purposes. They also have another place for us to meet, in fact they have at least two, the Discord server and the Cavern. Apart from that, we have various fan maintained fora, and we have Reddit.

I think their decision to archive the forum here makes the most sense, given the age of the underlying software. They've put an immensity of work into maintaining it, so far.

It also sounds to me like they still have Uru Live in the back of their minds, and that they do still intend, over time, to help create a path for fans to add more to the game. The OpenUru and Guild of Writers teams are still hard at work as well, to my knowledge, as are others. Fans have already put so much together in the past, I think they, (we,) have more in store.

Personally, I think I invested more nostalgic energy into the Uru Obsession site than into this one. I still lurk here, and I like the forum, but I don't mind shifting to the fan run fora that still exist, and that may be created in the future. If their decision, here, frees up a smidgen of resources for them to place towards their future projects, I think their decision is a good one. They might even, perhaps, have more time for moving a little bit closer to fan ages in the Cyan server. One never knows.

I understand if others like this forum for sentimental reasons, (believe me,) and I definitely understand preferring some alternative other than Discord. But we do have other alternatives, OpenUru, Guild of Writers, Reddit, the Cavern, the Great Tree forum the Guild of Archivists forum, and perhaps others I don't know of or that will yet be created. I personally see no need to panic or fret.

Onward with us! I'll see you all in future spaces. :wink:

Sorry about the Change and Closure

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