Discussion on setting up an Inter-Guild server bank

ddfreyne · **Posted:** Sun Dec 14, 2008 3:09 pm

Uru being open-source means anyone can do pretty much whatever they want without Cyan's approval, Frisky Badger.

Frisky Badger · **Joined:** Tue Mar 20, 2007 6:48 pm **Posts:** 746

Yeah, I realized that about 5 seconds after I typed it. Oh well, Ages still need to be bug tested.

Leonardo · **Posted:** Sun Dec 14, 2008 3:33 pm

Oh well, I was going to write something but it seems others already expressed my opinion.

So:
Big Thumbs Up for Alahmnat, Szark, Frisky, JKla and others

Chacal · **Joined:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 5:07 am **Posts:** 155

So now, let's condense what we know:

1 - No management or decision-making by Cyan. No FCAL.
2 - Cyan will decide for itself how it can contribute in the future.
3 - There can be numerous shards doing whatever they please, including new content, story, etc.
4 - However a more stable and canon inter-Guild shard is desirable which will replace the Cyan-run MOUL; this is the topic for this thread.
5 - There will also be test shards used by GoW and GoMa for testing new Ages before bringing them to the inter-Guild shard (not on topic in this thread, see GoW and GoMa forums).
6 - Membership in any guild is NOT necessary for making new content and publishing it, however the inter-guild shard would only offer Ages that satisfy its (to be published) criteria.

To this list I add some personal preferences:
7 - On the inter-Guild shard, the progress started with Prologue will continue. Some organization will keep opening new areas in the cavern and offering new Ages.
8 - A "canon" storyline may continue on the inter-guild shard.
9 - History will not be erased. Prologue and MOUL events have happened.
10 - Progress and story may or may not be what Cyan started. The DRC may or may not get back to the cavern, the events in the first season of MOUL may or may not continue.

BAD · **Joined:** Tue May 09, 2006 2:10 am **Posts:** 372

I think Chacal sums up many of the things said across the plethora of forums. How many of them come true, and in what ways will remain to be seen, but I agree with all of them.

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

Chacal, we know none of those things!

You have listed a number of preferences that you and others apparently share.
But Cyan has NOT given us clear information as to how they would like to see the next URU incarnation delivered.
Granted, given their past track record, they may hand URU off in an as-is state and tell us to figure it out on our own - and that is what you are doing in your own way.
But you're jumping to premature conclusions, and stating opinion as fact in doing so.

Dr Britcom Mom · **Posted:** Sun Dec 14, 2008 7:13 pm

Quote:

Uru being open-source means anyone can do pretty much whatever they want without Cyan's approval.

I think ddfreyne sums it up pretty nicely.

Chacal · **Joined:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 5:07 am **Posts:** 155

Statements 1 to 6 are what we know. 7 to 10 are probables, but I edited my post to flag them as "some personal preferences" for clarification. I suggest we go on with this list as a starting point.

I purposely refrained to go into technicalities, these can be discussed on other forums with knowledgeable people.

Nalates · **Posted:** Sun Dec 14, 2008 7:28 pm

Chacal, good summary. Whether we KNOW for sure or not, with what information we have now that summary is accurate. Any assumptions in there seem pretty safe.

Alahmnat, you have not missed anything, good post on the guilds.

I’ve never understood where people get the idea that guilds are trying to control things or have big secret meetings. GoMa has some private threads for age writers that don’t want to do their error fixes and learning in public. But the guild itself is open. Remember. Guilds are groups of fans doing their own thing. We are fortunate many of those people enjoy community service work or are willing to share a hobby. I have yet to find any with the time to spend trying or desire to control or run the community.

One big thing… the guilds are not here to… serve… they are people that choose to HELP as they preserve a game they like and pursue a hobby. They may be 'being of service', but that is different than being a servant.

Quote:

But I'm seriously worried about some proposition[s] that where made when the guilds were set up, some now who acts like we shouldn't have anything but guild controlled shard (because oh my! Occ stuff, what a blasphemy !)

O.O – What? Guilds were formed on like a date? I was around in 2003/04 when the GoC formed. Read the “Guild of Cartographers Quick Resource List II” and find the link to the ‘Founding Thread’ at UO. The DWRP – Guild of Archivists has the history of the …I guess I’ll use OOC here as a reference to the people in forums rather than in the game… OOC guilds. The Maintainers, Writers, Greeters, now the Fine Artists and several other …specialty… OOC guilds have been formed over the years and shaped and shown their character. In IC there was a shift in how the story was handling guilds that one might focus to a date. But guilds did not suddenly form one day. Cyan used OOC guilds because they were already teams of fans and one day acknowledged that use. But the guilds were mostly already active and formed.

Guilds do not ACT LIKE anything. People within guilds may. Never take a single person’s action or statements as the guild position, even if they are the Grand Master of their guild. For instance I (and I’m not the GM of GoC I just have the biggest active mouth) may be able to control the GoC Tech Data site and tell one what will happen there (like adding Uru search tools). But I cannot control the GoC. I may say things about what the GoC or its members have done in the past because I know many of those things. But I cannot comment the GoC to a course of action (unless I’ll do the work), a policy, or a position. I may be able to influence members, but they are FREE members and I have no control over them. I doubt anyone in guild leadership suffers from the delusion they actually control a guild. May be as soon as I learn how to herd cats… naaah.

Over the years those that have stuck with the guilds and remained active, have shown what they are made of and how they behave. If there is any group that I trust to run a cannon or extended cannon shard that will hold the flavor of Cyan’s Uru/D’ni, it is the GoW, GoMa, GoA.

Rusty_Russell · **Posted:** Sun Dec 14, 2008 8:12 pm

Eleri wrote:

JKla wrote:

I don't know if your being stupid intentionally Leonardo the NDA applied to content and not weather they were on the main shard or a separate one.

Actually you were not allowed to say if you were on rehearsal.

The existence of the rehearsal server as a separate entity itself wasn't hidden. I'd call some form of pre-production server a given (but then that's part of my working life).

JKla · **Posted:** Sun Dec 14, 2008 8:24 pm

I inhabit one of those closed off sections of GoMA I have a storyline I have been developing for years. The story is embedded in game and is released chapter by chapter in response to in game puzzles with clues embedded in the story. So if this story were on a public area It would somewhat negate its episodic release.

The story however was written before the formalisation of FACL in fact it was started when we were on our own in UU and Cyan were allegedly down to two staff. When D'mala came on line the project was put on hold and out of respect to Cyan left on the back burner. In order to clear FACL I need to rework the story a process GoMA has been kind enough to help me with.

The delivery system was formulated in UU and in an effort to integrate it with the fan written body of work I made an concious decision to see If I could do my own embedding, clues and puzzles. So to that end I have been writing both an age and an Ahra Pahts shell since these will also involve puzzle elements required in the story release It seems sensible to also keep this under wraps at both GoW and GoMA.

I hope I have made it clear why I appear to have stuff hidden in both GoW and GoMA yes I make mistakes there but my main reason is to make the release process a puzzle and prize experience as opposed to "That was not much of a surprise I saw it all on a public forum."

So if you choose to beat your head against a wall in an effort to produce any sort of puzzle for fan consumption you can be safe in the knowledge that both GoW and GoMA will do their utmost to help you not only produce accurate and compliant work but will also do their best to see that it reaches its fan audience in the best form.

While my ages are at this time available on the ULM the puzzle resolutions are not there and as such are safe to explore. Imagine exploring the ages of Yeesha with no Journey cloths visible, nice to look at but wait for the game.

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

Chacal wrote:

Statements 1 to 6 are what we know.

Wow. You're saying we know these things, but you're not justifying how we know them.

Let's go back and review what we are basing "knowledge" on.
I believe that boils down to two shreds of info: the Tony Fryman press release and Chogon's clarifying post from page 3 of this thread.
Both of these appear to be initial statements of Cyan's hopes and intentions.
Neither of them are the conclusive statement of policy we would hope to see when code and plug-in is released.

To recap, the Fryman press release:
(in both cases, bolding is mine)

Quote:

So, Cyan has decided to give make MystOnline available to the fans by releasing the source code for the servers, client and tools for MystOnline as an open source project. We will also host a data server with the data for MystOnline. MORE is still possible but only with the help from fans.
This is a bit scary for Cyan because this is an area that we have never gone before, to let a product freely roam in the wild. But we've poured so much into UruLive, and it has touched so many, that we could not just let it whither and die. We still have hopes that someday we will be able to provide new content for UruLive and/or work on the next UruLive.
This is also a bit scary for the fans. We realize that this could turn UruLive into the "wild west" and lead to many fractured and diverse MystOnline servers. But it is our hope that with the help of dedicated core fans (if you are reading this, it probably means you) that a safe and secure MystOnline server set (many servers from around the world working together as one) can be created that will let people explore and live in UruLive.
..................................
This release will probably be accomplished in stages, but we hope to get things ready for the first stage very quickly. More details to surely follow.

From this, we can deduce that Mr. Fryman, representing Cyan, would prefer to see a worldwide collection of fan servers working together, appearing to the playing community as one shard, rather than a "wild west" scenario of splintered, anything-goes shards.

From Chogon's Sat.AM post:

Quote:

By opening up the source to MystOnline, it does not preclude Cyan from creating their own server in the future with Cyan's content and storyline. However, with our current situation, that might be a long ways off and we don't want to hold people back.
Also, the architecture of the MystOnline servers is a *lot* different than the Until Uru servers. The MystOnline servers are very scalable and with some open source programmer help, it should be possible to have one shard (shard is not really a good term here) that has many servers, spread over the world but to the user playing, it will look like just one big server. And it should be possible to make them safe and secure.
There still will be rogue servers created, which is fine. But with organization by guilds and other fan groups, and good information, UruLive can still be great place to live.

Here, Chogon reiterates Cyan's hopes for a distribution model whereby fan servers worldwide are organized into one distributed "shard". He acknowledges the inevitability of independent operators setting up whatever and wherever they want, but still labels these "rogue" shards, thereby differentiating those from the distribution model Cyan hopes to see. Even regarding those "rogue" shards, Chogon hopes that organization will predominate, via the guilds and other fan groups: he's stating here that Cyan has no intention of bestowing exclusive server-hosting rights to the guilds or any other single group.

As far as I can see, this is all the information we have, and even this is still not written in stone.
If I've missed something, if there were posts or articles I've missed, then there may be "knowledge" that I haven't seen.
Otherwise, the "knowledge" you state applies only to yourself and those who wish to subscribe to your views, and not to the entire URU community.

Sorry that this over-analysis seems necessary...I will exit from of this thread at this point

Chacal · **Joined:** Wed Dec 13, 2006 5:07 am **Posts:** 155

Well nothing is ever 100% sure.
You may be right, it all depends on exactly how Cyan words the license. And whether or not Cyan gives an inter-guild shard a license to use and/or modify its content (MOUL Ages).

See this thread for a discussion on the license:
http://www.mystonline.com/forums/viewtopic.php?t=16698

Still, technicalities aside, the list is pretty much what we can work with.

Eleri · **Posted:** Sun Dec 14, 2008 9:54 pm

Dr Britcom Mom wrote:

Quote:

Uru being open-source means anyone can do pretty much whatever they want without Cyan's approval.

I think ddfreyne sums it up pretty nicely.

And some of us get the screaming heebie geebies from the thought.

EowynCarter · **Joined:** Wed Dec 20, 2006 4:19 pm **Posts:** 1161

Eleri wrote:

Dr Britcom Mom wrote:

Quote:

Uru being open-source means anyone can do pretty much whatever they want without Cyan's approval.

I think ddfreyne sums it up pretty nicely.

And some of us get the screaming heebie geebies from the thought.

Why, because others can have fun ?
Bah !
We'll be able to set up enough servers so everyone can find one to thier liking. Noting to worry about

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