The Myst series has had somewhat of a fractured history; the original game sold millions of copies, and really helped usher in the age of the CD-ROM drive. The follow-up, Riven also did well as a sequel, but after that, the series kind of lost its way. While all of the sequels received decent reviews, it seemed gamers were moving away from adventure and puzzle style games to the more immediately gratifying first person shooters. Of the later follow-ups, the only game produced by Cyan was Uru: Ages Beyond Myst and its online component, Uru Live. Uru Live launched without several of its touted features, and the servers were killed only months later. However, Live has received a new lease on life with the announced partnership between Cyan and GameTap. Gamasutra was able to talk with Rand Miller about this development and the Myst franchise in general.

Miller’s comments on online gaming are interesting; he says, “…our plan for Uru was… to continue to stream those ages those pieces on a regular basis so that your adventure never ended.” He follows up by saying, “We look at online gaming different from everyone else does… What people want is content… what people want is new stuff all the time.” How is what Uru Live is doing any different from the additional content placed in other massively multiplayer online RPGs? The pace of the content launches might be faster, but it seems like it would be difficult to maintain that pace.

It’s interesting that GameTap is trying to resurrect the game, but how deep does their commitment run? Uru Live doesn’t seem to be a typical MMORPG, but will their co-operative puzzle solving and community interaction be able to compete with the more action-oriented online games on the market?