The other night I logged into MOUL for the first time since last year. It was pretty quiet, though I did meet some new faces (to my eye at least). As I was logging in I asked myself why I was doing this. I don’t fully know why I did, other than I love starting old games from time to time including DOS ones. Another reason I think was because I wanted to know if I was still interested in this game. Why do I still read forums dedicated to a game that’s long passed it’s prime? Why are we still having arguments and grudges that date back to 04? I think it’s great that Cyan finally open sourced Uru, but I think they were a little late to the party, by 4 years at best…
Uru was the first online game I ever played and was a great way to introduce myself to the online universe. It was quite the addicting game for me. I logged on every chance I could back when it was something new, including prologue. I became so addicted that many of the other games that I had (a big pile of FPS’s) stopped being used for a long time. Even during controversies and guilds/groups hating each other I still liked the game. But after 8 years we haven’t really moved very far with this game. Granted, people have made ages and I’ve been online with other people in a couple of them. But the support for them is lacking compared to many other companies out there.
These days I see quite a few old timers have moved on to other universes, and I’ve been in that group with the rest. While there are other games out there that have improved on their engines and stories, Uru continues to be nothing more than a museum, and though it is possible to make our own servers and clients now, the support doesn’t seem to be quite the same.
I look at it this way. I’ve had all incarnations of the game (secret and nonsecret) since 2004 up till now. 8 years of waiting for Cyan to move forward and what seems to be endless bickering in one form or another. Uru was fun while it lasted, it was great meeting friends, but now there are better things out there. Oh well, I’ll still keep this old relic on my hard drive, and someday I’ll get off my ass and play with the server and client stuff.
