This is about as niche as you can get, but few communities are as solid, mature and passionate as the Myst Online community are, and it is going to come as a tragedy to many of them.

Myst Online has had a turbulent history, to say the least. Originally cancelled by Ubisoft, the game was later picked up by passionate download service GameTap, who famous for their understanding of gaming culture and for often pioneering quality over popularity.

Myst Online was unique amongst MMORPGs because, unlike pretty much every game ever, there was no violence or action involved in the gameplay. Gameplay was predominantly story driven, and progressed through puzzles. The unique twist? Many of these puzzles required a group of people to solve.

GameTap brought the game back from the dead, mainly because of the passionate cries of the fanbase to bring it back, and expanded the title throughout the year with new chapters that pushed the story forward.

Sadly, the unexpected decision to cancel the unique subscription based MMORPG was announced early yesterday by Gametap VP of content, Ricardo Sanchez; the decision is apparently due to business reasons.

"The decision was a very difficult one and was made for business reasons rather than due to any issues regarding the design and vision of the amazing world that Cyan Worlds and Rand Miller have brought to us," said Sanchez explained. "Despite the great Myst Online experience coming to a close, Cyan is still a very valued partner of GameTap, we are on excellent terms, and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the future."

Whilst I could sit here and argue the evils of commerce and economic greed, I'm not going to. GameTap gave the game a chance when Ubisoft would not, and they did a beautiful job with it. But a persistent virtual world game simply cannot be supported without profit. It's sad to see this happening, but I can at least understand why.

The responses from the community are a mixture of shock, surprised, disgust, and / or understanding.

For the existing community, the server will remain up for the next 60 days, at which time the servers will be shut down and the title removed from the GameTap download service.

- Perhaps the ending has not yet been written

Tags : Cyan : Discontinued : gametap : mmorpg : Myst : Myst Online: Uru Live : Uru

Comments

By: Corrine On: 12:09 Feb 5th, 2008 Offline	It's sad to hear of such a unique game being discontinued. It's even sadder that I've never heard of it and have never tried it. And as you said, I'm respectful that GameTap gave it a chance at least. Their representative sounded genuinely regretful that the game had to be let go. Hoo.