Uru Neighborhood 2008

The guilds most people see are groups of people posting on forums. Behind that there are members building ages for the coming open source version of the game. Others are experimenting with the tools used to make those ages. Some are creating Blender tutorials on age making. Others are examining the older server software and even possibly running underground servers. The only possible Myst-Uru IC guilds are in THERE and Second Life.

In Part-I I wrote of where the confusion between IC and OOC guilds comes from. Here I am considering how that affects what people want to do and especially those that want to change the guilds. In the interest of full disclosure I speak from a biased and expert’s position as the current caretaker of the Guild of Cartographers. Guilds are usually run by Grand Masters. I only claim the rank of Guild Master, a step down.

When one wants to initiate change in a guild, it is then a question of whether they mean the IC guild or the OOC guild. To change an IC guild one must look at story line and history. For the history we use the Guild of Archivists site. Many fans are canon strict. To sell a change to an IC guild one must satisfy canon fans and conform to canon. Changes are by good IC role play or as Myst-Uru fans like to call it, and IC explanation. If one can sell that idea to a majority of fans, it is almost a done deal.

Unfortunately there are whole areas of storyline reserved by Cyan Worlds, Inc. for their future use. At the present time those areas are not defined and the community waits for the open source licenses to tell us what we can do. So, IC changes are a very difficult sell at the moment. But that is no reason not to be planning changes and selling ideas.

In Second Life the Eder D’Uru region is experimenting with new IC guilds. As far as I know these are the only IC guilds in existence. However, one can find some OOC guilds present in SL. Figuring out just how IC/OOC they are is again confusing.

Beyond just affecting the storyline IC changes involve actual in-game activity. To move the story forward and have people join in one must to be able to convey the story/idea to other players so they can participate. If a change requires the game engine change then one must also convince the fans programming the servers and game engine to go along. There are a number of complications to be addressed. IC changes to guilds are probably the hardest to make. Being clear on whether a change is IC or OOC is pretty much a prerequisite.

More about the OOC guilds in Part-III. See: Myst-Uru Guilds IC and OOC Part-III