Nalates' Things & Stuff

The Guilds of Myst-Uru Part V

2012/05/232009/04/10 by Nalates Urriah

There is one last complication in this series. If you are a fan and you want to share in controlling the future direction of the game, what do you need to do to take some control? If all the fans try to take control, will that be a good thing or a bad thing or just complete chaos?

Aegura - Uru The City in Second Life — Ae'gura - Uru The City in Second Life

There is no intuitive answer. Philosophers and statesmen as well as kings have considered these issues. We have 5,000 years of written history to show us what worked and Niccolò Machiavelli explained how to assure ones place of power. People generally realize that Machiavelli’s path is about controlling the masses. He does make sense and to a point his tactics work, especially on the poorly educated. While many are trying alternatives, only personal freedom to pursue your dreams ensured by a neutral third party that answers to the people in mass and cannot control them has ever worked well. It is a matter of how do we protect our self from the individual, have enforcers and we our self remain free?

The Guilds of Myst-Uru Part IV

2009/04/09 by Nalates Urriah

Part III is about fans being in control of the Myst-Uru open source version of Myst Online. It will be difficult for anyone person or group to control it. But, is that a good thing? I’m for freedom and many choices and lots of competition. Having lots of Uru worlds to choose from sounds good to me. But it may be disaster for Myst Uru and cause its ultimate demise. How can that be?

The Hall of Kings - Uru in Second Life — The Hall of King's - Uru in Second Life

If there were but one Uru run by a neutral third party which all fans could enjoy, we would likely have enough financial support for it run indefinitely. It would also assure players in game to keep the place from looking deserted.

But Myst Uru is not just about players in game. It is about fan created content, some fan programming server and client changes and someone designing and building content. Strong central control kills creativity and Myst Uru has failed twice from lack of content. While a central control would appear to solve many problems it creates others.

The Guilds of Myst-Uru Part III

2009/04/07 by Nalates Urriah

Seems like there is always someone talking/writing about the guilds controlling the game and fans. Whether or not one believes game fans and Myst Uru fans in particular can be controlled there comes the question of how might they be controlled and who would do the controlling?

Concert Hall in Aegura - Eder Gira Build SL — Concert Hall in Ae'gura - Eder Gira Build SL

The ‘who’ seems pretty simple and obvious to many Myst fans, the guilds. Normally it would be Cyan worlds, Inc. the game owner, but they are giving the game to fans and stepping back. Part I and II of this series list the different groups of guilds. So which one will rule them all? Oh, and who runs the guilds?

The Guilds of Myst-Uru Part II

2009/04/06 by Nalates Urriah

The Myst Uru MMO world is one of a small group of games that have been taken over and run by the fans. Most MMO’s have the games creator in control of the game. Fans often unite again the management. But what happens when the management is the fans? Who then really controls the game? Which fan is it?

Many in the Myst Uru world think the guilds are about controlling the fan community. I have never believed that. I’ve never thought it was possible. But, many do. I think the fans are more in control and vote with their participation. Whatever they support and participate in is what appears to be running the show, keyword being appears.

So, where are the fans? What are they doing and who is in charge? A comment was made to me the other day, “I hear you are in charge of the ECR&D* now?” My answer was, about as in charge as anyone can be of anything Uru related. I know the participants of ECR&D can move on at any time. There is no real control.

The Guilds of Myst-Uru Part I

2009/04/06 by Nalates Urriah

What is the story on the Myst-Uru guilds? Are they power hungry? Are they a force for good or evil? Will they be Myst-Uru’s salvation or destroy it? I personally think they will help and are the salvation. But I am also biased. What are others thinking and doing about Myst-Uru guilds?

This is a look at what I find and how I see it. This post will be a series of five posts.

The Guild… Which Guild is that?

Eder Tsogahl in Eder Gira Project - Myst Uru

In the Myst-Uru community there are more groups than just guilds. But, there are more guilds than just the guilds. I the groupings I see are; the community movers and shakers, guild leaders, various fans, various fan organizations, freelancers, bloggers, twitters and of course the guilds. The fans are the only real group. There are the Big Five guilds, which has nothing to do with membership numbers. Big has to do with recognition within the IC storyline. Then there are all the reformed guilds, new guilds, joke guilds and on and on.

Land of NoR Town Hall Meeting

2009/04/05 by Nalates Urriah

New information and interesting questions were features of Saturday’s town hall meeting for SL’ers play LoN (Land of NoR – SLURL). Luxa Budan and Mystyka Gray were the moderators speaking for LoN. For those interested in RPG’s and what makes the successful ones tick, this reveals some of the thinking going on inside.

Luxa said, “Now there is a poll up on Land of NoR Forum to see what kind of future you would like to see for the sim configurations. Merge the continents or no. If you haven’t yet, take the time to vote.” Suggesting that they are planning on joining or in some other way changing the configuration of NoR’s continents. The poll is in progress be sure to vote. So far the idea of separate but joined by a land bridge is the most popular by about 2 to 1. They also say NoR is on a sim freeze mostly because of the LL devaluation of sims. So, no new sims are planned for anytime soon.

Free LoN Groups to End

Luxa said, “Also to regulate the people spamming the chats and to cut down on general asshatery we are going to make the groups fee based to join. The lindens will be supplied back to the community through SL’s distribution system for groups. Certain members of staff will have the ability to invite legitimate people into the groups. Naturally if you are already in the group you will not have to pay to join.”

SL Photography – Places – Blogs

2009/04/03 by Nalates Urriah

Photographers need interesting places to photograph. SL has loads of them. I use NWN and now Ysé Sliffeuse et Gloodeuse along with others to find interesting places. However, you may notice some of those cool photos don’t look like the place you see when you get there. It is not Photoshop that makes the difference. It can but, it is Windlight that makes a big difference.So if you have not explored Windlight, do so before your next photographic mission. And then there is the appearance and quality of images placed on one’s blog…

JPG Image - WordPress Upload — WordPress Upload via Word - JPG

I started noticing that some of my images looking sharp on my workstation look blurry on my blog. Eck! SO, whasup with that? Well here is a bit of an experiment. This first image is a JPG file pasted into Word and so nicely uploaded without any effort from me. Way easy. Good Word. Good WordPress.

Next I used WordPress to upload an image and place it in my blog. This is a bit more work but I have to edit the image display anyway, so not that much more.

Yse PNG Test - Via WordPress direct upload

I also wondered if it was a JPG thing. So, I used a PNG image. If you don’t know what JPG’s and PNG’s are… you must be new to digital photography. So, go read about them at Atalasoft.

Myst-Uru Search

2011/01/032009/04/02 by Nalates Urriah

Got Myst-Uru search problems? May be things like finding information about topics regarding Myst-Uru history, the status of Myst-Uru open source, how to install and run the older games on new computers and on and on… It can be a challenge in the Myst-Uru world with most information on the Cyan (Myst creator) and fan … Read more