Editing Myst Online: Uru Live (section)

===Uru Live===
After several periods and stages of testing, Rand Miller announced<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.cyanworlds.com:80/letter.php|title=Rand's letter to the community|website=Cyan Worlds website|access-date=November 29, 2019|archive-url=http://web.archive.org/web/20070408111524/http://www.cyanworlds.com:80/letter.php|archive-date=April 8, 2007}}</ref> (on behalf of Cyan and Ubisoft) on February 4, [[2004 CE|2004]] that the project was aborted, and that servers would cease to run on February 9, citing failure to generate enough potential subscribers. Among fans, this has been in heavy debate ever since, with many accusing Ubisoft of not having given the project its due chance.

For many fans, the product represented a very highly and long-anticipated project of Cyan's, making its cancellation agonizing. However, many details of what went right and wrong were never disclosed, and a fair analysis is therefore, for better or worse, not possible in public. 

====Criticisms====
While it went through various stages and forms of testing (Choru, Ubiru, Prologue and Rehearsal), Uru Live '''never actually had a "release"'''; it was constantly in beta. There were never paid subscriptions, and even the monthly fee was never disclosed, although a price point of $12–$15 was likely, based on what comparable MMO games cost.

Cyan (and many testers) apparently felt that the product was nowhere near stable enough to be ready, and that more time in working out problems (such as bugs, crashes, and lag) was needed. That, in turn, means that many never joined or showed interest to begin with, turned off for lack of stability.

It is conceivable that many would have signed up after an announcement that testing was over, that a sufficient milestone of stability had been reached, and that details on how subscriptions will work and what they will cost have been worked out and are publicly available, but none of this ever happened.

On the other side, Ubisoft had invested a sizeable amount of money and other resources (such as servers, community contacts, a new forum software and several websites) to bring it even to the state of Prologue to begin with, and any further day of delays and of insufficient stability probably meant further costs.

Some argue that '''Ubisoft generally wasn't as enthusiastic''' about a multiplayer online concept to begin with. From very early on in their involvement with Uru, they apparently started deemphasizing the multiplayer aspect.

Based on Mudpie, Uru was at first apparently to become multiplayer-only: the working title Myst Online was jointly announced by Cyan and Ubisoft, and a now-defunct website created accordingly. In addition, when Uru was first stated as the final name for the product, some T-shirts were handed out to fans featuring the slogan "Online Ages Beyond Myst". Soon after, this was rather quietly changed to read just "Ages Beyond Myst", as can still be witnessed as the subtitle of the original box, Uru: Ages Beyond Myst.

Focus began to shift further towards offline gameplay when the Ubiru testers were asked, surprisingly, to concentrate on finding problems in the single-player aspects of the game. This confused many, as the existence of an external beta test was unusual and primarily the case because Uru was to be online.

Also, round the same time as they cancelled Uru Live, Ubisoft also backed out of several other MMO games, such as The Matrix Online, which was subsequently picked up by another publisher.