Entry 23

After being gone for a Canadian long weekend (Victoria Day - we have fireworks and everything celebrating the old, dead, queen) I was very eager to get into Uru and see the new Age that has been added. Unfortunately, it looks this has been put off until this Thursday, though Rand Miller (one of the creators of the Myst series) will be in the cavern that evening to introduce the next stage of Uru - 7:00pm in A Beginner's Bevin.

What I did walk into was a little more bizarre, at least from my perspective. It seems that a wall collapsed on a couple of explorers and the city was frantic in rescue attempts. I really find it difficult to get into this "in character" stuff and to take it that seriously. The city itself was full and inaccessible to me. Both the Greeter's Guild and Uru Obsession were so stuffed with players that I didn't want to go there because of the inevitable lag. I decided to go to Beginner's Bevin to see if they had any information as to what was going on. I was soon joined by two other players who began talking about how tragic today's events were. I left, before they said something that they might consider rude.

I decided to check out the latest updates at the Uru Obsession website. One of the explorers is dead, the other (name Wheelie and daughter of one of the DRC types) has been rescued. There's a transcript of the chat logs which I skimmed through (and which explained why the city was packed). Follow my link on the left if you want to read it yourself, but for me, I just don't really care. In order for me to become engaged in a story I need to feel I'm immersed in it, at the center of the action. I also need to know, and care about the characters. With the way Uru works, I get neither of these. This is a work of fiction, but it feels like you are following it from the periphery, and the energy required to get to the center is simply not worth it.

What I find more interesting is that I noticed in one of the pictures on Uru Obsession that there were a couple of folks with pith helmets on. This is a left over from the solo Uru game that can be found in Eder Kemo. I went there to retrieve it and found an interesting light beam emanating from a cliff face. It was gone after I linked out and came back. Most likely a bug, but pretty weird.

Strange Light in Eder Kemo

There was also a note from the DRC in the incoming in my KI which said there was a machine that you can insert you KI into to make it emit light for a period of a few seconds. There are only a handful of KI machines in the game (Gahreesen, a few at the Great Zero, and Descent). It didn't take too long to find it was the one at Descent - which made sense because it was the only one that didn't have any other purpose until now. The light itself is pretty useless, but perhaps it may become a bigger deal later. There are places where having a flashlight would sure be handy.

HC