Has It Been One Month Already??

Hmmm .. well I never said I was going to be good at this .. :D

I posted recently on the Uru Live forum that I've never been one to take "no" for an answer until I was absolutely sure that I had to .. well .. I'm to the point where I've accepted that I "have" to. Taking into account what I've read about the service that GameTap seems able to offer anyone outside a rather narrow range of "broadband" .. I would say that I .. and a great many others .. will be excluded from playing Uru Live. I have tried all that is available to me .. there is nothing more I can do .. :(

There are a LOT of us that fall under the "international" players group .. and GameTap as it is currently set up does not cater to those of us outside of the US .. though that is supposed to be remedied at some point along the way. My feeling is that one of the things that surprised them with the survey they had us take was that a good number of fans actually live outside the US market.

Then we get to add these items into the equation.

First off .. NO support of ANY kind for dialup .. which currently is my .. and a lot of others .. only online option.

Second .. there is NO support for satellite broadband .. something that a LOT of people are unaware of .. and a few people (including myself) have been looking into. It will be the ONLY broadband available to me where I live .. being offered in the near future.

Third .. there is iffy to no support for people who's broadband falls below their recommended range .. someone posted that as 384K. Apparently .. much below that speed and their systems don't register the connection as active .. or something like that.

I look at the problems that more then a handful have run into in discovering these things .. and I have to wonder at the enthusiasm that is fostered among the fans. A page has been created for those "international" fans who want to sign up .. but who cannot yet .. in order to let it be known that they are interested. Yet .. with no real way to know if they even will be able to access it .. given the "issues" that so many have that exclude them from participating.

Someone posted that it gives the accountants numbers to look at .. but when it comes time and so many find out that they cannot play .. numbers may not reflect the amount of those who signed up. I would imagine too .. that many will be terribly disappointed when they get down to the wire and find out they are excluded. I agree with another poster who said it makes something of a mockery of the international sign up list that so many are so enthusiastically signing .. when GameTap seems unable to provide anything but a service to a very specific "broadband" audience.

I've followed the Myst series for so long .. played all the games .. gotten several versions of them even .. read all the books .. even have some great collectable items too. I've loved the unfolding story of this family line and to have even more coming .. and to be denied participating .. is SO frustrating !!

I've done everything I can to "find a way .. " .. but I accept now .. that unless some miracle happens .. I can't even begin to think of .. whereby the petty broadband gods decide to extent their broadband hand in my general direction .. and bestow upon me non-satellite-above-384k broadband .. that I will never see the inside of Uru Live.

So for me anyway .. it seems that with Myst V .. the ending truly has been written.