After having its servers shut off on April 10 by GameTap, it appears that Myst Online: Uru Live is going to be resurrected.

Even though Myst Online was GameTap's most-played title, the company recently shut down the MMOG back in April after a "season," citing that it would no longer offer the MMOG due to "business reasons." This was the second time that a publisher dropped the title; the first was Ubisoft in 2004, which dropped Myst Online: Uru Live before it even left its beta phase. With GameTap canceling the title, it seemed like Myst Online would vanish for good this time.

"The decision was a very difficult one," said Ricardo Sanchez, VP of Content and Creative Director for GameTap, in a press statement, "and was made for business reasons rather than due to any issues regarding the design and vision of the amazing world that Cyan Worlds and Rand Miller have brought to us. Despite the great Myst Online experience coming to a close, Cyan is still a very valued partner of GameTap, we are on excellent terms, and we look forward to continuing our relationship in the future."

However, Myst Online looks like it's poised for a comeback. GameTap and Myst developer Cyan Worlds reached an agreement this week to return the rights to the game to Cyan.Although Cyan Worlds regained publishing rights, GameTap still has a part in Myst Online; it was part of the no-money-exchanged deal when Turner Entertainment handed over the rights. "They realize that unless something happened (to revive Myst Online), it wasn't going to live," Miller told Spokesmanreview.com. "And if it didn't live, no one would ever get anything out of it."

Now Cyan has unveiled a new plan for the game called Myst Online: Restoration Experiment (or MORE). The MORE team introduced its plan via a post on the Myst Online Web site. In it, the team is careful to explain that Cyan has a "tentative roadmap" for the restoration but that "there are some hurdles to overcome." Although broken away from GameTap's clutches, the MMOG would still cost players a fee to play: a minimal sum of $25 for six months to cover server expenses, according to the MORE team. The first part of the roadmap deals with restarting the servers, which will be operated and either owned or leased by Cyan. Unfortunately, the team explains that all avatars and account information from the GameTap servers have been lost and therefore players must start all over again.

In addition, there's no commitment on behalf of Cyan to continue development of Myst Online even though the company reclaimed the publishing rights; the development staff itself currently comprises of less than 10 employees. "You should know that the roadmap does not involve any new content from Cyan at this time," the team states on the Web site. "The plan is to start to move the content creation - the "Art" - to you. In addition the guilds themselves will start to exercise some authority in writing, monitoring, approving, communicating, etc."

While this is good news for Myst Online fans, the MORE team said nothing is set in stone. "Please realize that this roadmap is tentative and dynamic - but it's a starting point," the Web site states. "There's no guarantee that we can accomplish all of these milestones, but they are something to discuss, adjust, and shoot for."

Stay tuned for more news regarding Myst Online and MORE.

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