Myst is one of those games that brought countless newcomers into the world of PC gaming, with it's high-quality visuals and challenging puzzles making it one of the earliest hits of the CD-ROM era. Now GoG.com has reached an agreement with developer Cyan Worlds to put the games up for sale once more, starting with Myst Masterpiece, available now for $5.99.

"Keeping the Myst series alive is incredibly satisfying," said Rand Miller, co-founder of Cyan. "GOG.com allows us to keep the ages of Myst accessible for our fans, and in addition make them available to a whole new generation of gamers."

Masterpiece will be followed shortly after by Riven, which weighs in at a 2.2GB, a truly massive game for its time, and Manhole, Rand and Robyn Miller's earlier adventure game for kids.

Over the years I've probably purchased Myst in one form or another more than a dozen times. I suppose it's nice to have another option.

Talking open source anything is well beyond my level of comprehension, but "fully" means what it says, and includes both server and client architecture. So this is a hell of a lot more technical than encouraging or relying on player created content, homebrews, mods and the like. They're seeking to create an actual development community, albeit among gamers.

For certain, many gamers are also coders. It's not mutually exclusive. But are they playing Myst Online, are they interested enough to come to it, is the game's code enough of a toybox for them, and is access to it enough of an enticement — all these are questions that Cyan Worlds will be answering.

Myst Online to Be Released Fully Open Source [CNet]

Cyan president Rand Miller says that the newly relaunched game will include features that will allow players to create their own content, which was hinted at during the game's first relaunch. The revitalized title will carry a fee ($25 for 6 months was suggested) to cover the cost of maintaining servers.

There's something to be said for tenacity, but I fear in this case that something is "Just let it die already."

GameTap gives Myst Online back to Cyan. Cyan says it's opening the game to fan development [TXT - Thanks Kyven]]

Myst fans will be glad to read, however, that "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." Stay strong, Mysties.

Myst Online: Uru Live Season 2 Status [Myst Online Forums]

Myst III was the first time I actually started to dig the whole Myst thing, as the static graphics before then were just too oppressive. Since Exile I haven't bothered with the Myst universe but that may be about to change.

[...] Rand Miller, co-creator of the Myst empire, Myst Online: Uru Live will eventually let users build their own ages. Miller has always had this poetic goal of letting players "write" Myst environments of their own; Cyan Worlds plans to provide its own development tools to gamers to make this happen.

I never played Uru: Ages Beyond Myst, Uru Live, or any iteration thereof. And in fact am so out of the Myst loop that I had never heard of them until now. I've been craving a good zone out lately, so maybe I'll grab ABM to mess with until I can poke at Uru Live. Eliza Gauger

More here [Joystiq]