Cyan Worlds said it's formulated a plan to bring Myst Online back to its fans, after GameTap shunted control of the property back to its creators.
Cyan CTO Mark "Chogon" DeForest said in a community board letter that despite having a plan in place, cheerfully titled the "Myst Online: Restoration Experiment (MORE)," there are some "hurdles to overcome." Among the necessary compromises will be an implementation of a $25 fee for a six month subscription.
"We are not trying to make any money on this at this stage - but we do need to cover some of the costs," he said.
"You should know that the roadmap does not involve any new content from Cyan at this time. 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 monitoring, approving, communicating, etc."
Kotaku also spoke to Chogon about when the bigger, better, faster, MORE Myst Online might be up and running:
"We hope to have the MystOnline servers up sometime before the end of the year... hopefully, even sooner," he said.
The result will be a "more grass roots" Myst Online that will resemble Until Uru, but with more involvement with Cyan, Chogon said.
"Cyan will be in control of the core servers and the core of the game. While, the fans will be involved in not only creating content and tools but also helping run the game as well as providing structure (through the guilds) and key insights into keeping MystOnline going.
"This will start slowly but in the future, Cyan may be able to provide content once again and continue the story it has started."