Since the release of Riven in 1997, there were a few attempts at doing a Myst website like this one. A couple of designs were even layed out, but never completed. This site is the culmination of all previous attempts, intended to honor the entire Myst series during the days that it came to a conclusion:
- After the news of Myst V being the last in the series back in April 2005, the site began its planning stages with MystJourney.com registered and a final design completed by June.
- Once the initial design and outline of the content was ready, the site was previewed to the Myst community on the MystObsession Forums.
- On August 1st, 2005, with 7 weeks left until the release of Myst V, the Final Myst Journey Countdown had begun as a weekly newsletter for those interested in taking a journey through previous games in the series leading up to Myst V's release.
- On September 1st, 2005, with 22 days until the release of Myst V, the Ages of Myst Countdown had begun, with a new Age wallpaper posted daily. Since there were more than 22 Ages to cover, the wallpapers continued to be released until there was one for each Age in the series including those of Myst V.
- The Choose Your Myst Journey feature was posted in October 2005 after the release of Myst V to show players who were new to the series and those who have gotten only a taste of it, the different ways they can go through the games and series of books.
On a personal note, I have grown up with the Myst series and it has inspired me into adulthood to build my own worlds. It's no surprise that my latest project involves storytelling. It's called Indie Aisle; it's a web app that allows writers to self-publish their books and comics to work on various eReaders (the closest thing we have to a Linking book!).