
When a Video-Game World Ends - ForHackernews
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2016/01/when-a-video-game-world-ends/423360/?single_page=true
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minimaxir
A funny counterpoint is when an apocalypse occurs in a video game world
_accidentally_. Take, for example, World of Warcraft's Corrupted Blood
Incident:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corrupted_Blood_incident)

Through an exploit, a viral debuff can escape and infect any player or NPC in
the world. Cue entire _cities_ dying with no way to stop it. It was
interesting enough that the CDC investigated.

Blizzard ended up repeating this event intentionally as a promo for the second
expansion (a zombie apocalypse) and ironically, people _hated_ it because it
made the game unplayable!

Another funny accidental apocalypse in early WoW was kiting raid bosses to
cities, letting them wreak havoc until a GM despawns them:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl0VWJdE01M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl0VWJdE01M)

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bcook
GM?

~~~
drdaeman
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamemaster](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamemaster)

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rmidthun
My daughter played an MMO by Disney called Pixie Hollow. In the game, players
were given pets that they needed to play with, keep clean and feed to keep
healthy.

About a month after the game closed, she woke up from a nightmare. She dreamed
of the pets huddled in the ruins after all the fairies (players) had left them
behind. It sounded heartbreaking.

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honestcoyote
A few years ago I remembered the name of the MUD I played in college. Found it
was still online. Couldn't remember my old pw so I created a new character and
'finger'-ed my old character, the one who almost caused me to flunk a
semester, and there she was. Still had the same .plan file. Seemed like the
correct level and titles too. "Last logged in: 19 years ago". I did the same
for my old friends. The most recent was 17 years ago.

I don't get nostalgic often or easily, but I felt this amazing sadness for a
minute. All those people who were so close to me. All gone half a lifetime ago
but they're still here in a way. Memorialized as bits on a German university
server which very few still visit.

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bazillion
Another counterpoint to this is a world that exists despite almost no one
playing it: Clanlord[1]. I started playing this game during its beta test when
I was 16(I'm 32 now) where there were as many as 200 players on a single
server. It predated every MMORPG you've ever heard of, unless you were into
online games during their earliest days. I still log on there every now and
then to "spend" my ranks (basically leveling up skills), and there are still
afk clients consistently logged into the server which sit in the town center
to heal folks. The coolest thing is the fact that its creator has posted patch
notes[2] every 2 weeks for the last 16 years -- how incredible is that?

What's interesting about this game is how the creator of it solved a lot of
very difficult technical challenges where there was no common solution at the
time. There was always one computer running one persistent world, so he spent
a lot of time working on scaling out the performance of that server to be able
to handle a possible load of 200 concurrent connections, where the average
game at the time could _maybe_ handle 6-8.

Knowing what I know now about programming, I would _love_ to be able to get
under the hood of that game and play around with it.

[1] [https://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/](https://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/)

[2]
[https://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/news/new.html](https://www.deltatao.com/clanlord/news/new.html)

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elenorelange
Graphical MMOs that predate it are Habitat (1986), Neverwinter Nights (1991),
Meridian 59 (1995), The Realm (1996), and Ultima Online (1997). In 1999 when
Asheron's Call and EverQuest came out, games like this became obsolete.

But there are still a few hundred players of Sierra's The Realm, which first
came out in 1996.

There are also many community emulators for Ultima Online.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_\(video_game\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_(1991_video...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neverwinter_Nights_\(1991_video_game\))

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meridian_59)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Realm_Online)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ultima_Online)

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buserror
Actually CL existed long before 1999 -- I know that very well. I don't have an
exact date; the 'official' release date was 1998, but it was just a rubber
stamp thing; it had been functioning in Beta mode for several years before
that. The release date was just a question of resetting everyone's characters
and starting again on a (must slower) experience path.

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merb
The problem is that these games are done forever.

I think the publisher should make a useful software to create some private
servers after they shutdown their services. mostly that games could still
"live" even without the publisher. I mean if they didn't some things will be
gone like forever.

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jonnathanson
The problem with that is IP.

Take a game like Star Wars Galaxies, for instance. Sony didn't own the rights
to Star Wars; it was licensing them. When it shut down the game, turning the
code over to the public would have been a violation of their license and would
have gotten them sued.

Now let's take an example of a game based on original IP. Even then, the
publisher presumably wants to maintain its control over that IP. It wants to
preserve the option to sell new iterations on that IP at some point in the
future.

Even in the case of a publisher's going bankrupt or shutting down, it will
attempt to liquidate its assets (IP being a key asset) in order to pay off its
creditors. (For example: this is how the Terminator franchise keeps surviving
in various iterations, despite the bankruptcy of its original IP holder. The
rights were auctioned off at fire sale prices, rather than simply committed to
the public domain.)

Intellectual property is the entire basis of the entertainment industry, be it
movies or games. It is, accordingly, very fiercely guarded.

[Note: this is not a comment about the ethics or the morals of IP, nor a
comment on what game companies _should_ do. It is merely an observation.]

~~~
csours
I wonder if some kind of trust arrangement in the original IP license could
accommodate this.

ie: At the end of this licensure period, $publisher may make technical game
material available for use. These materials do not extend a license etc etc.
$publisher may not charge for, etc etc.

Most of the time, these old games will have small user bases, and if not, the
licensor should be able to exploit that in some way.

~~~
jonnathanson
It's an interesting thought. And I've actually seen games in the wild where
something kinda-sorta like this seems to have happened. Not, MMOs. But in some
cases old PC or Mac games, now being rereleased, decades later, as nostalgia
plays. In cases where there was an IP license involved in the original game,
the rereleases are sometimes (but rarely) genericized. Your hypothetical
Chewbacca the Wookiee becomes Grordor the Tree Troll, and his Chewbacca sprite
is replaced by a bit-riddled rendition of an orangutan with a crossbow. Or
what have you.

Of course, every license is slightly to significantly different from the rest.
So no telling which games involved more liberal or more restrictive terms
within their original agreements.

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FussyZeus
Gotta be honest: This article got me misty-eyed multiple times.

This is what I find cool about Freelancer (and games like it). There are STILL
a decent amount of Vanilla and mod servers out there, and that game came out
in 2003.

This is one of the big reasons I don't play much multiplayer anymore, other
than Minecraft. There's no permanency and no assuredness that what you put
together with your friends will be around tomorrow. I know my minecraft server
is always going to be running and my friends know it too, we've built amazing
things there because of it.

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Aissen
And no need to be an MMO to die, solo games can end, too, with their always-
online requirements. Diablo 3, Destiny, Sim City, etc. all have solo-only
content and will become unplayable once their parent company pulls the plug
(without removing the requirement).

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kriro
Played galaxies, loved it. Great crafting system. The becoming Jedi stuff was
interesting but won't work in this day of social media and more widespread
internet use (barely worked back then).

The overall problem is interesting. You can just shut everything down,
preferably in a cool way that feels epic for the players. This is perfectly
fine if the game doesn't make money anymore as a player I don't expect games
to exist forever. On the other hand you could consider this scenario from the
getgo and have a clear transition path once you don't want to support the game
anymore. In a perfect world you'd open source everything and/or provide a
transition for community run servers. It's an interesting problem how to
freeze the data and keep characters the way they were but hard reset is ok as
well I'd guess. This rarely happens because well open sourcing stuff is
considered a bad idea often but most importantly noone wants to plan for
failure (how many startup founders have a plan to wind down the business
gracefully). Realistically the technology is pretty old when you fade out a
game so...why not? It'll be extra afford but could also turn out to be a great
trust-boost for future games. Think ID software :)

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ojii
Relevant 99pi episode [http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/game-
over/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/game-over/)

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wjoe
Final Fantasy XIV deserves a mention here too. Though it came back some months
later, the original version was a massive failure, so they ended up remaking
the entire game. They planned out a whole apocalyptic event for when the
original servers went down, with a meteor visible in the sky and slowly
getting closer in the months leading up to the shut down. They story behind it
was pretty interesting, and it made the world a lot more believable when they
brought it back for the new version.

Much like the article says of Star Wars Galaxies, everyone gathered for the
server shut down, and at the end a video played of the impending apocalypse.

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mintplant
Toontown at least has been picked up by a team of fans [1] who reverse-
engineered the client and built their own server software on top of Disney's
open-source release of their networked actor model system, Astron [2]. They're
really doing a great job with it, adding new features and content and making
significant expansions to the game lore. In some ways they're able to do more
with the world than Disney ever would have.

Their marketing has also been very polished - especially for a fan revival of
a game targeted at young children - and the community is surprisingly healthy
as a result. In run-ups to a major releases, they've run puzzle trails/mini-
ARGs that have brought hundreds of people to try and piece together the clues
[3].

I hope Disney doesn't swoop in one day and shut it all down, Nintendo-style.
They must know about it in some capacity, as core team members from Toontown
Rewritten are now major contributors to Astron. Perhaps they think it's better
for their public image to let it be.

[1] [https://www.toontownrewritten.com/](https://www.toontownrewritten.com/)

[2] [https://github.com/Astron/Astron](https://github.com/Astron/Astron)

[3]
[http://toontownrewritten.wikia.com/wiki/Alternate_Reality_Ga...](http://toontownrewritten.wikia.com/wiki/Alternate_Reality_Game)

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xiaoma
I would love to see a Twitch stream of the end of the world (of warcraft).

~~~
746F7475
I'm sure there will be one, but it'll take quite a while for WoW to die like
that

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obitoo
The end of the Wow Beta was pretty fun; giant elementals (raid boss size)
attacked the major cities, most people weren't beyond level 20 and I'd
certainly seen nothing like it before. Of course we couldnt make a dent in
them but it was a unique (at the time) experience, well done Blizzard.

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cmarro
reminded me of this episode of 99 percent invisible
[http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/game-
over/](http://99percentinvisible.org/episode/game-over/)

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teddyh
“ _This server is going down! Dooooown! It 's dooooomed!_”

[https://web.archive.org/web/20090503173458/http://archive.ga...](https://web.archive.org/web/20090503173458/http://archive.gamespy.com/dailyvictim/index.asp?id=691)

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jldugger
The final moments of Metal Gear Online 2:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRuouKk3TiY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DRuouKk3TiY)

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misingnoglic
I'm upset that they didn't talk about Glitch - that was an amazing MMORPG with
an even more amazing end (and hopeful rebirth)

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gaius
I wonder what they will do for Elite: Dangerous

