Hey guys, I'm doing a project and I want to find and explore some abandoned or nearly abandoned MMO's or online options of conventional video games. So, does anyone know any? Even games where you could be stuck in a lobby for eternity would be great
Abandoned Online Games?
- Thread starter fortysevenarms
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I'm curious about this myself. Something about the desperation of desolation within an online space formerly occupied by thousands. I remember the Escapist did an editorial on this once, visiting abandoned online spaces like visiting an old ghosttown. The problem with MMOs though is that they need to maintain profitability if they are going to exist at all so finding one abandoned is finding one at the end of its lifespan, in which case there will be a small influx of players dropping in for the end of the world party.
Yes, exactly. I am an Art student and have been studying The Poetics of Space, a book by Gaston Bachelard. In it he argues that what happens to a space/piece of architecture changes it fundamentally and that space can have it's own "lived experience". Right now I am most interested in how this applies to digital spaces, especially since they don't fit our traditional concepts of a space (even though VR and Occulus is changing things, but that also brings up more questions). And you're right, the transitory nature of a digital/gaming space being empty makes them very difficult to find which is why I am reaching out online. Its also the transitory nature that I find so appealling, after all of the work and experiences and interactions the space can stop existing forever. Sorry for ramblingRemus said:
Also, thank you for pointing me to the escapist article. I knew someone had done something on this before but I couldn't find it. It is absolutely perfect!
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Well last time I tried Star Wars Galaxies, it was pretty abandoned, I wanted to give it a try but my current laptop doesn't have a CD player so I can't install it and I'm too lazy to look for it on the Internet, in any case the game is officially shut down but some fans are running servers to keep it alive.
Here's [http://www.swgemu.com/forums/content.php] the page, when I played it Jump to Lightspeed wasn't available I'm not sure if they re-implemented it yet but that was a while back in any case it's probably mostly abandoned, one of the servers should have my house somewhere in Tatooine, probably says the same name as here, it's abandoned though.
Oh yeah, I should mention that since there is player housing there are lots of abandoned ghost towns laying around the planets, so if you really want that feeling of desolation this really should do it, to be honest it was kind off depressing when I played it.
Oh yeah and you're going to need to find your own way to install the game because they don't provide it in the EMU server page, they do give you the patchers and all that stuff but not the game.
EDIT: I kinda forgot to mention this but the EMU server is free.
Here's [http://www.swgemu.com/forums/content.php] the page, when I played it Jump to Lightspeed wasn't available I'm not sure if they re-implemented it yet but that was a while back in any case it's probably mostly abandoned, one of the servers should have my house somewhere in Tatooine, probably says the same name as here, it's abandoned though.
Oh yeah, I should mention that since there is player housing there are lots of abandoned ghost towns laying around the planets, so if you really want that feeling of desolation this really should do it, to be honest it was kind off depressing when I played it.
Oh yeah and you're going to need to find your own way to install the game because they don't provide it in the EMU server page, they do give you the patchers and all that stuff but not the game.
EDIT: I kinda forgot to mention this but the EMU server is free.
Crysis 3 and Medal of Honor: Warfighter might be good places to start for shooters.fortysevenarms said:
Crysis 3 has about 100 regular players (that's not a typo), Doorfighter on the other hand has 1 (und precisely von!) server handling all the remaining multiplayer instances for the 200-ish people who still play it.
The trouble with a lot of MMO's is they get turned off once empty, so you're running the risks of private servers to get a look at them. But post NGE the empty town of Star Wars Galaxies could be genuinely creepy.
Deus Ex is pretty cool in an empty multi server, there's a lot of details in the maps you can't see when people are trying to brain you.
That's one of the saddest articles related to gaming I've ever read.lax4life said:
I was around for the shut down of Tabula Rasa and that was epic. The 'end' was supposed to be the detonating of a doomsday device when the AFS lost control, but the players not only fought back, they pushed and pushed until the Bane were defeated. So Tabula Rasa might be the only MMO I know of that had an official happy ending...
I'm a big fan of exploring dead, empty online spaces too. There's something about it. It's the same reason I like glitchhiking or wandering wide open digital spaces.
Check out 'The Endless Forest'.
[link]http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/[/link]
It's a very strange and directionless indie MMO where you just wander around a forest as a deer and interact with things and other players. It has a surprisingly dedicated but tiny playerbase, but the problem is finding where they're hanging out at any given time. The forest has some serious non euclidean geometry.
MMO's are tricky in that they are by far one of the most potent empty digital space, but often just die and become removed if the playerbase dwindles enough. Perhaps you can find some similar indie titles for your study.
There are also generally a lot of totally dead servers for old PC shooters like Quake, Unreal Tournament and Marathon. They can have a very ghost-town vibe.
You should also try a game called Noctis. It's a very old but powerful space exploration sim with online elements. Basically you travel around and explore a space the size of several galaxies. Other players can name the stars and bodies they have pioneered which show up in your game.
It also has a very stark and surreal kind of beauty:
Minecraft is another great example. Old dead Minecraft servers (without all the MMO mod elements) have some particularly potent ghost-town vibes to them. Even more so because someone hand-made all the things you see around you. It's a very wierd feeling coming across an empty little town in the wilderness that has obviously been built by several different people. I once found a whole massive city complete with skyscrapers and hotels with not another single person in sight. I then found a sign that told me there was a town to the north. I followed a pathway for about ten minutes until I got there. I found a patch of ground and spent a little while making my mark. I planted a few trees and built them into a treehouse sort of thing. A couple of days later I came back and it was burnt to the ground with a sign planted in the ground saying 'ha ha'.
I've also found and hunted down a lot of players wandering alone deep in the wilderness, ambushing them from behind trees and duelling them to the death or sniping them down from a distance. I once stealthily followed a small clan of three people back to their underground lair and poured several buckets of lava through their skylight.
Man, Minecraft used to be cool.
I guess the main thing you need to do is start exploring. Get some old shooters or multiplayer games and dive right in. You never really know what or who you'll find. Little online MMOs are a good place to start.
Check out 'The Endless Forest'.
[link]http://tale-of-tales.com/TheEndlessForest/[/link]
It's a very strange and directionless indie MMO where you just wander around a forest as a deer and interact with things and other players. It has a surprisingly dedicated but tiny playerbase, but the problem is finding where they're hanging out at any given time. The forest has some serious non euclidean geometry.
MMO's are tricky in that they are by far one of the most potent empty digital space, but often just die and become removed if the playerbase dwindles enough. Perhaps you can find some similar indie titles for your study.
There are also generally a lot of totally dead servers for old PC shooters like Quake, Unreal Tournament and Marathon. They can have a very ghost-town vibe.
You should also try a game called Noctis. It's a very old but powerful space exploration sim with online elements. Basically you travel around and explore a space the size of several galaxies. Other players can name the stars and bodies they have pioneered which show up in your game.
It also has a very stark and surreal kind of beauty:
Minecraft is another great example. Old dead Minecraft servers (without all the MMO mod elements) have some particularly potent ghost-town vibes to them. Even more so because someone hand-made all the things you see around you. It's a very wierd feeling coming across an empty little town in the wilderness that has obviously been built by several different people. I once found a whole massive city complete with skyscrapers and hotels with not another single person in sight. I then found a sign that told me there was a town to the north. I followed a pathway for about ten minutes until I got there. I found a patch of ground and spent a little while making my mark. I planted a few trees and built them into a treehouse sort of thing. A couple of days later I came back and it was burnt to the ground with a sign planted in the ground saying 'ha ha'.
I've also found and hunted down a lot of players wandering alone deep in the wilderness, ambushing them from behind trees and duelling them to the death or sniping them down from a distance. I once stealthily followed a small clan of three people back to their underground lair and poured several buckets of lava through their skylight.
Man, Minecraft used to be cool.
I guess the main thing you need to do is start exploring. Get some old shooters or multiplayer games and dive right in. You never really know what or who you'll find. Little online MMOs are a good place to start.
I don't know if it's exactly dead, but Horizons, Empires of Istaria, Istaria: Chronicles of the Gifted [http://www.istaria.com/] is an old MMO that is developed entirely on a volunteer basis now. It's possible that there aren't many people playing it at any given time, and it is possible to play the game for free(though free accounts only get one human character and cannot own land).
If you're looking for browser-based MMOs that are dying/dead, I can strongly recommend looking into Shintolin [www.shintolin.co.uk].
This thread is making me sad, and I should not be reading this.
Stop triggering me!
But I recently came back to the Hidden, and looked at my favorite servers list, only to find my favorite one missing. A little digging online, and it turns out that the server providers shut it off, because no one was playing.
It was strange. I spent days of game time in those servers, and they had great custom maps. All gone now. It makes me feel strangly small.
Stop triggering me!
But I recently came back to the Hidden, and looked at my favorite servers list, only to find my favorite one missing. A little digging online, and it turns out that the server providers shut it off, because no one was playing.
It was strange. I spent days of game time in those servers, and they had great custom maps. All gone now. It makes me feel strangly small.
Transformers war and Fall of Cybertron are pretty much dead across all platforms with the small exception of Fall having a very tiny number of hackers, it's a damn shame because I'm a huge fan of Transformers and their multiplayer games never really get that much attention anywhere.
Defiance seems pretty dead, but every once in awhile it gets a patch of some sort that brings players back for a few days.
