ToonTown, an MMO produced by Disney, is now dead. I played the trial version for a while, and a month with a free code I got for it, so it's not like I was attached to it or anything. Still, I get really sad when I see great games get up and die. At least with single-player games, like Nethack, I can go back and visit. But now this thing is just gone.
It seems that every MMO that I thing is something special and unique goes and dies. It started with my first online game, VMK, and a handful after that. (Anyone play Glitch?). For some reason, my brain treats these games as if they were people, and their death always feels quite real to me. It just sucks that these pieces of art that have had so much time and energy put into them by dozens of people are going to get shoved into a closet and never be seen again. Companies should release the source code or something! (Or at least do what Glitch did, and release the assets.)
Oh well. As long as the Kingdom of Loathing is around, I suppose I'll be good. (knocks on wood)
EDIT: I think this quote from an article explains it:
"When a virtual world closes, its users lose many things all at once," said Nick Yee, a researcher who has been studying virtual worlds for 14 years. "A living, breathing community with its own unique culture, slang, and lore; an accessible and familiar hangout with regulars and familiar faces; an online identity and persona that they're emotionally invested in and cultivated over time; and a social network of friends who have shared many experiences together."
I know a lot of my family thinks it's silly that I have people on the internet that I would consider to be much closer friends than a lot of the people I speak to on a daily basis, but they really are. There's this one person in particular who was a great help to my mental state during a period where I was always feeling pretty down and depressed, and didn't really have a lot of people to speak to in the "real world". I think that it's perfectly fine if you have digital denizens you consider to be true friends.