“Ded gaem!” You’ve likely seen that truly biting piece of wit and cleverness in MMORPG discussions before (that’s sarcasm, for the record). But what happens when someone enters in to a truly quiet social MMO in the hopes of revitalizing it for a party at the end of the month? That was the mission of one YouTuber and his visit to There, a 3-D social MMO that first opened in 2003, closed its doors in 2010, and then came back in 2012 as a subscription-based title that’s still running today.
The video comes from Globert, a video creator whose entire shtick is unearthing abandoned, quiet, or extremely obscure games from the past. The 20 minute-long digest shows his start in the middle of barren locations, outlines his methods for finding other players, and shows off some of the places other players have put together.
After some chance encounters with other players at game nights, he eventually started to make friends, got shown around neighborhoods, and was introduced to the small but tightly-woven community of active members, some of whom has been in-game since the very beginning. This eventually led Globert to instead make a party for those remaining instead of trying to revive a “dead” title.
As it turns out, Globert’s video did appear to have a revitalizing effect: The game’s Facebook site has noted an uptick in new arrivals and put out a new instructional blog to assist with signup and registration, and one comment in the video noted that the person hosting trivia nights from the video is seeing more players than ever before. Incidentally, our own signup effort did find that there is a free trial available, but new players have to pay 50 cents via PayPal as an age verification measure.
While Globert’s visit is temporary, it’s also a testament to the early days of internet life, when people were still figuring out how friendships and camaraderie in online multiplayer spaces work. It’s well worth the watch below.
