Following in the footsteps of MAME, there’s a pleasing resurgence in fan-crafted MMO emulation projects. From Star Wars Galaxies to vanilla Warcraft to Warhammer Online, it’s great to see these worlds being preserved. Even better to see people like John Smedley giving them the thumbs up.

Even if they can never be the same as they were - the lightning-in-a-bottle communities are impossible to recreate - it’s important that the history and joy those worlds represented aren’t lost. I briefly tried a Vanilla Warcraft server, and it was amazing to remember just how far things have changed. Hunting with ammo, pet happiness, minimum range, weapon skills - and the possibility of dying in starter areas1.

And despite the small numbers, there’s every chance the emulated games will generate unique communities of their own.

  1. What I really wanted to try was Plainsrunning, though I’m not sure it ever made it into a production build. ↩︎