by duckblind » Fri Apr 05, 2024 7:14 am
i'm always fascinated by lost mmos. my personal favorite was fusionfall, though it did come back at a couple points in time so i've gotten my fix of it for now (despite missing the large community it originally had!). i just think the scope of that world was so lovingly designed, even if it got lost in translation and couldn't be properly executed down the line. it's one of the best examples of crossing over media with vastly different styles and making them all into a cohesive universe. genuinely has such a great score too.
as for games that are like 100% lost with no proper revival attempts ever having existed, the nicktropolis game on the nickelodeon website was pretty fun; bare bones for a network-site-contained mmo but it actually updated with events and such and there was a really nice little community there for a time. i liked how it also integrated into the site's forums and other games too (like the also lost media side-scroller level designer)- i remember seeing mods from the forums in the game and being starstruck and sharing/reading some of my first fanfics on those boards. the foster's home big fat awesome house party on cartoon network's site was something i only played a couple times when there was nobody else on, so it's always felt liminal to me, but i wish i could go back and explore the map a bit more in-depth. same with the disney fairies online world.
outside of mmos, my most-missed game is girlsense! i don't know if anyone else remembers it, but it was a social fashion designer that had the most creative freedom i've ever seen in the genre. you had to start with a base item but you could cut into and paint it any way you wanted so people were turning dresses into framed paintings and cutouts of cartoon characters and such and then making their boutique displays little galleries. i really wish it still existed as my art has improved so much since it closed and i probably would be having way more fun with it. it's a shame nothing like it has been able to start up since ):