That doesn't make me any happier about it.

You cannot currently affect players directly or indirectly in MMOs, don't limit the future. If an MMO started to reward companions with combat bonuses, loyalty bonuses etc. perhaps such a dynamic could be achieved (just a rough idea). It doesn't have to be WoW with a few new buttons.

Unfortunately you are of course correct - it will be.

Maybe it's just me, but if I wanted to show my kids what sort of games I used to play, I think Everquest or World of Warcraft would be down at the bottom of the list. :p

Don't people run their own Ultima Online servers? Not saying it will be possible with the current modern MMOs but you never know. Even that aside the argument is silly. How many people have favorite restaurants/hang-outs/whatever they used to go to as kids but can't anymore because they aren't around? Would you have preferred never to visit them at all or just live in the moment and enjoy things for what they are now? Probably not but I'm starting to see where your kooky and haphazard anti DRM stances stem from. I enjoy things in the here and now -- I don't really care if something I play and enjoy now will be around twenty years later. More likely than not a video game will be low on your list of fond memories... at least I hope so. Except it isn't 'gone forever.' You played it and enjoyed it. Apparently you are unfamiliar with the phrase better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all.

That's actually changing for the better. You can have HD videos of all your games and MyFacester all your old teammates 20 years from now. It's optional but it is there.

Even if the social aspect of a game like WOW doesn't exist in 20 years there's an argument for still being able to look at it. Understanding the dynamics of a juggernaut vs. a failure like Tabula Rasa, seeing the evolution of MMOs along side single player games, and seeing the evolution of the genre itself is all worthwhile. Understanding why 50-100 million hours a week (probably really conservative, that number) were spent playing WOW during 2010 might be hard to contextualize without actually having some portion of the game functional.

As much as I hate to admit it, WOW is culture. Fuck, games are our culture. It does suck to lose a little bit of culture, objectively. Sure, personally, I couldn't give a shit about most games launched on the Wii, but that doesn't mean they're not culturally important.

As for WOW, due to its sheer popularity it is less likely to be forgotten. But APB will be, except for a couple news articles, so will Tabula Rasa, maybe even Warhammer Online. Think back, if I say Wasteland or Bard's Tale, you know what I'm talking about, most folks here do. If I say The Legend of Blacksilver or Ghost Chaser that number is going to go down.

Of course, in my black moments I wonder if it matters, really. At PAX I heard a couple of people wonder who Warren Spector was and a bit of me died inside (or at least felt really old).
Maybe, but DDO wouldn't be, at least not for me.

Sorry for the snip, see above in my previous post. It's about culture. And now that a lot of folks carry powerful computers with cameras and mics in their pockets your examples are changing as well.
I hear they ran events at the end of Tabula Rasa where the players not only affected the world, they trashed it, quest hubs got annihilated, etc. It seems you could have a rotating kind of thing where you had a start of a story and watch it evolve different ways each time. You could throw in some kind of minor reincarnation bonus for longtime players to reward them for coming back.

While I understand that argument I guess I just don't feel it has any bearing on me. I thought the discussion was more about one's personal use and enjoyment rather than some historical analysis of a phenomena. But even then... are we saying since it can't be 'preserved' as-is it isn't worth experiencing in the first place? I know that's not quite what you are arguing but that is the thrust of the original post in the thread -- avoiding things that may not potentially be around twenty years from now to enjoy again.

Are you on the right website? I mean isn't GOG all about keeping old games alive and replaying the classics, or discovering an old game for the first time?

Games are my movies, my theater, whatever. Just as I watch Blade Runner every year I want to play Fallout every year or so, or Duke Nukem. Of course I care if they are still able to be played, to be experienced. Why wouldn't I?

I can only speak for myself, I read it as both in the OP's post, but that is certainly colored by things I hold important.

Since you've had to here me blather on for a long time on this board I'm sure you know how often a trumpet culture as important.

I should just go get a degree in archival, I wonder if I could eat doing that (I've had a good turn at making a lot of money, for me it hasn't brought any de facto state of happiness or anything, but I know penury would certainly make me unhappy).

You said in another post "Except it isn't 'gone forever.' You played it and enjoyed it. Apparently you are unfamiliar with the phrase better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all." I actually like that, and I feel that it's true in a lot of ways. In fact, it's the only form of immortality I believe in and the only one that my conscience allows me to teach my child. If something can live on no where else, we can let it live in our hearts.

It's one thing to care. It's another if you -- as you said in your original post -- feel compelled to avoid something entirely that you will enjoy in the first instance because it possibly won't be around in the second instance twenty years removed.

If I were ten+ years younger and an established career removed I probably would have been an archeologist~

I always say it's ironic that we make all our important choices when we have the least wisdom to make them. It's like society thrives best off our naivety.

I would have been much the same, I would have been this guy: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bL7vK0pOvKI (Wade Davis)

Part of that is not wanting to support or contribute to the idea of games which are temporary, which only exist as long as the company wants them to. There is also a big factor of not wanting to get invested in something that is temporary, certainly. The whole "better to have loved and lost" thing is certainly true, but we can't compare human relationships and video games surely. You might say "games are less important so it's less of a deal" but I think the exact opposite, they are less important so why bother in the first place?

Well it's all about the money, isn't it? Even most of the 'failed' ones turned a profit. APB was an exception of course but that one had an absolutely suicidal business model behind it. The game itself could still turn a profit for the new company behind it.

So yes, these games will come and go. Massive intricately crafted worlds will be abandoned and lost for all time. But such is the way of things. There are far too many good single player games for me to get too concerned about it.

But it does make you wonder if someone couldn't buy some of these defunct worlds and populate them with NPCs to create a single player game out of them. Morrowind is effectively a single player remake of an abandoned MMO after all. Look how that turned out.

Well, maybe some games can implement meaningful choices in some ways, but none can do the most basic one that all single player RPGs let you do - be the sole hero or villain of the story.

Not even going that far though. Imagine if the waves of random bandits you might kill in a typical single player RPG were actually players, and they didn't magically return back to life instantly.. yeah..

Anyways, didn't Tabula Rasa actually close down some time ago?