So having a "ghost town" server where you could log on once in a year to just have your fond old memories of a game bristling with live tainted by the empty tomb it has become thanks to almost no-one being online anymore? Would that really make you happy? Would you visit the places that meant something to you 10 years ago like you would visit the grave of a long dead family member, alone, just to remember?

Sure, why not? Plan weekend retro gaming events with a large group, and have everyone log on to a specific old game to enjoy a blast from the past. One of my co-workers recently did a MUD event not long ago, and actually managed to crash the server when they had more connections than the software could handle, which they never actually achieved in the decade or so the game was up and running as a full time thing people played on a regular basis.

Servers wouldn't even need to be 'up' 24/7 for a historical preservation, but rather it could easily be random retro events that come up every now and then. Kind of like real world museums: Most have vast collections in storage and only actively display a few things at a time. Some 'main attraction' stuff stays out full time for decades, but smaller parts get swapped out for new displays on a rotating basis. In the game world this too could work well. Sure I might not be able to jump up and play whenever I want, but "The game might come back for a week or a month at some point" is a lot better sounding than "The game isn't profitable, and we're flicking the switch on it, and it is turning off forever."

Yes, that might work quite well for some games. I could see how this would be a blast for the non-grindy MMOs...

Dunno so much about games like WoW... might be a good way for people that played for years as a group to assemble the group once more and just play a raid for nostalgias sake. Will most probably not be so interesting for newbies. Being stuck in the newbie sections of the game because of the long grind, and not getting to anything interesting before the server would be switched off again, waiting a month or more for the next nostalgia gaming weekend with this particular game just to advance another 5 levels doesn't sound like much fun.

Well ideally for a museum style preservation of something like that the developers would also provide the tools and documentation to adjust things in game, letting the curators bump experience levels up and down as needed for presentation. How they modify things would depend on what they were presenting and the goal of things. Some games might get put up to let people play through long term 'as was', effectively recreating what the game was like when launched. (In the future, possibly even populated with advanced external AI 'extras' to fill in player numbers for a better recreation of the feeling of playing it.)

Other games might get hosted for shorter periods and more 'unlocked', or give users access to pre-leveled characters for things like 'dungeon raids of history' week.

Just something to help ensure that the art that is games doesn't vanish into a dark-age because all the companies go bust or get shuffled around, and no one knows where stuff is. It is part of our history, and it would be a shame to let it all slip away without anyone even mentioning it.

Well ideally for a museum style preservation of something like that the developers would also provide the tools and documentation to adjust things in game, letting the curators bump experience levels up and down as needed for presentation. How they modify things would depend on what they were presenting and the goal of things. Some games might get put up to let people play through long term 'as was', effectively recreating what the game was like when launched. (In the future, possibly even populated with advanced external AI 'extras' to fill in player numbers for a better recreation of the feeling of playing it.)

Other games might get hosted for shorter periods and more 'unlocked', or give users access to pre-leveled characters for things like 'dungeon raids of history' week.

Just something to help ensure that the art that is games doesn't vanish into a dark-age because all the companies go bust or get shuffled around, and no one knows where stuff is. It is part of our history, and it would be a shame to let it all slip away without anyone even mentioning it.

I like that.

Might be a choice between three different approaches:

1) Preserving the world state - "eternal" continuinity: You not only set up a new server, but also migrate the database of the original game to make sure players will find their characters, housing and items intact when they revisit the game. Of course, for the sake of continuinity and not to diminish past accomplishments, no tinkering with the grind.

That might be impossible to do and very expensive to both migrate and host, and would of course play more to satisfy existing players revisiting, while not being so cool for new players.

2) Accelerated grind - fast track to the end game: upping exp, item drop and cashflow so people advance at a much faster rate. No database migration, as every player can advance fast enough to reach their original end game stats in a reasonable amount of time.

I had the opportunity to expirience that when trying out Ragnarök 2 on a private server when the game still wasn't available in europe. I had to say, as much as I loved the visuals of the game, and some of its systems, I most probably would have lost interest quickly because of the grindy nature of that game. With the accelerated grind, I was able to advance two characters to quite high stats (never reached the endgame, was more interested at "sightseeing" ingame) just playing the game for 2 months or so at an hour or two per day. I was able to see most of the games most spectacular views with some nicely customized characters without spending the hours upon hours of soulless grind that would have been needed for that else.

This would of course bring down cost as you could start with a small database/Server and organically grow as players register for the server. People could reasonably fast reach the end game, and could / would be forced to enjoy the full game again in some kind of time lapse play. Some very veteran players that had sunk 1000s of hours into their existing characters might not be too happy about it as reaching the same state would still take them 100s of hours, but for most this would most probably be enough.

3) People start into the end game, no grind. All characters created start with maxed out levels, maybe with some starting equipment that either is the best available in the game or close to it. No grind needed anymore.

This might be the easiest way to allow players that just want to hop in for an hour an see what this WoW hype was all about to see the games end game. Don't know if this is a good idea, because it hides a good portion of the game from view, and given the nature of most MMOs, once the hunt for levels or better equipment is gone, there is just the subpar story and the sometimes spectacular, but often technically limited world to keep people interested. Given that people usually spend 100 hours or so to reach the endgame, and then maybe another 1000 hours just squeezing out the last drops of endgame content, or just fooling around with clan mates, it is questionable though how important the non-endgame parts of the game really are in the end.

Which is sad really, I often found that IF there is some artistical and storywise spark of ingenuity in grind heavy MMOs, its often NOT found in the endgame. When everyone is a walking one-man army buried in armour, the whole world is at stake and your opponents are all gods, the storys start to become very same-ish.

Could there be the option of hosting different servers for the same game, with different options (maybe NOT option one unless there is a lot of money available)?