There’s something about nostalgia that gamers hold near and dear to their heart. Despite the polygonal and misshapen character models, bland graphics, and glitch-ridden nature of games’ past, there’s always a feeling of bliss when a gamer reopens a title from their childhood.
Well that won’t be the case for Runescape anymore. The “Legacy” server that preserved the original 2001 edition of the online MMORPG will be shut down on August 6th.
Developer Jagex explained that the reason for the shut down is because there was a “growing risk of unrecoverable, game breaking bugs” in addition to the classic servers being flooded with automated bots instead of actual players. However, the developers will still continue to update the modern version of Runescape for those players to enjoy.
On the other side of the MMORPG world, however, Blizzard games announcing at their annual convention Blizzcon that World of Warcraft will be reopening classic servers in the coming years. These “vanilla” servers (called that due to retaining the original flavor of the game) will aim to capture the nostalgia players felt when they first opened the game in 2004.
We’ve seen in many other aspects that classic and retro gaming are making a comeback, such as the NES Classic being released by Nintendo with a collection of original games from the console’s earliest life cycle.
There’s no doubt that the future of gaming will be about advancing and pushing the boundaries of technology, but maybe taking a step back could be the future as well.
