Preserving Virtual Worlds -Library of Congress
 

As a old EQ player from '01, Project 1999 gives me quite a nostalgic feeling. Tonight, I was doing some studying on Digital Humanities and came across an interesting project I would love to see Project1999 to take part in. Preserving Virtual Worlds (PVW) is a Library of Congress approved project that is attempting to save video game worlds for future generations.

To quote a statement of purpose from "Debates in Digital Humanities," PVW "has developed and tested standards and best practices for archiving and ensuring future access to computer games, interactive fiction, and virtual communities."

It strikes me that the essence of P1999 is to preserve what players consider the 'core' spirit of EQ. Exactly in-sync with the purpose of PVW.

I am a newb to the forums, but I do want to do some good for the community by making it aware of an interesting social project. Possibly for our grandkids to play! Take care.

What a waste of time lol. How many times do you play pong? The only reason people still care about EQ is because they have fond memories of it, not because their grandfather played it.

I can't recall ever playing a single video game game released before the date of my birth. However, I do see the archival value of this sort of thing. Just like history has value- this is simply digital history.

I like the idea. The same as I appreciate others documenting other types of history I can see the value in this.

@orionsun- Your comments really blew me away. 'The only reason', you are generalising and are nearly certainly incorrect. 'not because their grandfather played it'- A near impossibility due to the age of the game and mean birthing age. Please, think more... Man I must be in a bad mood :p

OK lets slow this down a bit so the short bus can catch up....

You play EQ...
Super sweet history project archives PEQ...
Your DNA somehow mananges to make it into another human...
Somehow that human also manages to reproduce...

Now your precious little grandchild is sitting there with his brain-implant holo-porn, you think hes going to fire up a shitty ass world virtual world from 2 generations of people ago? That he can't even play, because there might be like 1 or 2 people checking out PEQ, so yay ghost town.

Are you daft?

While you're here splashing your bathwater about with your undersized intellect, young people are playing MUDs written 20 years ago.

This guy cannot troll intelligently.

Zork ftw! :D

Since p99's database is private you are going to have a hard time getting that likely. However you do have PEQ and AxClassic ( I would suggest AxClassic for this case ). The reason I suggest AxClassic is its a nice bundle of the eqemu server and database so it would be easiest to setup.

Truth be told I don't think you will be able to get a real real classic version, such as eqclassic.org plans to offer. Unfortunately despite this being an open source project a lot of data is still closed out if you will :)

I played MUD's in the 90's and although they are graphically out of date they still provide really neat ideas that newer games seem to forget in their quest of high end graphics and expansive yet static world.

My oldest grandchild plays simply because I play. So let's scratch the 'because their grandfather' part out.

This is a good idea!
EQ was developed by adding graphics to a MUD. There are elements in MUDs that make people still play them, why?
Because they are virtual worlds... its true, when you take the people from a virtual world, it ceases to exist. But, people will explore these lands if they are preserved.

Newer MMORPGs are not based on MUD designs, but more on Unreal Tournament designs.
EQ and UO should be preserved forever.

Such as nobody plays Monopoly, Checkers, Chess, Poker, Dungeons and Dragons any longer? I can see your point. :rolleyes:

What is the common thread in all those games(besides the fact they arent computer games)? They are all multiplayer... unless you play chess by yourself.

They aren't archiving stuff for a few years, they want to keep things for generations. When was the last time you played The Oregon Trail? We all loved that as a kid but nobody has an apple IIe anymore, luckily it is small enough it has been ported to other systems but there was also financial incentive to do so.

Even ignoring the fact that in 50 years the client won't be compatible with current operating systems, where are you going to legally obtain an EQ titanium client in 2050?

Anymore strawmen on the farm?

Emulators and Virtual machines = win

not too long ago I pined for starcontrol2, and i was like welll.....I can choose to do it in an emu OR a VM, I went with a VM of course (better than LLE emulators by far, but not HLE emus)

The future of computing is in VMs anyways

there are also emulators..

A friend of mine liked his apple games from "back in teh day" so he acquired an apple emulator, hooked up some game images he got from teh same place, and went to town on the "good ole" piece of crap apple games from "back in teh day" that he he loved so much

some emus have netwrok connectivity, and almost all VMs allow for passthrough of devices, device emulation, and other tricks in order to use the "system" the "way it was intended".

What this means is that in 50 years, while there won't be anyone natively using whatever ancient technology we are using right now will be called... we will be able to tunnel all of the traffic through the new network system using VM managers and other stuff - and yes VMs can be run inside of VMs - right now it isnt a good idea performance-wise, but computing power is getting so cheap that it will just be a "bad config that works anyways" as opposed to "a bad config that barely works"