I was informed that Club Penguin Rewritten was struck down by Disney a couple years ago. RIP As well, refer to this list for updated smaller scale fan project revivals: www.reddit.com/r/Games/s/xmtFfmU9T6
12:52 Actually, Pixie Hollow was around _before_ the movie came out. The franchise didn't start with the Tinker Bell movies either, it started with Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, a book by Gail Carson Levine.
The algorithm is on your side dude, here's a sub for ya. Dude, VMK was incredible. It was one of those things you just had to be there for. Sure like, Club Penguin was around and that was cool, Toontown was cool, but VMK was truly something special for what it was.
Hope this comment helps your reach. Incredible quality from a channel so small. VMK was my favorite disney MMO, mostly due to the tie in with The Kingdom Keepers book series!
Legends of the Pirates Online still has an active playerbase. Honestly it's worth playing for a bit not as an MMO but just as a fun RPG. Especially if you have some friends to crew and level with.
I remember playing VMK up until it shut down. It was really a great experience, I started playing after seeing at magic kingdom and it just tied in to stuff at the park so well, if I remember correctly you would go in and check in at the main area and get a task list to complete throughout the park and when you got back you would get codes for the in game items. A lot of the tasks in VMK mirrored the same system and it just felt so magical to get to experience it back when it came out in 2005.
Really great video, I'm happy this popped up on my feed! I played a lot of these growing up, so this extremely nostalgic. I remember playing Virtual Magic Kingdom a lot growing up but I don't know a single other person who has played that game. I always wanted to go to Disneyland but since I never got to, this game was my way of living that fantasy. It was definitely very reminiscent of Habbo hotel, which I also played. But I actually liked VMK more as it had that Disney charm and some fun minigames. The Haunted Mansion minigame as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean one were my favorites. I have fond memories of the Jungle Cruise Photo Safari too! There were fifty Hidden Mickeys in the game, which were actually quite hard to find, and you were awarded credits and pins for getting photos of them. I tried saving up credits to buy enough film to photograph all the Hidden Mickeys but I don't think I ever got them all. I was also obsessed with Club Penguin growing up, and somehow didn't even know I lived in the same city where it was developed until later on when I was in my teens! They even had a Club Penguin HQ with merch and everything right in my hometown. Really wish I visited that as a kid! I played Toontown and Pirates of the Caribbean online as well, and those are incredibly nostalgic. Being introduced to all these is what kickstarted my love for MMO's and eventually I discovered WoW, Guild Wars, and FFXIV which I played a lot through my teens and early adulthood. Just returned to WoW for their latest expansion and still having a lot of fun :)
I can't believe Pirates Online didn't pop off more. Still one of my favorite ship combat of all time. The melee and magic combat wasn't too bad either. I need another pirate MMO
Bro came out of left field to the UA-cam gaming community but he came out swinging. Your RuneScape video dropped into my algorithm. Havent heard of you so I checked out the channel, and Holy sh** dude you have some quality content. The RS video will def blow up your channel, and rightfully so. Can’t wait to see your channel grow, because it absolutely will.
There is a reboot of VMK! It’s called myVMK and you can still play! They are still posting newsletters and releasing items to this day. One of my favorite games growing up and I haven’t thought about it in so long. Thank you for this video. Also, I recognize some of the players in the video clips!
MyVMK still exists as a fan recreation, and has for over a decade. It's a shell of it's former self, but if anyone is seeking to relive the nostalgia, it's there.
Was so shocked to hear him say there was no fan recreation when I’ve been on/off playing MyVMK for years! And you’re only one of two comments I’ve seen mention it too
Great video man! I ussually don't feel invested in video essays, but this one is an exception. Just a small detail though, Club Penguin Rewritten ceased operations on April 13, 2022 due to a request from Disney themselves, so yeah the boogie man is still on the loose. Other than that, keep it up!
There was also an online Buzz Lightyear Astroblasters game around the same time as VMK and I think you could access it through VMK as well. It was a rail shooter game, much like the ride at Disneyworld and Disneyland, however, it had a cooperative element that was unique to the game. By playing the game while the parks were open to the public, you could actually unlock special targets for guests at the park to shoot and improve their score as well as them help improve yours. It was very interesting and I loved going on the ride (I lived in Southern California at the time) and seeing my name on the leaderboard next to a username telling me how much they boosted my score. It was really unique and fun.
My brother and I have been playing a lot of Toontown rewritten lately and it’s been so fun to go back to! This made me want to try out the pirates game again cause we used to love that one too! Great video
Fusionfall, Toontown, Club Penguin and Free Realms were my childhood, love hearing about those, would love a video about the other 2 from you, hope you build some ground and grow up dude
14:30 I gasped seeing that trailer knowing it probably came with my upload. Uh... anyway! You're right that Pixie Hollow's remakes aren't as popular. I assume it has to do with the fact the ones that are available are not accurate recreations, because the mostly young player base at the time was too young to be able to preserve any of the games original assets. I also find it interesting you say that the game shut down because of content updates being slow, but I don't believe this was the case as there were many game updates. In fact, there was even a Fashion Boutique spinoff app on the App Store that only lasted a year. If anything, I believe that Toontown had problems keeping players engaged with updates after the main story ended. Pixie Hollow, I think- had players age out of the game. However this is not to say that players weren't engaged with Pixie Hollow, I think it was just as if not more popular than Toontown at that time- however Pixie Hollow community did not have the "voice" that Toontown had. The player base of both remakes according to their respective sites and hubs combined is like 800,000 people. And a smaller developer is making a new game as well using original assets from the game. With two more movies on the way I still believe the audience would play the game, and it could at least last 2-3 more years- however because Disney wanted to focus on mobile gaming and close the original MMOs the game was shut down and the community was quite upset. However, no one ever got the attention of the developers like how the Toontown community did, because there were younger players. TTO was like several years older and had combat gameplay, keeping older players interested. The oldest the Pixie Hollow players were were in middle school or high school, because the game was 5 years old (really 6 counting the pre beta) You often did not see a player with an account older than 2010 when the site was closed. I say this cause TTO's players were really passionate of getting the game back online when it shut down and contacting other avenues to try to keep it up. Club Penguin fans were already archiving the game before it was gone. Pixie Hollow's audience couldn't have that even though it should. There weren't exactly a lot of detail oriented people playing PH, who would know about SWF files or whatever XD. That doesn't mean kids somehow didn't find their way into like the files (somehow), they just used it as evidence the game was coming back or would come back rather than like ohhh we should save this. It made the news much more sad. Pixie Hollow Forums is still online (it was part of MMO central but never merged) and you can see people talking about how there probably wouldn't be "pixie hollow private servers". Even the Pixie Hollow team's goodbye message to players reads very impersonal. It was one of the main MMOs where people didn't really know who made it or any of the team members. It was very somber news. The most popular aspect of the game I'd say is the customization aspect, and that's what kept players coming back. A lot of the new features post 2010 focused on customization and social gameplay, rather than the quests. They even had a special currency for non members, which the other games didn't have or need. Crafting is even a faint memory for many people who played it The pre-beta thing was Disney's way of ensuring there was an audience for the game, in mid 2007 Create a Fairy released on the Disney Fairies website and you could create a fairy and a page for it (like a fairy myspace). Then in 2008, there was a closed beta called Pixie Hollow previews. Eventually, the game released gradually including all the fairy meadows. The pre beta version of the game was avaliable on the international sites until 2017. You could find codes on toys and there was a Create a Fairy program on old DVDs that came with dolls. With all this excessive background information, you can see why the game shut down. Pixie Hollow's "core audience" shut down and there were hundreds of unused accounts from 2007-2009. It was too expensive to release internationally in the MMO format and the game's detailed animations often caused lag for players. it seems like most Disney MMOs were costly and difficult to maintain, leading Disney to change direction and focus on mobile games. Club Penguin was the only one where they weren't operating at a loss, and maybe that's also because they acquired the game and the original developers seemed to do a lot of work improving the servers and such.TLDR- kids too young to save anything, older accounts make no money, it leaning younger is the reason it isnt as popular now as ppl barely remember it
There were a couple of other Disney MMOS not sure how promoted they were if at all but one was called Superbia it was a Disney Channel MMO and it featured Disney Channel characters and the next one was called Playhouse Disney Preschool Time Online that was a Playhouse Disney MMO game where you got to interact with Playhouse Disney characters it would be cool if you could do videos on them
I was informed that Club Penguin Rewritten was struck down by Disney a couple years ago. RIP
As well, refer to this list for updated smaller scale fan project revivals: www.reddit.com/r/Games/s/xmtFfmU9T6
VMK also had or still has a Fan server Called my vmk
12:52 Actually, Pixie Hollow was around _before_ the movie came out. The franchise didn't start with the Tinker Bell movies either, it started with Fairy Dust and the Quest for the Egg, a book by Gail Carson Levine.
VMK is a core memory from my childhood! I always tell my friends about it and they have no idea what I'm talking about.
Absolutely like it’s unheard of
I was EXACTLY the same way, I played religiously but no one knows about it except the friends I had played it with :(
im still upset that club penquin was shut down purely to chase the mobile trend
Man, VMK hit different. I loved making crazy rooms and hanging out with people when i was a kid.
how the fuck does this have only 7 views??? This is incredible and i can tell you my dude you are going far if you're able to put out videos like this
For real
it took me a sec to realize this is wasnt a 300k+ view video
The algorithm is definitely picking this one up now. I think we have a slow burn banger on our hands.
I miss Pixie Hollow so much
The algorithm is on your side dude, here's a sub for ya.
Dude, VMK was incredible. It was one of those things you just had to be there for. Sure like, Club Penguin was around and that was cool, Toontown was cool, but VMK was truly something special for what it was.
Hope this comment helps your reach. Incredible quality from a channel so small. VMK was my favorite disney MMO, mostly due to the tie in with The Kingdom Keepers book series!
Dude pixie hollow online was my CHILDHOOD 😭
It should be mentioned that VMK wasn’t just visually similar to Habbo - it was developed by the same exact team.
Legends of the Pirates Online still has an active playerbase. Honestly it's worth playing for a bit not as an MMO but just as a fun RPG. Especially if you have some friends to crew and level with.
I remember playing VMK up until it shut down. It was really a great experience, I started playing after seeing at magic kingdom and it just tied in to stuff at the park so well, if I remember correctly you would go in and check in at the main area and get a task list to complete throughout the park and when you got back you would get codes for the in game items. A lot of the tasks in VMK mirrored the same system and it just felt so magical to get to experience it back when it came out in 2005.
LOVED this video. I hope it gets more views it was well written and engaging the whole way through! Huge walk down memory road :) thank you!!!
Really great video, I'm happy this popped up on my feed! I played a lot of these growing up, so this extremely nostalgic.
I remember playing Virtual Magic Kingdom a lot growing up but I don't know a single other person who has played that game. I always wanted to go to Disneyland but since I never got to, this game was my way of living that fantasy. It was definitely very reminiscent of Habbo hotel, which I also played. But I actually liked VMK more as it had that Disney charm and some fun minigames. The Haunted Mansion minigame as well as the Pirates of the Caribbean one were my favorites. I have fond memories of the Jungle Cruise Photo Safari too! There were fifty Hidden Mickeys in the game, which were actually quite hard to find, and you were awarded credits and pins for getting photos of them. I tried saving up credits to buy enough film to photograph all the Hidden Mickeys but I don't think I ever got them all.
I was also obsessed with Club Penguin growing up, and somehow didn't even know I lived in the same city where it was developed until later on when I was in my teens! They even had a Club Penguin HQ with merch and everything right in my hometown. Really wish I visited that as a kid!
I played Toontown and Pirates of the Caribbean online as well, and those are incredibly nostalgic. Being introduced to all these is what kickstarted my love for MMO's and eventually I discovered WoW, Guild Wars, and FFXIV which I played a lot through my teens and early adulthood. Just returned to WoW for their latest expansion and still having a lot of fun :)
I can't believe Pirates Online didn't pop off more. Still one of my favorite ship combat of all time. The melee and magic combat wasn't too bad either. I need another pirate MMO
pirate 101 is still up. it’s a little cash grabby though. it has a great storyline
I played so much toon town and neopets as a kid. watching this video unlocked so many memories man 🫡
Bro came out of left field to the UA-cam gaming community but he came out swinging.
Your RuneScape video dropped into my algorithm. Havent heard of you so I checked out the channel, and Holy sh** dude you have some quality content.
The RS video will def blow up your channel, and rightfully so. Can’t wait to see your channel grow, because it absolutely will.
There is a reboot of VMK! It’s called myVMK and you can still play! They are still posting newsletters and releasing items to this day. One of my favorite games growing up and I haven’t thought about it in so long. Thank you for this video. Also, I recognize some of the players in the video clips!
MyVMK still exists as a fan recreation, and has for over a decade. It's a shell of it's former self, but if anyone is seeking to relive the nostalgia, it's there.
Love this video! I just wanted to mention that VMK does in fact have a fan recreation that’s been live since 2013! It’s called MyVMK.
Also, the reason VMK looked very similar to Habbo is because they were made by the same company, Sulake!
Was so shocked to hear him say there was no fan recreation when I’ve been on/off playing MyVMK for years! And you’re only one of two comments I’ve seen mention it too
Great video man! I ussually don't feel invested in video essays, but this one is an exception.
Just a small detail though, Club Penguin Rewritten ceased operations on April 13, 2022 due to a request from Disney themselves, so yeah the boogie man is still on the loose.
Other than that, keep it up!
Thanks for the info on that, what a bummer!
A goated video with so few views, keep doing this, it is high quality stuff
There was also an online Buzz Lightyear Astroblasters game around the same time as VMK and I think you could access it through VMK as well. It was a rail shooter game, much like the ride at Disneyworld and Disneyland, however, it had a cooperative element that was unique to the game. By playing the game while the parks were open to the public, you could actually unlock special targets for guests at the park to shoot and improve their score as well as them help improve yours. It was very interesting and I loved going on the ride (I lived in Southern California at the time) and seeing my name on the leaderboard next to a username telling me how much they boosted my score. It was really unique and fun.
TOONTOWN! I love Toontown, awesome grindfest of a game.
My brother and I have been playing a lot of Toontown rewritten lately and it’s been so fun to go back to! This made me want to try out the pirates game again cause we used to love that one too! Great video
Fusionfall, Toontown, Club Penguin and Free Realms were my childhood, love hearing about those, would love a video about the other 2 from you, hope you build some ground and grow up dude
This was genuinely well done. I'm glad it was in my feed.
Signed, an MMO fan.
Man. I still love Toontown to this day. I'm so glad there's private servers.
I can confidently say am your 799 sub can’t wait for 800. You are very underrated keep going!
Toontown and Virtual Magic Kingdom was my jam. All my homies hate the cogs.
Yeah everybody comment while you can, very high video quality nice audio , you my friend have a bright creator path ahead of you !
If I wasn't playing AdventureQuest I was playing Toon Town.
Pirates Online is my all time favorite game. Too few people know about it!
great video I miss Pixie Hollow deeply 😢
Amazing video mate. You deserve many more views 👍
Yo toontown was my favorite game as a kid
I loved pixie hollow I miss it so much, it was my first time gaming on a pc
Really liked your video! Thank you for the fun and informative way of explaining
Toon town online sounds amazing... bring it back! Disney became the cogs.
Pixie Hollow Online mentioned❗️You have my attention
Very nice video! Keep it up.
ALGORITHM COMMENT
14:30 I gasped seeing that trailer knowing it probably came with my upload. Uh... anyway! You're right that Pixie Hollow's remakes aren't as popular. I assume it has to do with the fact the ones that are available are not accurate recreations, because the mostly young player base at the time was too young to be able to preserve any of the games original assets. I also find it interesting you say that the game shut down because of content updates being slow, but I don't believe this was the case as there were many game updates. In fact, there was even a Fashion Boutique spinoff app on the App Store that only lasted a year. If anything, I believe that Toontown had problems keeping players engaged with updates after the main story ended. Pixie Hollow, I think- had players age out of the game. However this is not to say that players weren't engaged with Pixie Hollow, I think it was just as if not more popular than Toontown at that time- however Pixie Hollow community did not have the "voice" that Toontown had. The player base of both remakes according to their respective sites and hubs combined is like 800,000 people. And a smaller developer is making a new game as well using original assets from the game. With two more movies on the way I still believe the audience would play the game, and it could at least last 2-3 more years- however because Disney wanted to focus on mobile gaming and close the original MMOs the game was shut down and the community was quite upset. However, no one ever got the attention of the developers like how the Toontown community did, because there were younger players. TTO was like several years older and had combat gameplay, keeping older players interested. The oldest the Pixie Hollow players were were in middle school or high school, because the game was 5 years old (really 6 counting the pre beta) You often did not see a player with an account older than 2010 when the site was closed. I say this cause TTO's players were really passionate of getting the game back online when it shut down and contacting other avenues to try to keep it up. Club Penguin fans were already archiving the game before it was gone. Pixie Hollow's audience couldn't have that even though it should. There weren't exactly a lot of detail oriented people playing PH, who would know about SWF files or whatever XD. That doesn't mean kids somehow didn't find their way into like the files (somehow), they just used it as evidence the game was coming back or would come back rather than like ohhh we should save this. It made the news much more sad. Pixie Hollow Forums is still online (it was part of MMO central but never merged) and you can see people talking about how there probably wouldn't be "pixie hollow private servers". Even the Pixie Hollow team's goodbye message to players reads very impersonal. It was one of the main MMOs where people didn't really know who made it or any of the team members. It was very somber news.
The most popular aspect of the game I'd say is the customization aspect, and that's what kept players coming back. A lot of the new features post 2010 focused on customization and social gameplay, rather than the quests. They even had a special currency for non members, which the other games didn't have or need. Crafting is even a faint memory for many people who played it
The pre-beta thing was Disney's way of ensuring there was an audience for the game, in mid 2007 Create a Fairy released on the Disney Fairies website and you could create a fairy and a page for it (like a fairy myspace). Then in 2008, there was a closed beta called Pixie Hollow previews. Eventually, the game released gradually including all the fairy meadows. The pre beta version of the game was avaliable on the international sites until 2017. You could find codes on toys and there was a Create a Fairy program on old DVDs that came with dolls.
With all this excessive background information, you can see why the game shut down. Pixie Hollow's "core audience" shut down and there were hundreds of unused accounts from 2007-2009. It was too expensive to release internationally in the MMO format and the game's detailed animations often caused lag for players. it seems like most Disney MMOs were costly and difficult to maintain, leading Disney to change direction and focus on mobile games. Club Penguin was the only one where they weren't operating at a loss, and maybe that's also because they acquired the game and the original developers seemed to do a lot of work improving the servers and such.TLDR- kids too young to save anything, older accounts make no money, it leaning younger is the reason it isnt as popular now as ppl barely remember it
Disney City Girl (Plaudom) was also an MMO game designed for girls. I started playing it up until COPPA came along and pulled the plug.
Man I miss VMK so much
Awesome video with great polish
Cursed games in a cursed era
good stuff man
I'm on the train and I'm not gettin off
There were a couple of other Disney MMOS not sure how promoted they were if at all but one was called Superbia it was a Disney Channel MMO and it featured Disney Channel characters and the next one was called Playhouse Disney Preschool Time Online that was a Playhouse Disney MMO game where you got to interact with Playhouse Disney characters it would be cool if you could do videos on them
Sick!
Algorithm comment as well ❤️🩹