My god, all this fuss over a game that isn't even a "game" at all but more of a ... glorified IRC room for kids.

I don't get it, is it because it's disney maybe? Don't they know there are better offerings out there? Such as Puzzle Pirates?

I'm afraid to say, it's time to let this die.

Pools Closed.

never played that /=

it makes me wonder how people will react if WoW servers were shut down...

The only sad part about this is the 11 year old kids (or around that age) who are upset their favourite site is going to bite the big one. Thats life though, it's also the nature of online things.

I can see why people would freak out about this. It is Disney related.

I would say something flippant about getting over it, but I know I get attached to stuff as well. I probably wouldn't get quite as upset as these folks though. It did say temporary in the news article, so I guess that was to be expected. Hopefully they'll enjoy whatever other Disney thing they wander to next.

I'm amazed that Habbo is still around. Absolute abomination of a site.

@GREY GECKO: I'd love to see the WoW servers shut down, can you imagine the massacre?!

@ShaggE: Haha, I'm glad someone got my joke ;).

I'm being evicted :(... I HATE YOU DISNEY

@Dannon: D:
"9 million...all dead"

This totally reminds me of a YouTube video I saw once by some kid who desperately wanted the old RuneScape to come back. Dramatic music, random screenshots separated by text like "Please come back" and "It was the best thing ever" and "Millions of fans have been left hollow and empty."

Old news. Besides that, if a person didn't want to waste their time with gaming then MMO's are not for you. That's how I feel, why play WoW? It doesn't end until a new bigger MMO comes out and beats it. Then you wasted a bunch of money just to hang out with idiots.

@Dannon: I don't know why you'd want that but if it makes you feel any better, when they stop growing, regardless of their size, they'll be one step closer to being shutdown. You may have to wait a while though :(

As a fan of Disney, I'm not surprised they are doing this. Of course, the PR release won't say it, but on a financial level, it might not be making them enough money. Perhaps they want to focus on their other online worlds that they are pumping loads of R&D dollars into. Plus, this was really supposed to be a promotion for the 50th anniversary of Disneyland that went well past it's course.

Then again, this is the same company that introduced pin trading in Disney World in Fla just for their Millenmium Celebration. They still sell pins to this day.

@okenny :): I have no problem with WoW, my initial reasoning was to see all the pasty white people, who spend every second on there, roaming the streets all confused with nothing to do, it'd almost be exactly like Dawn of the Dead. Having thought about it more though they'll probably just migrate to another MMORPG, I'm sure on the eventual day when the servers do get stopped (years and years from now) there will be a ton of new MMORPGS trying to be THE one that gains the benefit of all the lost souls wanting to belong to something new

@Edmon: I meant to hit the reply button and forgot. :p

@GREY GECKO: I'm entirely convinced that the survival of the human race depends solely on keeping WoW running.

@GREY GECKO: don't even joke about that, i live in a college apartment complex

Ah, somebody got to the "Pool's Closed" joke before I could.

If there is such an outcry for this- imagine if neopets shut down. Or even worse. WoW.

Well Disney finally got a case of the Aids.

I was actually hoping that Kotaku wouldnt run this story. The original thread on RPS got shut down when commenters (including me) suggested that its bad that a child is this reliant on a video game world. In response one of the children with a motor neurone disease posted a message on her blog pointing to RPS and saying how hurtful the comments were. In the meantime it seems that there have been a lot of stories submitted about children with all sorts of disabilities who depend on VMK for their social needs. I am opposed to much of this because it shouldnt matter whether the user has a disability or not. I also disagree with the way this is being made to look like disney are attacking children with special needs.

What seems clear is that VMK was run as a promotion which actually exceeded its original deadline and it has child protection controls to make sure that nobody can share personal information. A lot of people are trying to convince disney to be lenient regarding these laws so that the community can stay in touch but again this is being used to make disney look bad and over dogmatic.

Without trying to repeat myself here I think some of the responses from the kids that play this game are shocking especially when a child can only play in a virtual world. Im sure everyone here will agree that games are something fun and a good way to relax or do things with friends but when it replaces the real world thats bad. At least with adults they have more of a choice.

@GREY GECKO: The world would explode with hot tears.

Hot tears of shame, that is.

In homage to the /b/rothers...

PARKS CLOSED DUE TO AIDS.

wow lol

@otakupaul:
Reading this makes me think how bad it must be for others who's games are still up and running, like Everquest. I mean, they must be even worse than these kids you're talking about.

Man, it's pretty bad.

+ Watch video

[www.savevmktoday.com]

Manias are a bit too serious. It took me back a little when the voice-over was a grown-ass man.

Hey, if you have a Peter-Pan complex thats fine, just don't border insanity.

@GREY GECKO: If WoW was shut down, the internet would explode, plain and simple.

We are saddened by the closing of the Virtual Magic Kingdom (VMK). My son and I play together and have been on VMK for the last 3 years. We joined VMK they day they opened the game for public beta which was a testing phase of the game before it was officially open. Like many others, we have made special trips to the Disney parks to do "Quests", and joined the Disney Movie and Disney Rewards clubs all in order to receive special items within the game that you could not buy in it's virtual stores. Although VMK is a free game offered by Disney, it has made plenty of revenue for the Disney Company. Of course the best thing about VMK is the save environment that VMK provides for children. Being a Disney game, this should not be a surprise, but VMK is even safer that Disney's other online games. Although you can freely chat with others in the kingdom, Disney has built in a safe chat system where you can only say words that are in the games dictionary. This prevents you from saying things like numbers so you are not able to give out your phone number or address. You also can't say your name or even the word "name". It is the safest place on the web for kids to gather and play. When our son is on VMK, we do not have to be over his shoulder the whole time he is on the game. VMK is also a great educational system. Not only do kids learn much needed social skills, but the also lean economic and mathematical skills by earning credits (the games online currency) and learning to save them for items that are for sale in the virtual stores within the game. These items are things like clothing, trading pins, furniture for their virtual rooms and magic pins that add fun special effects to your character like fireworks above your head or letting you be semi-invisible for a few moments. They learn to barter by trading their virtual items with others in the game. We would be willing to pay to continue to play this fantastic online experience if Disney would make the offer, but they have ignored our requests to do so. We thank you for helping us to spread the news about this and hope that others will join our fight to keep VMK open. Send email, letters and give phone calls to the Walt Disney Internet Group and the Walt Disney Company and let them know we need to keep the Virtual Magic Kingdom open.

Think of the hundreds of thousands (not really - it was more like tens of thousands) who lost the NSider Forums seven months and four days ago. I was one of them. And though they said it'd come back, the site revamps that were "the reason" for the closure were a front end, a façade to the fact that Andy Hartpence's job was moving and he wasn't.

NP reported that something was coming, but the only thing that even came was a tech support forum that was there to prevent lawsuits and is not a community in any way, shape, or form.

The only difference is that the NSider closure came without warning. The forums screamed "SHADOW'S RACING MAMA LUIGI" and then bit the bullet of a move to SF. At least VMK's demise came with some form of notification. There are still lies or untold parts of the story (is Disney losing money on VMK?/Andy Hartpence is not moving to SF), hysterical and panicked users of VMK/NSider, etc.

Thank you, Kotaku, for reporting on both of them. I've read you for a good 8+ months now, and you've hooked me onto Gizmodo, Consumerist, Lifehacker,
Gawker, and Valleywag in the process. Good going.

I remember that September afternoon: I was looking for something to do on NSider. There was a Lithium maintenance screen - normal. Then I bypass it using my traditional way, and "Nintendo NSider Forums Update" and a lame excuse of a goodbye statement hit my face.

Oh, and guess what: they did say there were no plans to bring back NSider at the same time NP wanted to.

@captain_dl:
"VMK is also a great educational system." that was funny.

And regarding what was originally planned for VMK, I believe it was intended to be open for two years or less. My son and I took the in-park quest at Disneyland the first day it was offered and had the core group of developers along with us. Good times.

@Tomahawk214:

It's "pool's closed" idort, and please dont forget #1 and #2.

On-topic:
To be honest i sorta feel stupid now for never hearing about this VMK before. So to me the loss is zero. But facts are facts, and this is indeed a tricky situation for disney. As other have stated this was a promotion that had a limited lifetime from the start. Though im amazed about the massive response, come on kids... there are other places like this on the net and more will eventually be created.

Would be fun for just a day to see what will happen if WoW closed down :p

@Rexter: Unfortunately, there is no other place like this on the web. There may be other places that are similar, but nothing quite like VMK. And I would think that if this was a promotion with a limited time to run, it should have been mentioned at the time we signed up. There have been 10 year bans handed out in the game for people who were breaking the rules or hacking the system. If the game was meant to run 2 years, why impose a 10 year ban? We are still fighting it, but are also looking for other kid safe games to play when VMK closes.

On another note, it will be interesting to see if Sulake upgrades Habbo to run on the VMK engine when VMK closes.

As a life long Disney fan of 28 years, I can firmly say that the VMK was never any good.

@Benjo: As a life log Disney fan, I beg to differ with you. It is much better than Toon Town Online and the new Fairies game they are trying to steer everyone towards. Although everyone is entitled to their opinions. I happen to think WoW is rubbish, but there are tons of people on the WoW servers right now that would argue over that one. My big complaint is that when VMK closes there is no other place with the amount of child safety built in that VMK has.

href="#c5296725">captain_dl: VMK better than Toon Town Online? I think you're comparing apples to oranges here. Toon Town is a MMO with seriously hamstrung social networking abilities due to not having a general open chat system (only players who are confirmed friends, something that can require parental approval, can fully chat otherwise its limited to menu selections). VMK, on the other hand, is pretty much a focused social networking site with very limited gaming possibilities. It's all good, depending on what you're looking for.

I can understand why people are really upset by this. I've been a big fan of the Disney theme parks my whole life and for a brief time in the late '80s I ran a Disneyland themed MUD. It got pretty popular pretty quick, but I shut it down after only a month or so as grumblings of a possible cease and desist letter from Disney started to surface. People where saying at that time that Disney was working on some kind of virtual park thing and was coming down heavy on anything that might encroach on that turf. I think that rumor turned out to be Toon Town, which while a pretty decent kids MMO isn't a virtual park.

And in truth VMK never really did anything for me either. As someone else here mentioned it's more like an IRC with avatars, some pretty Disney park backgrounds and some light gaming. I can fully understand why people got attached to it and are upset and hurt that it's being shut down but it was never really what I was hoping for.

If my brief Disneyland MUD was any indication I think there are huge possibilities for using the Disney parks IP online as more than just a navigation ideogram for their website or as pretty backgrounds for a social networking site. I also think Disney knows this, but the parks are a cash cow for them (at least the American ones are) and they are very weary of hurting park attendance by providing a similar experience outside the gates, virtual or not. VMK was an experiment to see if they could leverage the parks IP online to provide more attendance at the real parks. Hence the 'Quests'. Hopefully they'll feel it was successful, and hopefully they'll realize the outcry over VMKs closure indicates that there are huge possibilities for their parks IP on the Internet. Disney is very slow to approach new ideas, their failures over the last decade have made them more than a little cautious when playing with their parks IP (the almost complete failure of Euro Disney, the lackluster Disney California, the woefully under-built Disneyland Hong Kong) so we probably won't see a replacement for VMK soon, if they had something in the wings they would have announced it to take the sting off of the closure (yeah, Fairies is no sort of replacement) but hopefully we will see something eventually. They still have SOME smart people working there.