Gaming Terrors

Abandoned Servers

You know those eerie feelings you get when you are playing a multiplayer game and there is no one on the server, apart from you?

For instance; boot up Minecraft right now and scope around for some deserted server that is running, but no one is on.

Feels pretty weird, right? Well, this is what my hobby was: going around to these barely running games and seeing what people had left behind, not just Minecraft either. Counterstrike, Team Fortress 2, World of Warcraft. I used all of these games to explore the special servers nearly every day. I logged down what was on them: buildings, maps, announcements and then my friend would come along and wipe/build on what I had logged in. I would get paid about $50 for every server I cleared, depending on the size.

So anyway, I'm sitting there sipping on a Coke when my unnamed friend (due to security reasons) rings me up over Steam and says that there is this really big Indie game map that was just abandoned and he wanted me to check it out. He also mentioned that the map was larger than normal, so he would pay me around $100. So, I accepted and went to download the client. It was an old website. The design was pretty poor and it didn't look very popular, so I speculated that he wanted me to just see if it was working. So I created an account and booted up the game. It looked normal enough, sort of like Second Life, that game where you play as yourself and run around and buy/build stuff.

So I started at the server maintenance screen and went over some of the hosting stats and found that the server was being run from a single tower that had a proxy. I couldn't list the location to get a proper ping to report to my friend, but since he was probably going to delete it, I guessed I would just make it up. I scanned over the other active servers and it seemed like the only active one was this one. He was probably going to wipe it and demolish the company project, so I guessed that's why I'm getting such a big bonus for it.

I logged into the server and the loading screen came up: hints, a bar and some pictures of people playing. The usual. After the screen had completed, my avatar was dropped into a little forest, what I assumed would be outside of any main city or town. So, I walked forward hoping that some sort of tutorial would guide me around but nothing happened. The graphics were quite advanced for a game its age, the forest spanned for ages and the trees were like that of Elwynn Forest of WoW. I told all of this to my friend as we kept the channel open for fast information.

After walking around in the forest for about twenty minutes, I came to a bigger than normal tree. It had this big door on the front of it that looked as if it had been carved into the wood by hand, kind of like the ones of Nightmare Before Christmas. But, anyway, the cursor came up with an interaction symbol and then the screen went black and my voice channel cut out. There was no loading screen, only the sounds of the poorly looped 8 bit music that was on the last loading screen. So I waited and waited until finally the game comes back in with my voice channel. The only thing in the entire tree is a big mirror, totally separating the middle of the tree from the other half. My character then walks up to the tree, without my control, and puts his hand toward the reflection. After this, I was suddenly brought to my desktop.

Along with the Icon of the game all the files are missing too. The http has also vanished along with it. I ask my friend if he cut the server and he replies an innocent "No."

Anyway, he transfers the money to my PayPal and logs out.

So I go to sleep that night thinking about what I will spend my $100 on as I drift into sleep.

I wake up about six times that night. Always seeing that damn tree. It's not even scary, just annoying. It's a vividly recreated mirror just like the one out of the game and I keep touching it.

I get up at around 6am after being unable to sleep and decide to hop on the computer for the weekend and rummage about on Steam for some good deals. I get about halfway through watching some saints row trailer when I get invited to play some CS:S. The name was added to my friends but I don't recognize him at all. The name, actually resembling mine, keeps flashing and after a couple of minutes, I decided to oblige.