When MMOs Shut Down: A Player's Guide to Preserving Little Worlds (Lessons from New World)

When MMOs Shut Down: Preserve the Little Worlds You Love — Fast, Practical Steps (Lessons from New World)

Server closure is coming. For players who poured months or years into New World and other MMOs, the real pain isn’t just losing a login—it’s seeing screenshots, maps, mods and community creations vanish overnight. With high-profile shutdowns and content takedowns in late 2025 and early 2026, the need for practical, legal preservation workflows is urgent.

Why this matters in 2026

Two trends made preservation a priority this year: first, more big studios are sunsetting live-service titles as business models shift; second, institutions and communities (Internet Archive, Video Game History Foundation) are improving tools and norms for archiving living games. That means players can—and should—act now to capture their communities' work before servers go permanently dark.

Quick reality check: What you can and can't (ethically) preserve

• Saveable and safe: screenshots, recorded play sessions, stitched map images, user-created mods (with permission), chat logs (with consent), forum posts and community media that creators allow to be archived.
• Caution or avoid: redistributing copyrighted game client binaries or proprietary server code without permission, ripping DRM-controlled assets for public hosting, mass-downloading content in violation of Terms of Service.
• Ask first: if you plan to host other creators’ builds or mods, get explicit permission and a license (Creative Commons is common for community archives).

Immediate action: 48-hour preservation checklist for imminent shutdowns

If your MMO announces shutdown with a short lead time, use this triage list to save the highest-value artifacts fast.

1. Screenshots & Photo Mode
   • Capture all critical views: cities, guild halls, event scenes, unique player housing, and major boss encounters.
   • Use lossless PNG for screenshots. If in-game photo mode supports higher resolution, use it. Tools: ShareX (Windows), macOS Screenshot Utility, Steam's F12 + HighRes options.
   • Add metadata (see metadata section). If time is short, paste a plain text manifest listing filenames and short descriptions.
2. Video & Streams
   • Record 30–60 second clips of important mechanics, map traversal, and social events using OBS Studio. Use 30–60 fps and at least 1080p.
   • If you streamed, download VODs (yt-dlp works well for Twitch and YouTube VODs). Keep separate raw and compressed copies.
3. Chat & Forum Archives
   • Export Discord channels with tools like DiscordChatExporter (open-source). For forums, use your browser to save threads or HTTrack for site-level snapshots.
   • Notify active members you’re archiving and give an opt-out window for private messages or sensitive content.
4. Mods and Add-ons
   • Copy the entire mod/add-on folder from the game client or mod manager (CurseForge/Mod Manager/Nexus). Include any manifest files and changelogs.
   • If hosting mods, create a simple mod.json with author, version, license, and dependencies.
5. Maps & Layouts
   • Stitch tiled screenshots for high-resolution maps (tools: Hugin or ImageMagick + custom scripts). Capture consistent coordinate markers if the game shows them.
   • Create a simple coordinate index: record how in-game coordinates map to pixels on your stitched image.
6. Store & Replicate
   • Upload to at least two independent locations immediately: a cloud bucket (Backblaze B2, S3, Google Drive) and a community mirror (Internet Archive, community Git repo).
   • Use checksums (sha256sum) and create a manifest file listing checksums and metadata.

Tools and commands you’ll actually use

Below are specific tools and short commands to make the steps above repeatable.

Screenshots & metadata

• ShareX (Windows) or macOS built-in tools for rapid capture.
• exiftool to write metadata: exiftool -Description="New World - Everfall Market" -Keywords="New World,Everfall,market" screenshot.png
• ImageMagick for batch resize/convert: magick mogrify -format png *.jpg

Video recording & VOD download

• OBS Studio: configurable profiles for 1080p60 or 4K capture.
• yt-dlp to fetch VODs: yt-dlp -o "%(uploader)s_%(title)s.%(ext)s" <VOD_URL>

Chat & forum archiving

• DiscordChatExporter (export to HTML/JSON). Run locally and store exports with a manifest.
• HTTrack or wget for forum snapshots: wget --mirror --convert-links --adjust-extension --page-requisites --no-parent <forum_url>

Maps, stitching and deep zoom

• Hugin or ImageMagick for stitching tiles into giant PNGs.
• OpenSeadragon to serve deep-zoom images on a web viewer.
• For structured map data, use GeoJSON to store named points and polygons with a local coordinate reference.

Storage & integrity

• Checksums: sha256sum file > file.sha256
• rclone to push to cloud providers: rclone copy /local/archive remote:game-archives/new-world
• Redundancy: Keep local, cloud, and a community mirror (Internet Archive) copies.

How to archive map layouts step-by-step (practical example)

1. Open the in-game map and pick a consistent camera zoom and angle.
2. Use ShareX or Steam screenshot at regular grid intervals—e.g., take overlapping tiles every 75% of the viewport so images overlap by ~25% (this makes stitching reliable).
3. Stitch tiles in Hugin: load images, align control points, create an output at the highest feasible resolution.
4. Annotate the stitched map with named locations. Save annotations both as a layered SVG/PNG and as a GeoJSON file with pixel coordinates mapped to in-game coordinates.
5. Serve the final deep-zoom image via OpenSeadragon or upload to Internet Archive with attached JSON metadata.

Preserving mods and add-ons: packaging and provenance

Mods often vanish when workshop hosts or mod managers go offline. Preserve them the right way:

• Copy the complete mod folder, including manifests, screenshots, and change logs.
• Create a ZIP including a README.txt with: author(s), permission to archive and redistribute, original download link, game version tested, and license (ask for explicit CC license if you plan to redistribute publicly).
• Push code mods to a version control host (GitHub) using Git LFS for binaries; keep releases tagged and link to the ZIP release for easy downloads. See community guidance on platform listings to improve discoverability for mod packages.

Community archives: a blueprint for organized preservation

Archiving is collaborative. Here’s a simple governance and workflow you can stand up in days, modeled on successful grassroots projects in late 2025 and early 2026.

1. Create a steering channel on Discord or Matrix to coordinate archivists and assign roles: Screenshot Leads, Mod Curators, Map Stitchers, Metadata Editors.
2. Adopt licensing and consent rules: require explicit permission from creators to publish community content; default to CC BY-NC for fan works unless authors specify otherwise. See the Creator Marketplace Playbook for sample consent and licensing workflows.
3. Standardize metadata: use a manifest.json per asset bundle with fields for title, author, date, tags, checksum, and license.
4. Store public mirrors: Internet Archive for long-term public hosting, GitHub for code, and a cloud bucket for large binaries. Automate syncs with rclone.
5. Make archives discoverable: build a simple static site with indexing and search (use Lunr.js for client-side search) and embed OpenSeadragon for maps.
6. Backup governance: rotate admin keys, keep multiple maintainers, and publish an archive health report every quarter.

Legal and ethical guardrails

Preservation work walks a line between cultural good and copyright risk. Follow these principles:

• Prioritize consent. Ask creators before posting their mods, screenshots, or player housing blueprints.
• Don’t distribute proprietary client/server code. Preserve what players make and experience, not the studio’s engine or server binaries unless the company explicitly releases them.
• Respect privacy. Remove or anonymize personal chats and private information unless participants agree to publication.
• Document everything. Clear manifests, timestamps, and provenance notes strengthen your archive’s credibility and legal defensibility. For provenance best practices, see audit-ready pipelines.

Case study: what New World taught us

When Amazon announced New World’s sunset window in early 2026, communities moved quickly. Guilds archived event logs, talented map-makers stitched cities for posterity, and modders packaged UI skins and macros with clear manifests. Two lessons stood out:

• Speed matters: Early coordination (a shared Discord + a master Google Sheet) cut duplicate effort and ensured critical artifacts were saved.
• Metadata is the multiplier: Archives with clean manifests and permissioned licenses were the ones that survived and were usable by historians and hobbyists later. Read more about making archives discoverable in the 30-Point SEO Audit.

"Games should never die" — a sentiment echoed across the preservation community in 2026 and a call to action for players and custodians alike.

Future-proofing: how to make your archive useful in 5+ years

• Use open formats: PNG, WebM, OGG, and plain JSON are more likely to be accessible than proprietary formats in future.
• Include context: Screenshots alone are less valuable than a screenshot + timestamp + short scene description + player names/roles.
• Make it browsable: Host a searchable front-end and include deep-zoom map viewers so future users can explore at scale. Field reviews of interactive viewers and local sync appliances can inform your hosting choices.
• Plan redundancy: Aim for at least three independent copies (local, cloud, public mirror).

Quick templates you can copy now

Two small files to drop into every archive folder:

<manifest.json>
{
  "title": "Everfall - Market Archive",
  "date_saved": "2026-01-17",
  "creators": ["PlayerHandle1", "PlayerHandle2"],
  "license": "CC-BY-NC-4.0",
  "checksum_file": "checksums.sha256"
}

<README.txt>
Archive of player content saved before New World server shutdown. Contact: archive@example.org. Do not redistribute game binaries.

Final checklist before you go

• Have you captured high-res screenshots and stitched maps?
• Are your mods packaged with manifests and licenses?
• Did you export chat/forums and obtain consent where required?
• Are checksums and at least two independent backups in place?
• Is there a public mirror and an index page for discoverability?

Call to action

If you’re part of a guild or server community facing a shutdown, start a dedicated preservation channel now. Share a manifest template, recruit one or two archivists, and back up your first 100 screenshots within 48 hours. Join the gameboard.online preservation hub to download a printable preservation checklist, share your archive manifest, and connect with volunteers who can host mirrors. Together, we can keep those little worlds alive for years to come.

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