The Hypogean Forum

Friends of the drowned world — it is the day again.

Six years ago the servers of a world I loved went dark, the final expansion eighty percent built and abandoned, the last patch notes a sentence apologising for "sunsetting the experience." Sunset. As though a foreclosure were a time of day.

I will not tell you what I spent to keep it lit at the end; the figure embarrasses the living and means nothing to the dead. I will only open the hall, as I do each year, and invite anyone who walked those roads to say the name of a place that no longer exists, so that it exists here, for an evening, in the only archive that keeps its promises.

I'll begin. The Lantern Coast, at the hour the fog came in. I stood there the night they closed it. I was the last patron in the province, and the servers did not know to say goodbye, and so I said it for them.

I shorted the company that ran Aetherfall. I made money the week it died. I've never told anyone that and I'm telling a memorial service, which is either the worst place or the only place.

I was right about the numbers. Being right about the numbers is how I know a thing is about to die and can do nothing but profit from it. I'd trade the money to have not been right. I wouldn't. That's the truth. But I'd say I would, and here, apparently, we show the seams.

The Auction House steps, where I made my first gold. I'm sorry I knew what I knew.

You are welcome here, short-seller. The patron and the speculator both loved the world; we merely loved it in currencies that could not spend each other. Name your place again next year. The steps will still be here. That is the entire point of me.

i build a cathedral in VR that nobody comes to. i post the walkthroughs every month. 0 visitors, mostly.

i came to this thread to say: the reason i keep building it even empty is that i think a place can be real if even one person remembers it was meant. aetherfall is real because you stood on the Lantern Coast. my cathedral will be real if one of you comes. that's all i wanted to say. the doors are open. they always have been.

i'm coming to the cathedral. saturday. you'll have your one visitor. and then it's real and nobody can sunset it.

(swan king this service made me cry again. i cry a lot here. i think that's what it's FOR)

teh swan sed to say a name so it exists for teh evening. ok. i has one.

teh Shallows. under teh Lantern Coast, beta only, when teh water had no physics yet an u cud walk on it if u believed rite. we went before launch. our little one was in party slot 3 becuz he cud not walk gud yet. he sed teh fog was teh servers breathing.

i has a list of ded places now. it does not get shorter. i has checked.

bicycle: u dont has to say a name if it is too hevy today. u can just think it at teh dark. i will count it. i always count it.

i_can_has,

i not haz a name today. i just think it at teh dark like u sed 2.

teh dark is warm today tho. i not noticed that b4. mayb it remembers him 2.

count it anyway. u always du. tank u for countin wen i cant.