It Came From the Fandom: MyVMK's Second Gate

I've mentioned MyVMK on this blog before, but it has been quite some time, so I'll sum it up here.

MyVMK is an MMORPG. Specifically, it is a fan-made revival of Virtual Magic Kingdom, an MMORPG that Disney ran for a few years starting in 2005, to promote Disneyland's 50^th Anniversary. True to its name, the world map is of a Magic Kingdom-style park, mixing and matching details from the various real-world ones. There are a lot of spaces to explore with your childlike sprite, and mini-games to play either alone or against other players...but the real point of the game is to create your own spaces and mini-games using the mind-boggling variety of “rooms” and “furniture” you can buy with the in-game currency. In the several years that MyVMK has been up and running, its programmers and moderators have vastly expanded upon the items available in the original VMK, as well as introducing new options for customizing the placement of furniture within a room. But one thing they never did, despite the urging of the players, was create new explorable spaces.

All that is about to change. This is the current overworld view of MyVMK:

See Spaceship Earth in the lower right corner there, with the Epcot label? That was never part of Virtual Magic Kingdom. There was always an “Esplanade” area, with famous landmarks from non-Kingdom parks visible in the background, teasing us, but to the best of my knowledge there was never any plan to expand VMK beyond a single virtual park.

So far, there is no proper second gate in MyVMK either. If you click on Epcot, it will take you here:

There's nothing to do in this room, and nowhere to go from it. Yet. But it's coming. And I am weirdly excited about it. I haven't been very active in MyVMK for quite a while, but this could very well renew my interest. On the whole, of all the Disney parks I can't casually visit, Epcot probably intrigues me the most.* I've been there a grand total of once, nigh-30 years ago at this point, and I would love to see it again...even knowing that it's a mere shadow of its Eighties self by now. The high concept is that good.

A trip to the real Epcot is not in the foreseeable future for me. I'll be more than happy to pop in on the virtual one, when it opens.

* Tokyo DisneySea is a close second.