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Yes, people still play Meridian 59
Meridian 59 may not enjoy the population numbers it did almost 20 years ago, but there are still a handful of dedicated players playing every day. A recent article at The New Yorker takes a more personal look at a few of these remaining players. "I've tried to leave the game many times over the years," admits Tim Trude, a 33-year-old player from Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Tim first started playing the MMO at the age of 15. "But I always return. Some of these people I've grown up with. We have been enemies or friends forever." The article goes on to quote other players and document a brief history of the game's development, including the source code release in 2012. Meridian 59 is looking to launch on Steam sometime this year, and its current code-maintainer is looking forward to the possibility of bringing in new players once again.
Celebrating a guild anniversary in style
Pink Pigtail Inn has what is probably the most involved guild anniversary I've ever seen. We've seen quite a few anniversaries and events come through Guildwatch, but this one takes the cake: a huge competitive scavenger hunt, complete with out-of-game clues, banned class abilities (so teams could be balanced out), and even self-made quests involving the guild's lore. It's probably rare to find a group of officers that can be this committed to something normally considered "an RP event," but obviously it worked out, because the whole guild really enjoyed it.The context Larisa puts this in, however, is even more interesting. According to the Daedalus Project (a series of surveys of MMO players -- we've mentioned their work before), the majority of players can't celebrate a guild's anniversary anyway, as they haven't been in their guilds for even a year yet. I've never considered it, but it's true: while we are very attached to our guildies when we do find a good guild, we aren't really attached to them for very long, relatively speaking. There are stories of guilds going on for decades, but even those guilds have players coming and going -- if your guild has the same group of people playing together for a few years, you're probably in a smaller group than you think. PPI's example is a great one for any guilds who have been around long enough to celebrate it.
