It's been awhile since my last blog post, but rest assured I've been busy. In the time since my last post I've been building a website for my own amusement. The site does have a point though, several actually. The first reason for the site was to build a place for myself and others to remember VMK. To that end, I created a section of the site called VMK Lives. (a little misleading? maybe. Full of hyperbole? It wouldn't be me if it wasn't.) The section has photo galleries that contain pictures of every room in VMK with a couple of exceptions.( hey, nobody's perfect right?) It also has forums for ex-VMKers to keep in touch with lost friends and make some new ones. It also has a forum to talk about Virtual Family Kingdom (the would be successor to VMK that is currently in beta). I plan on adding chat to this area as well, if people want it.The VMK Lives area will probably not progress much farther than it is right now. Think of it as sort of a museum where people can socialize.

http://www.freewebs.com/TheMadDuck

The second reason for the site was something that will interest a much broader base of people and will have its own distinct area called Wi-Fi World. Wi-Fi World is strictly being created as a response to some needs on the Nintendo Wi- Fi Connection service. It's also something that I think will be fun for a lot of people. So, What is Wi-Fi World you ask? (If you didn't ask,just pretend you did,ok?ok.) I'm glad you asked! The concept behind Wi-Fi world is to help with connecting people who want to play online with their Nintendo Wii or Nintendo DS. I know, I know, There are countless forums where people can go and throw their friend codes up and hope people add them. The idea here is to do something similar, but a little more community oriented. You see, as the creator of Wi-Fi World, I see it as a place for a friendly community of gamers to gather and make new friends whom they can trust to behave cordially while playing games and exchanging messages on the forums. Wi-Fi world will have chat as well so that people near their computers can chat while playing games that don't have a chat feature. As we develop a community, Wi-Fi world will have tournaments, leagues, and a few other ideas that are truly original and I'm really excited about,but not ready to unveil yet. The boards and chat will be monitored very closely by me, as I want to foster a really friendly place for people to play. Flaming and cheating will be dealt with quickly and severely. I want people who are sick of all the foul mouths and cheaters to have a clean, fun place to play together. The forums will be up very soon, so check it out.

http://www.freewebs.com/TheMadDuck

I also have plans to add at least three more areas to the site. Eventually I want the site to be a place that people who have similar interests as me can go to on a daily basis to have fun, be entertained, and make new friends.

You may be thinking," that's a lot of content for one guy to keep updated and fresh. How are you going to do it?" Well, needless to say, I have a plan (Famous last words) and I have begun to put it in motion. Part of this plan is to give people who are non professionals a chance to build a resume and body of work by having others contribute content to the site on a regular basis. So, here's the deal... If you would like to become a part of the "staff" for any part of the site, let me know. I'll be looking for writers who can regularly update a column on any of the topics the site contains. Also I'll be looking for creative types to contribute work in many genres, including, Comic books, Videos, children's stories, artwork, podcasts, and more. So, if you've got creative talents, a desire to be part of something new, and can keep it all family friendly, contact me and let me know.

Here's the current url of the site.www.freewebs.com/TheMadDuckThis will probably change when I get closer to the official launch date.

I'm keeping it short today,because I want to spend as much time on VMK as possible. I will be there when the gates close forever on the Virtual Magic Kingdom. I will be sad, but I will not stop trying to get it back. I have been taking screen captures to save my memories of VMK and will post them online for all to see and remember. Who knows, you might be in one of them! Anyway,a final thought, I just rode a ride on VMK created by my friend LoisAlene that was fantastic! The fact that someone could spend years to create such an amazing ride only to have it taken away for no good reason is really sad. I don't know how she could ever invest time in another Disney virtual world after losing all this hard work.

I'll be on at closing. I'll be dancing, and I'll also be tearing up. See you on VMK one last time.

Today I want to take a more simple and personal tack with my post. I don't want to talk about ideas for saving VMK or for Disney or anything like that. Today I want to share some VMK memories.

My wife first told me about VMK and when I saw it I was in awe. Being a huge fan of the Disney Parks I immediately felt a connection to VMK. It was like going to The Magic Kingdom without leaving home. All I did at first was walk around checking out the sights. Then I started playing the games. Of course Pirates is my favorite although at first I stunk at it. Then my wife and I discovered the hidden mickey quest. Just like in the real parks, we got hooked on trying to find hidden mickeys in VMK. We never did find them all and I didn't want to cheat by looking at an online guide. We did however spend way too much time and stay up way too late (I'm on the east coast) looking for them.

My wife eventually lost interest, but by that time my gamer gene had already kicked in and I was obsessing over credits to get cool stuff for my rooms. I was always more into the furniture than the clothes. During my obsessive quest for loot a funny thing happened ...I made a friend. A girl on VMK called FlyWithYourDreams became my regular teammate at pirates and even though she thought she was bad at the game proved to be a great partner. I haven't seen her on VMK since the announcement. It's a shame, we had a lot of fun.

Over time I made some more friends and kept getting stuff then "IT" happened. My pc died. My wife then decided to make the switch to a Mac. I was so excited to be able to play VMK again but, I couldn't get it to work on my iMac. I'm sure it was something I did wrong,but it would son be remedied. We decided to buy a windows laptop to use for work related stuff and bingo! I'm back on VMK. During the time I was unable to play I still logged in just to keep my account active.

When I got back on,I was happy and sad,because I had already learned of VMK's closing announcement.

At first I kind of felt like "Why bother anymore? It's all gonna be gone in May." But of course I played on anyway.

That brings me to last night. As I mentioned I made a few friends during my time with VMK,but my friends list was relatively short. Last night I decided to do the last quest.(I wanted the ears) As luck would have it I finished in the Pirates Treasure Room and met a couple of friendly people. They invited me to join them and in no time I was riding a really great ride made by one of them,chatting,joking and showing them my rooms. They introduced me to even more people. I didn't play one game of pirates last night and it may have been my favorite night on VMK ever. Tomorrow I'm going to talk about what I'll be doing when the park closes,but for now I just want to give a shout out to my entire friends list and say thanks for the good times.

TheMadDuck's friends as of today may 20th:

AgathaV

BlondeWeirdLife

Boatind_Queens

cuocakegirl

DizzyScaryJazz

FlyWithYourDreams (I miss you partner)

iceaje

IHavGreenEyes

LoisAlene

Moody

naddy

PrettyPinkTiffany

Princess-Quester

PurpleRubyFlower

SilverSurfSherbert

skull-crazy

SleppyDebbie

SleepySmartPuppy

Slices of Jade

SparkleSkyMouse

TheAngelWings

TigerTara

I hope to see you on VMK tonight and tomorrow!

Ok here it is. Going into this post I wondered if it was really worth writing since I'm pretty sure my ideas will fall on deaf ears over at the Walt Disney Company, but here it goes anyway. I'm going to address this post directly to Disney. If anyone from the company would like to respond to this,by all means,leave a comment or e-mail me at JaMan999@gmail.com.

As far as I can tell, Your response to loyal VMKers has been something like," We're sorry you're upset,but why don't you try Club Penguin, or Pirates of the Carribean online?"

The simple answer is that those games simply don't appeal to VMK players. One of the things that keeps people coming back to VMK is that intangible of "Disney Magic". It's the same thing that makes me go to Disney World in Florida year after year. Obviously, the fact that someone doesn't find them appealing would mean that they aren't going to pay to play those games. Many VMK players have already said that they would be more than willing to pay to play VMK. I know it's easy for people to say this when the option isn't there,but you'd have to show a little faith to follow suggestion #1- Make VMK a paid service. I'm not going to go into pricing structure as I'm sure you have smarter people than I to figure that out.

Now, I fully understand that if a contract dispute with Saluke is the cause of VMK's shutdown that you as a company may not have a choice about the may 21st closing date. However, you do have the option to follow suggestion #2 (these are free by the way)- Contract with someone else to create a new and improved VMK. I know this would take some time and money to accomplish,but then when you launch the new VMK you can tout all the new features as the reason for combining this with idea #1 and charging for it. I love VMK,but from a technical perspective it is outdated, so launching a new VMK or maybe even a VWDW (virtual Walt Disney World) with an even bigger map,room for expansion and newer technology behind the scenes would spark even more interest and increase the population of paying customers.

Last,but not least,and by far the most unlikely to be used I admit, is suggestion #3 - Make a retail version of VMK for videogame consoles. Disney Interactive is a big supporter of the Nintendo DS, especially now after launching D-Gamer. Imagine a DS version of VMK with Wi-Fi connection play, multicard, and DS download play. People could not only still enjoy VMK,but actually take it with them. This would make rare item give-aways at the parks a snap as all players would have to do is bring their DS with them and download the item from a spot in the park. There's a ton of other options that could be done with this idea. It could be a Downloadable WiiWare game so you could save the manufacturing costs of a retail release and players could play on the Wii. All I'm saying is,think outside the box a little.

So there they are, My Three big ideas for the Disney Brass. I hope they at least spark a little debate over at Disney HQ about the future of VMK. You've certainly angered a lot of people with this decision,but a relaunch of any of the kinds I've mentioned would be greeted with open arms,as long as it comes with a guarantee that the game will be maintained for a as long as is possible. It's bad enough I'm going to lose all my stuff once, I don't think I could handle a second time.

Look for me - TheMadDuck on VMK

In my last blog I talked about the situation going on with Disney's Virtual magic Kingdom. I promised to offer some suggestions to Disney as to how they could keep VMK open. I'm going to save those for now as I don't really think they'll listen to me anyway. What I would like to do is offer a few suggestions to the fans of VMK who want to fight to keep it going.

First and foremost,as I mentioned in my last post I would urge you to go to www.savevmk.com and sign the petition. Secondly, Never discount the effect of writing an e-mail or more effectively, a letter. I know e-mails easier, but a stack of letters is harder to dispose of than a inbox full of e-mails. Just remember to be polite in your writing. Calling executives names is not an effective way to get your point across. Tell them who you are and how VMK closing effects you in a genuine heartfelt way and you may get a response. These are the tried and true ways that most save something campaigns use. I've got a few more though that most people neglect to try.

A lot of people have said that they would be willing to pay to play VMK if that would save it. That might get some attention from Disney execs , but they'll be unsure if most people would follow through with the money. One way to show that you're serious about paying for VMK is to spend some money on VMK. If you're wondering what I'm talking about it's really simple. Buy any and all VMK merchandise you can find. I mean anything. The influx of cash will get noticed.I was going to suggest getting the customizable VMK T-shirts from disneyshopping.com, but they already pulled them from the site.In fact the link from the VMK promotions page takes you to a Narnia shirt. Guess they were one step ahead. They must not have wanted a bunch of people wearing Save VMK shirts that they had to print.

The next thing to do is post videos on YouTube, Google Video, Etc. Talking about the closing of VMK and how it makes you feel.Again,keep it clean. The other thing is to e-mail more niche media who will be more likely to give the story some attention than the mainstream news will. Post on gaming forums, e-mail podcasts like Thehotspot@gamespot.com and get the hosts to talk about it.

You could try calling radio disney, but I'm sure they wont put you on the air talking about it. However, the deluge of calls on the subject may still get noticed.

Well, there's a few ideas for you. Do with them what you will.

On a different note, does anyone find it hard to get excited for the new items they've released since you wont have them for very long? Just curious.

Next time I'll have my ideas for the Disney Company and how they can save VMK and maybe even save some face in the process.

Edit:I just found another online petition who also have some good ideas for helping to save VMK. Visit them at www.savevmktoday.com