“Both of these games have had their heydays and then have both went astray a bit.”

On the most recent episode of the Waveform podcast, the hosts talk about two new announcements in the MMORPG world (relevant bit starts at 1:21 and goes on for 14 minutes): The context is this: RuneScape launched in 2001, and World of WarCraft in 2004, each game already had a “relaunch”: RuneScape via Old School RuneScape in 2013, and World of WarCraft with its Classic edition in 2019 – both revisiting and perhaps straight replaying the respective original game, but with some new improvements. The new announcements are yet another revisit for each universe: RuneScape announced RuneScape 4 – an old game engine but with more modern graphics, World of WarCraft announced World of WarCraft: Forever, which feels like a cross between “reboot” and “rewind” – going back to the original, but creating brand new events and universes within. I haven’t played either game, but the segment made me think: why have we never seen non-game software do this kind of stuff? I can think of multiple reasons,…