I promise you I did not wake up today and decide to give you a lesson in watercolors. This post is actually about MMORPGs.

If you’re not an artist, you may not know that paint pigments are discontinued frequently, sending artists into a panic. I dabble mainly in watercolors, but at least once every year or so, an extremely popular paint pigment made by industrial suppliers (usually for things like cars or appliances) is sunsetted, leaving the small-scale art suppliers in the lurch, and even dabblers are annoyed. Consequently, paint vendors scramble to alter an existing pigment to fill that gap in their range. Very often, there is no perfect replacement, and they must combine what pigments are still being manufactured into something that’s close enough. Even so, pigment purists will hoard their remaining stock and stick their noses up at multi-pigment convenience colors.

I was painting this past weekend and lamenting the loss of the original PO49 Quinacridone Gold, a color I don’t actually own as a single pigment and have never seen in person. I wish I’d been painting when it was killed off so I could’ve grabbed some, but I wasn’t, so I’m just out of luck unless I want to pay through the nose on Ebay or whatever, and I won’t be doing that. I can see only the multi-pigment mixes and faux hues and valiantly crafted substitutes – but not the real thing.

And as so many things do, that thought reminded me of MMORPGs. Sometimes MMORPGs close down before you get to them to try them yourself, so you’re left with just videos and screenshots and other people’s memories. And sometimes you spend the years afterward trying to cobble together from multiple games the play experiences that mimic what you think you’ve lost. But it’s never exactly the same… just like my paints.

Which MMO (that you actually wanted to play) closed down before you ever got to play it? And have you ever found a perfect substitute?

Every morning, the Massively Overpowered writers team up with mascot Mo to ask MMORPG players pointed questions about the massively multiplayer online roleplaying genre. Grab a mug of your preferred beverage and take a stab at answering the question posed in today’s Daily Grind!