The MOST Disturbing MMOs Ever Created
How did we get here?
The internet is an infinite pool of creativity…but with that, comes some dark and scary creations.
Now imagine if you combined this scary creativity with some social online games and you end up with the most disturbed MMOs ever created!
The MMO genre as a whole really started to take off in the early 2000’s, what with the internet becoming more and more accessible, enabling players to group up and play together. Some would say that MMOs were the first form of social media. Gamers invested a heavy amount of time into these games and just like social media, everyone have their preferences.
Which is how we ended up with some of the most niche and unique MMOs ever created.
Me being he curious person I am. I decided to go track some of these games down and play them.
So join me as i adventure through some of the creepiest and most disturbed MMOs, that I have EVER played.
The Endless Forest
The Endless forest is a social MMO created back in 2005. Its unique selling point is that there is no text or voice chat, you can only communicate through emotes and other actions. You play as a deer in the forest and their are no goals or set quests.
What makes this game so disturbing is the haunting music that plays throughout and the fact you deer as a human like face.
To my surprise, when I played it there was apparently 52 people online. Which by todays standards, makes it more popular then New World.
If you want to check the game out for yourself, you can by going to the official website below:
https://endlessforest.org/community/
Hello Kitty Online
Now you might be asking yourself, what did Hello Kitty do to be on the list. Well… let me tell you a story…
Hello Kitty Online is or shall i say was, a free to play MMORPG, themed around the world of Hello Kitty.
It launched back in 2009 and sadly closed down in 2018. During that time it had quite a lot of success, but other the years player numbers started to dwindle.
As you can imagine, a game with a Hello Kitty theme will attract a certain age range of audience, which in itself can make it a target by certain people. However, it went one step further with Hello Kitty Online, when there was a large data breach.. how large you ask.. well 3.3 million user account details were hacked. This included first and last names, email addresses, age , sex , region and recovery passwords. It was a month before this data was pulled down from the web, but by this time the damage is most certainly done.
Source Article: https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/dec/21/hello-kitty-data-breach-leaks-details-3-3million-user-accounts
So imagine how disturbed you have to be, to want to collect the personal data of a game essentially aimed at kids. I think if this is a reflection of the types of people playing this game, then i hate to think how deep the iceberg goes for Hello Kitty Online, which is why it makes the list.
How to Play Hello Kitty Online in 2024
That being said, you can still play the game to this day thanks to some private servers. You can follow the instructions here if you wish to check it out for yourself.
Worlds.com
What I can only describe as one of the longest running and first of its kind, Worlds.com was essentially the first VR chat room to be created. Released back in 1995, Worlds.com allowed people from across the globe to talk to one another across the world wide web and can be labelled as the first social MMO.
Truly revolutionary for its time, it was covered by many news outlet and gained quite a lot of attention from big corporations. This resulted in many company’s and celebrity management agencies investing into Worlds.com and creating their own VR worlds for gamers to chat in.
This included the WWE (formerly the WWF) , the NY Yankess, David Bowie, Hansen and even Steven Spielberg.
However, as technology advanced and people developed other methods to make friends and communicate with others via the web, it started to decline in popularity leaving behind a niche community.
Which is where the game started to gain its reputation as a place for cultist to hang out and recruit people…
Worlds.com allows players to create custom worlds and custom avatars, which is truly where the fun begins. As long as you can imagine it in low pixel glory it can be made.
Among these worlds was the infamous “Mugshots” which is a gallery of some of the players who have played Worlds.com over the years. For some time people actually believed that these were IRL mugshots that were uploaded without consent. This notion has since been debunked, for the simple fact that many of the pictures were submitted by the players themselves to be put in a gallery. It was essentially a way of sharing your profile picture to the wider world.
Source: https://worldschat.fandom.com/wiki/Mugshots
The Owner of Mugshots Jimbly, even uploaded his own picture to the gallery.
In regards to the cults that were apparently rife through Worlds.com… well a lot of that was debunked too. What it boils down to his that some users from 4Chan and other like minded sites would explore Worlds.com and troll/scare other players.
One of the most infamous ones being Nexialist who has had several YouTube videos made about them.
I think anyone with a reasonable IQ can tell within minutes of the interactions that its just some light trolling. However, the internet being the internet, people ran with this story which is where most of the notoriety comes from for Worlds.com.
Sadly at the time of writing this article, Worlds.com is currently offline. The game itself is still owned and maintained by the original owner at a loss and for unknown reasons, the servers were taken down in August 2024… Hopefully they will be back up soon.
How to Play Worlds.com in 2024
You can still checkout the offline version of Worlds.com, you can download and install an old client which can be found here: https://www.worlds.com/bowie-world
Second Life
Second Life is a truly unique social MMO, that has seen it’s fair share of controversy over the years. Which is exactly why it makes today’s list.
Released back in 2003, it was designed to allow players from across the globe to interact with one another, in a way never attempted before. MMOs were essentially the equivalent of social media sites before the likes of Facebook and Twitter took over. Players would use MMOs to be social with one another and keep in touch, so to design a whole MMO around the social aspects of gaming, didn’t seem like a bad idea.
But sadly, like most things in life… over time, the cracks started to show and all sorts of degeneracy started to take place within the confines of second life.
Part of the issue is that fact that the player creator allows so much customization, this paired with the ability to create unique worlds and the general horny nature of the internet and you have what second life is today…
But this isnt the disturbing part.. oh no, it gets much worse. Rather then taint my website with some questionable content, I’ll just link the full guardian article, so you can get up to speed.
And the worse thing is, this is an on going issue which i got to witness first hand, within the first 2 minutes of logging in…
For a full breakdown, check out my latest YouTube video.
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