How to Archive and Preserve an MMO: Technical Options for New World Fans

Save Aeternum: Practical steps to archive New World before shutdown

You're running out of time. With Amazon confirming New World will be taken offline on January 31, 2027, fans face the familiar pain of losing a living MMO — player-made stories, houses, trades, art and raw game assets. This guide gives New World communities a pragmatic preservation plan: what to archive, how to do it technically, and the critical legal caveats to avoid crossing lines.

Quick action plan (read first)

• Prioritize — screenshots, player-created housing, chat/combat logs, economy snapshots, and community lore.
• Capture continuously — schedule daily/weekly scrapes of trading post and guild pages.
• Use canonical formats — PNG, WAV/FLAC, glTF/FBX for models, CSV/SQLite for data with JSON metadata.
• Protect privacy — redact PII, hash player IDs where needed.
• Document chain of custody — tool versions, timestamps, and checksums for every file; refer to incident and recovery playbooks like Incident Response Playbook for Cloud Recovery Teams.
• Ask for permission — reach out to Amazon where possible before redistributing extracted assets.

Why preservation matters in 2026

Community-driven MMO preservation grew louder in 2025–2026. From decentralised archives using IPFS to university projects cataloguing in-game culture, game preservation is maturing into repeatable workflows. New World has a passionate, organized fanbase — and the shutdown window creates urgency to capture the cultural record before servers close.

“We want to thank the players for your dedication and passion… we’re honored that we were able to share this world of Aeternum with you all.” — Amazon, New World announcement (2026).

What you can (and should) archive

1. Visuals and media

• Screenshots of locations, events, emotes and player housing. Capture at native resolution; save as lossless PNG.
• Video captures of raids, invasions, and social events. Use OBS Studio for high-quality MP4 or lossless MKV.
• UI screenshots that record system info and server time to preserve context.

2. Player-made content and community lore

• House layouts: document with screenshots, in-game coordinates, and a text description of furnishings.
• Player art, machinima, and roleplay logs: collect originals and canonical release copies.
• Guild pages and recruitment posts: archive HTML or JSON snapshots and store the page rendering.

3. Text logs and structured data

• Chat and combat logs: export or copy-paste into timestamped, UTF-8 encoded files (CSV/SQLite).
• Economy/trading post snapshots: scrape item prices and volumes on a schedule to reconstruct markets.
• Patch notes, dev blogs and forum threads: save both HTML and plaintext copies for searchability.

4. Client-side assets (what's possible)

You can extract textures, UI atlases, and many client-side resources. But distribution of raw game assets may violate copyright and the EULA. Keep extractions in an archival, non-distributable store unless you obtain permission.

What you should not try to do

• Do not attempt to take server-side databases or code. That’s controlled by Amazon and likely illegal.
• Avoid running or distributing private server software that uses Amazon-owned binaries.
• Don’t publish unredacted player personal data—chat logs can contain PII and sensitive information.

Technical toolbox: practical methods and recommended tools

Below are hands-on techniques and specific tools to collect different artifact types. Tailor to your skill level and legal constraints.

1. Capture visuals and video

• OBS Studio — Record high-framerate video. Save master recordings to MKV and transcode to MP4 for sharing.
• Native screenshots — Use in-game high-res screenshots and store with metadata (server, timestamp, coordinates).
• Automated screenshot bots — for fixed camera panoramas, use a scripted client with scheduled captures (automation templates and microcourse automation techniques) (only if TOS allows).

2. Extracting client-side resources

Most modern MMOs package assets in archive files. Common community strategies:

• Identify the package format — inspect the game installation folder. Note file types, sizes and timestamps.
• Use generic unpackers like QuickBMS (with appropriate scripts) to extract archives. QuickBMS supports many proprietary formats.
• Texture extraction — convert game textures to PNG using DirectXTex, ImageMagick or custom converters. Preserve original metadata.
• Models and rigging — if you can extract mesh and skeleton data, convert to glTF/FBX and import to Blender for documentation and screenshots.

3. Audio and voice lines

• Locate audio banks (often OGG, WEM, or proprietary containers). Use tools like vgmstream or ww2ogg/REWave to convert Wwise files where applicable.
• Transcribe in-game books and NPC dialogue using automated speech-to-text for accessibility and search.

4. Logs, economy and server-state snapshots

• Trading post scraping — build a scheduled scraper in Python (requests + BeautifulSoup or Selenium for dynamic pages). Save dumps as CSV/SQLite and include timestamps.
• Combat logs — use third-party parsers if available, or parse client log text. Normalize into a standard schema for later analysis.
• Backups — store daily snapshots and keep at least weekly full backups to protect against missed runs; treat backups like incident responses and document processes (see incident response guidance).

5. Community metadata and sidecar files

For every preserved file, create a small JSON sidecar with:

• origin (server/region)
• captured_by (username; hash if privacy needed)
• timestamp_utc
• tool_and_version
• file_hash (SHA-256)
• license_info / consent_status

Storage, integrity and format standards

Invest time in how you store what you collect. A poorly organized dump becomes useless quickly.

• Use stable, open formats: PNG, FLAC/WAV, glTF/FBX, CSV/SQLite, JSON.
• Compress with lossless containers (7z, tar.gz) and include SHA-256 checksums and signatures.
• Version control for metadata and small scripts — Git with Git LFS for binaries, or DVC for data pipelines; consider lightweight hosting and cost control strategies like those in the Bitbox.Cloud case study.
• Migrate copies to multiple locations: local RAID or NAS, cloud cold storage, and an offsite mirror (Internet Archive, Zenodo, or IPFS) — see publishing workflow guidance (modular publishing workflows) for long-term discoverability.

Server snapshots and economy reconstruction — realistic expectations

Fans cannot create a true server snapshot unless Amazon releases data or grants access. That said, you can approximate server-state by combining:

• Trading post crawls for item prices and volumes over time.
• Guild rosters and public event calendars stored regularly.
• Player-submitted housing exports and screenshots to reconstruct the social topography.

By stitching these sources and timestamping them, you can reconstruct many aspects of the in-game economy and culture for research and memory.

Community projects and governance

Large-scale preservation succeeds when responsibilities are clear. Consider these roles:

• Archivists: handle file formats, storage and migration.
• Collectors: run capture scripts and conduct interviews with creators.
• Legal liaison: compile permissions, redaction policies and takedown procedures.
• Curators: assemble exhibits, timelines and research packages.

Use a simple governance model, public contribution guidelines, and a code of conduct. Host coordination on GitHub/GitLab and consider cooperative hosting and billing approaches such as community cloud co‑ops for shared infrastructure.

Legal checklist: what you must verify before archiving or sharing

Always err on the side of legality and community ethics. Key legal issues:

• EULA/TOS — read Amazon’s EULA for New World. Many EULAs forbid reverse engineering, server emulation, or redistribution of assets.
• Copyright — game assets are Amazon’s IP. Personal projects and commentary are generally safe; mass redistribution of raw assets may be infringement.
• Privacy — chat logs and raid recordings can contain personal data. Remove or hash identifiers to comply with GDPR-like standards.
• Trademarks — use Amazon trademarks responsibly in project branding to avoid confusion.
• DMCA risk — hosting ripped assets can trigger takedowns. Prepare an appeal and be ready to remove infringing content on request; see marketplace safety playbooks for defensive steps (marketplace safety & fraud playbook).

If in doubt, seek permission. A short email to Amazon’s community or legal contact explaining an archival, non-commercial intent can go a long way.

Ethics and privacy: how to handle player data

• Redact usernames or replace with hashed IDs when publishing logs.
• Obtain consent for recordings that clearly identify players (e.g., interviews or livestream saves).
• Provide opt-out and takedown procedures for individuals who wish to remove content.

Case studies and precedents

Successful community archives exist: fan projects around City of Heroes and older MMOs show that careful curation, transparency and respectful legal posture build trust. The preservation movement in 2025–26 leaned into decentralised tools and formal partnerships with museums and libraries. For teams managing observability and data integrity at scale, see approaches in observability-first architectures (observability-first risk lakehouse).

“Games should never die” — a sentiment echoed by industry peers in 2026 and reflected by community efforts to archive playable and cultural moments.

Step-by-step checklist for a community sprint (30–90 days)

1. Form a small core team: archivist, developer, legal contact, community manager.
2. Define scope: what will be public, what remains private, and what will be redacted.
3. Set up capture infrastructure: a server to run scrapers (consider micro-edge VPS for distributed runs), storage bucket, and Git repo for metadata.
4. Start daily captures: trading post, production screenshots, event recordings.
5. Extract client assets that are strictly for documentation (and keep them private until legal clearance).
6. Document everything: tools, scripts, schedule, and contributors.
7. Publish a public archive index and request feedback and permission from rights holders; a JAMstack front end is a low-cost way to serve an index and metadata.

Tools at a glance (recommended)

• Recording: OBS Studio
• Screenshot/image conversion: ImageMagick, DirectXTex
• Audio conversion: Audacity, ffmpeg, vgmstream
• Archive unpacking: QuickBMS
• 3D conversion and editing: Blender, FBX-glTF converters
• Web scraping: Python (requests, BeautifulSoup, Selenium)
• Storage and versioning: Git + Git LFS, DVC, cloud cost control case studies, IPFS (for decentralised mirrors), Internet Archive
• Data formats: JSON sidecars, SQLite for time series

Future predictions — preservation after shutdown

In 2026 we see three clear trends that will shape how New World archives are used:

• Decentralised mirrors will become standard. IPFS and similar tech reduce single points of failure.
• Academic partnerships will grow. Expect universities and digital humanities labs to request curated datasets for research; see guidance on publishing workflows (modular publishing workflows).
• Legal frameworks will adapt slowly. Expect more dialogue between developers/publishers and preservation communities in 2026–2027.

Final notes: balance urgency with responsibility

Archiving New World is both a technical challenge and a community responsibility. You can preserve the culture, economy snapshots and player creativity — but you must do it in ways that respect law and privacy. Avoid shortcuts that risk legal action or harm to players.

Actionable takeaways

• Start capturing now: images, videos, trading post snapshots, and guild pages.
• Use standard formats and sidecar metadata for discoverability and long-term usability.
• Keep extracted assets offline until you clear legal issues; prioritize documenting over distributing.
• Coordinate with other fans: share scripts, schedules and storage responsibility; research tools and browser extensions can speed discovery (tool roundups for research).

Call to action

Join or start a coordinated New World preservation project today. Create a GitHub repo for scripts, a shared storage plan, and a clear legal/ethics policy. If you’re in a guild or community group, nominate a preservation lead and begin daily captures this week. The window is limited — let’s preserve Aeternum responsibly, together.

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