*Anonymous habbo*: “Frank, what’s the deal with retroservers and why do I keep visiting them ?”
Frank: “You get presented this idea immense wealth, habbowise, is at your fingertips. Within hours you find the server needs to be restarted, crashes, or whatever, accounts are reset, and you need to rebuild your wealth. If you finally have something build, you find the only way to ‘share’ your wealth is to make screenshots and post on a forum online, that focusses on the ‘real’ hotel. The discomfort you’re feeling originates in the fact you do know it’s not real.”
*Anonymous habbo*: “Frank, but a retroserver is just as (un)real as the official hotel, just (the same) digital data ?!”
Frank: “Reality kick(ing in), dear anonymous. You’re right, both are just digital data, and the data is much alike. But the digital data of the real hotel persist, while you can count on the other to vanish. That simple. Your purchase with the real hotel also gets you a promise it will be remembered and kept online, this is a key thing that comes with your purchase. It might help the promise comes from the people that designed the furniture and have their servers running for years…”
Surely, retroservers are running on files taken from the real hotel. But they have these hotels running on their home computers, set up as a server, usually link to some files on the habbo servers. The files they use are copied from Sulake, so no way around the fact the data is the same. The ‘realness’ of the ‘real’ hotel is rather defined by
a) ownership of the design, and
b) the above mentioned promise of persistence, which no retro can make true.
They’re called
retroservers because people used to run really old versions of the hotel for fun. Good old days and stuff. Nowadays, most people running one try to keep up with the latest version of the hotel Sulake has online.
*Anonymous habbo*: “But Frank, I did visit a retroserver and now I see the Habbo homepage is issuing serious warnings about them ?! Am I probed, lost, incurable ?”
http://www.habborator.org/frank/gfx/frank_16.gif Frank: “Nah, probably not. In most cases it’s just kids playing around, admitted. They should think a little, much more respect to be earned by creating an original fansite, for instance. Yet, if people are able to get a retroserver running, they’re also able to provide you with a keylogger (you don’t even need to be remotely smart for both). And
please tell me you didn’t use same name & password you did for the real thing.”
*Anonymous habbo*: “Why the big fuzz then, Frank ?”
Frank: “Even Sulake does
not think retroservers are a big threat. Yes, they have them taken down by hosts, yes, they even take legal action when deemed properly. But ‘properly’ for Sulake is the exact moment these ‘hotels’ are trying to become the real thing. When retroservers start trying to build a community, hold competitions or even start selling their configuration. The ‘Keep it real’ campaign my bosses started didn't accidentally start in US and Holland. It’s countries where (Habbo, and thus) retroservers are popular.”
