Yulia Clearwater
Honorable Pirate
I found and started playing potco in march 2008, so I really never knew anything about VMK until later when I saw references to it.
Ah gotcha - it was really fantastic. Truly an escape for many people, myself included.
When Disney announced they were closing it they tried stuff like "oh, the game was never supposed to be permanent anyway; it just was going to be open temporarily" even though they had literally just put a ton of money into marketing for it.
There's been a remake since then (won't mention the name) which I used to play when it first opened, but the staff's level of immaturity and juvenile behavior was just too much.