Does anyone else miss the earlier Escargot / MSN Revivals days? (Rant)

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Hey, everybody

I’ve been reflecting a lot lately on how the MSN/Windows Live Messenger, and other IM Services revivals scene has changed over the last few years, and honestly, I just really miss how things used to be.

I’ve been hanging around MessengerGeek since around 2017/2018 (my current account says otherwise, but I used to have a different one, lost the password), and looking back, the vibe was just entirely different.

Before everything started fracturing around 2021, when Level Leap acquired Escargot (it was later on that things would go south for reasons I’m not willing to dig through right now, and a good amount of people departed to other services), it felt like we were all on the same team.

Escargot was just what most now call “old Escargot”, a unified project where everyone gathered because we all shared the same nostalgic love for classic MSN.

Fast forward to today, and it feels like the community has split into a dozen different factions, revival servers, and forks of themselves. Instead of a single, united community, it feels like an endless competition to prove which service has more users or which one offers you the better edge.

It’s somewhat exhausting, seeing so much drama over which server has more active users, who copied whose code, or which fork is superior or whether it was forked a legit way or not.

We went from a passion project meant to preserve internet history to a fragmented ecosystem defined by “rivalries”.

I miss the days when you’d log on and just… Talk to people, without the background noise of server politics. Am I just looking at the past through rose-tinted glasses, or does anyone else here feel the same way?

I’m curious to hear your thoughts. If anyone’s going to read this, that is

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Tell me about it.

I was there for pre-modernization Escargot. After that happened it changed for the worst.

After the whole “we’re getting hosed by Yahoo IP lawyers” debacle (I used to deny that this happened (to believe that they were trying to pull an exit scam for some sort of conspiracy), now that I have spoke people that were around the time it happened, I can now believe that it was a legitimate infringement case), I kind of became disillusioned with the IMPS community.

Not to mention my own problems trying to create what would of been my major MSNP server at the time due to foundational miscommunication issues, non related to Escargot, though there were was a deep “we should be better” mentality that is dangerously toxic to private servers. The only thing I could say about then is at least I didn’t have to have confidential protocol documents to try and gain an edge compared to peers like some people did.

Eventually I tried again with that server. Fell through quickly because the project lead decided to give up before drawing out a specification on how the project should function.

Ended up writing my own personal server, using reinforced tactics during my first two servers written.

So far, I’m quite OK with it, even if it isn’t ever going to reach it’s full potential as an actual server.

Most of the problems personally I have is the parts of withholding the documentation without any clear intentions to release it.

Sure, most of it is MSNPiki’s fault anyway. But I still felt like it was wrong holding up a guard that I didn’t believe in, which is to say that it was the best MSNP resource.

It was OK for it’s time. But the main problem is it’s attribution, which there is none.

I have since thanked the original writer of the commonly used MSNP8 documentation, which was directly put on to MSNPiki, probably not out of malicious intent, reading the relevant forum archive. Not really continuing to find any new information past the bare minimum is where it started feeling uncomfortable.

If I feel like I want to, I may formally announce my alternative. It is as of writing, at a MSNP11 level of documentation, excluding the OIM services. Incomplete MSNP12-MSNP15 documentation is also available, and what’s there works.

So, to basically describe what my personal situation is:

  1. I write on the yellowMSNPServer III codebase when I feel like it. It works OK for what it is.
  2. I talk to people about the protocol. I am accepting suggestions or comments on documentation.
  3. I have my own wiki. It is public, but I have not yet announced it. I have mentioned it publicly however. So it’s out there if you want to read it.
  4. I am not working on a major MSNP server. yellowMSNPServer exists for myself to allow protocol research and fun purposes that I may share with a select few.
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I was here back on 2013 when the original servers were still online, till 2017 where the end has come ( shutdown).

back then we were very few here and there’s was a little movement on the forum.

The boom started when @valtron made the famous msn7 custom serve then added more support versions and started take fame. in the same on then twitter the Messenger Reviver 2 started take trend ..but when it was enough steam…Black May 2017 came when MS shutdown the last msn servers and everything started to faded together with the endless spam here on the forum.

i strongly believe that if the originals servers where still online together now with crosstalk things will be different now…

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Yup. I had an escargot account for a brief period in 2020 - 2021 and everything seemed fine then. I probably still have it. I just haven’t logged in since then.

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I wish that escargot wasn’t so money-greedy,
whatsoever, i miss escargot do to the time in mid 2025 when i both signed up for a NINA account and a escargot account later :frowning: