Toontown Rewritten

Development of Toontown Rewritten began immediately after the announcement of Toontown Onlines closure in 2013. The lead developer, Joey Ziolkowski, was only 15 at the time, creating the game from his parents' home in Princess Anne, Maryland, and the team was not sure how successful they'd be, with Ziolkowski telling Wired that at the time the team thought it would be "a fun little experiment." The project was completely reverse engineered from publicly available materials, and Toontown Rewritten first opened for alpha testing in October 2013. The game released open beta on September 19, 2014, and officially on September 1, 2017. Since its launch, the team has added new updates to Rewritten to breathe new life into an old game, such as new Toon species, new boss battles, a planned map expansion, Rewritten received its first major expansion, "Sellbot Task Force", in December 2021. The update incorporates Sellbot Field Offices, where the Cogs take over a street's Toon HQ building. Players are tasked with making their way through the Sellbot Field Offices while at a disadvantage. In 2022, the Rewritten team unknowingly helped discover a string of fraudulent disclosure requests from an individual claiming to represent the CT-Cyber Crime Investigation, Dhaka Metropolitan Police. Legality and relationships with original developers The team takes careful measures to avoid legal conflict with Disney – refusing to accept external donations for server costs, forgoing advertisements, and removing Disney characters from their version of the game. The team distances themselves from the company; a user accessing the Toontown Rewritten website is prompted to verify that they understand the project is unaffiliated with Disney. In the words of the team's creative media lead, they "try not to poke the bear." Every time a Disney representative has been asked about the project by the press, they choose to decline commenting, and they have done little to stop the project. Jesse Schell, who played a significant role in Toontown Onlines development, is fond of the project, saying in an article for Wired that the message behind Toontown was, "don't let the corporation grind you [down]." He goes on to add, "I look at the Toontown Rewritten crowd, and what do they do? They're violating copyrights all over the place. Why? Because the corporation tore Toontown down." Joey Ziolkowski currently works for Schell Games after impressing Schell with his work on the project. Another original Toontown Online developer, Ron Weaver, described the project as "a huge gift" to him for allowing him to play the game again with his children. == Community ==

A special event is held in-game annually, known as the Cartoonival, in order to celebrate the anniversary of the original game's launch. Mollie Taylor of PC Gamer writes that she was taken aback by the sheer number of people who attended the 2023 Cartoonival, saying that she had not been expecting "1700 cartoon animals slowing down my 2023 rig to a slideshow and servers buckling because of how many people were swarming to a single zone." funded by Toons of the World volunteers. In 2020, people took to the game to host virtual Black Lives Matter protests during the COVID-19 pandemic. Initially, some players were mistakenly warned for using the phrase, but the staff quickly updated the game to allow the messages. == Reception ==

The initial reveal of Toontown Rewritten was met with skepticism; while fans of the original game were excited and optimistic, many also wondered if it could really happen and how long the project could last. Reception in mainstream outlets has been primarily positive. Taylor describes feeling "a spark of joy in seeing something so dead feel so alive." Writing for Kotaku, Mike Fahey says "it's good to see an older MMO growing and improving under fan care years after the original creators left it for dead." Daphne Ford of Trill refers to the server's community as "especially compelling", and says the game's updates improve on its quality, calling the revamp of Sellbot Field Offices "a refreshing twist." Screen Rants Nick Rodriguez says that the Rewritten team's efforts have "allowed the game to flourish into the 2020s." In a 2015 Destructoid article, Joe Parlock praises the project, adding "here's hoping it survives." == See also ==