Archive the Market: Building a Historical Database of Defunct MMO Item Prices

Archive the Market: Building a Verified Historical Database of Defunct MMO Item Prices

Hook: If you’ve ever tried to research item price trends from a shuttered MMO and found only fragmented screenshots, forum posts, or dead API links, you’re not alone. Gamers, market researchers and esports analysts need reliable historical records — not hearsay — to study in-game economies, test trading strategies, or preserve market history. The imminent shutdown of New World creates a narrow window to pilot a robust, verifiable archive that captures virtual-item prices and trade volumes before they vanish.

Why this matters now (2026 context)

In early 2026 the community learned Amazon would retire New World servers and sunset live support in 2027. Media coverage underscored a larger trend: more MMOs are shutting down or shifting business models, leaving their market histories at risk. Researchers and players increasingly demand reliable datasets for retrospective analysis, fraud detection, and cultural preservation.

Key pain points this project addresses:

• Loss of continuity when a game's servers go offline.
• Unverified price claims from third-party tip sites and influencers.
• Legal and privacy uncertainty around archiving player-contributed data.
• Poor mobile and researcher tooling for large-scale historical queries.

Project goal (straightforward)

Design, build and launch a verified archive that captures timestamped item price and volume data from MMOs scheduled to go offline, starting with New World as a pilot. The archive will emphasize data provenance, reproducible validation, legal compliance and researcher-friendly access.

What we will store

• Market snapshots: per-item buy/sell prices, stack sizes, listing counts, and trade volumes per server/region.
• Metadata: item IDs, names, attributes (rarity, type), currency denominators.
• Provenance proofs: signed hashes, timestamped screenshots, API response files.
• Aggregates & indexes: moving averages, volatility scores, and cross-server comparators.

Pilot choice: New World (why it’s ideal)

New World offers a practical pilot because it has:

• A documented shutdown window (servers retiring in 2027) providing a known timeline.
• A large installed base and active market across many regional shards — useful for testing scale and normalization.
• Existing community tools and scrapers we can collaborate with for data sources.

“Games should never die” is a sentiment voiced across developer and player communities; building verified archives for MMO economies is a pragmatic step toward preserving market history.

High-level roadmap (actionable milestones)

Start now. A meaningful archive requires months of normalized snapshots before shutdown, plus a post-shutdown preservation step. Below is a 12–18 month roadmap to make the New World pilot actionable and verifiable.

Phase 0 — Governance & legal review (Month 0–1)

• Form a non-profit project entity or partner with an existing digital preservation org (Internet Archive, Game Preservation Foundation).
• Conduct a focused legal audit: EULA/ToS review for New World, DMCA considerations, GDPR/privacy obligations. Draft a takedown and privacy policy.
• Create an advisory board made of economists, archivists, developers and community leaders.

Phase 1 — Data model, schema & infrastructure (Month 1–2)

Define an open data schema and storage blueprint so every contributor knows how to format submissions.

Recommended schema (minimal):

• timestamp (ISO 8601)
• game (string)
• server_id/region
• item_id (native if available) + normalized_item_id
• item_name
• currency (base denom)
• price (numeric) + price_type (buy/sell/median)
• volume_traded (integer)
• listing_count (integer)
• source (API/scraper/screenshot) + source_hash
• provenance_signature (cryptographic hash)

Phase 2 — Data collection pipelines (Month 2–6)

Set up redundant collection methods to resist single points of failure and to enable verification:

• Official/public APIs: If the game exposes market APIs, poll them with rate limits and record full response payloads.
• Client scraping: Use community-developed parsers to capture UI market pages or local logs, save raw HTML and JSON.
• Screenshots & replay evidence: Timestamped screenshots (with device metadata) anchor human-readable proof when API data is disputed — see provenance examples in reporting on how a single clip can affect trust (provenance claims).
• Crowdsourced submissions: Players voluntarily upload CSVs or logs, each submission hashed for provenance. Peer-led community networks are a good model for sourcing and vetting these contributions (peer-led network case studies).

Phase 3 — Verification & provenance (Month 3–ongoing)

Verification must be built-in, not bolted on. The archive will record both the data and the proofs that tie each record to a source.

Verification techniques:

• Cross-source reconciliation: Compare API dumps vs. UI-scrapes vs. community logs. Flag discrepancies and preserve raw evidence.
• Cryptographic anchoring: Periodically create Merkle roots of the snapshot files and anchor them with OpenTimestamps or blockchain anchors to provide immutable timestamps.
• Signed submissions: Encourage contributors to sign uploads using PGP or similar and publish public keys in the archive’s keyring.
• Checksum transparency: Publish SHA-256 checksums for each archived file and index them in a public ledger.

Phase 4 — Storage & redundancy (Month 2–ongoing)

Design for long-term resilience:

• Hot store: Time-series DB (TimescaleDB or InfluxDB) for queryable current snapshots and analytics. Also evaluate columnar and analytics engines — and compare architectures like ClickHouse for scraped data workloads (ClickHouse for scraped data).
• Cold store: Object storage (S3/compatible) with lifecycle rules moving to Glacier or Arweave/IPFS + Filecoin for decentralized persistence.
• Audit logs: Immutable append-only logs of ingestion and verification steps.
• Publication: Mirror sanitized datasets to a public data portal (CSV/Parquet) and to the Internet Archive for longevity.

Phase 5 — UI, API and researcher tooling (Month 4–9)

Build accessible tools for different users:

• Charting portal: Mobile-friendly charts for price history, trade volumes, moving averages and volatility indices.
• REST + GraphQL API: Allow queries by item, server, time range, and download in CSV/Parquet. Integrate with workflows described in multimodal tooling guides for reproducible analysis (multimodal media workflows).
• Data Explorer: Pre-built queries for economists and forensics (e.g., price spikes, wash trading detection).

Phase 6 — Publication, community auditing & preservation (Month 6–ongoing)

• Release datasets under an open license (recommend CC-BY or CC0 for metadata) while respecting privacy obligations.
• Invite community audits and reproducibility challenges; publish reproducible notebooks and analysis scripts.
• Maintain a registry of datasets, proof artifacts and anchor references for long-term retrieval.

Technical specifics: formats, DBs, and anchoring

Concrete recommendations so implementers can act immediately.

Data formats

• Ingest raw API responses as JSON and store gzipped JSONL for efficient append and reprocessing.
• Normalize cleaned timeseries to Parquet for analytics workloads and CSV exports for researchers.
• Store screenshots and raw UI captures as PNGs/JPEGs with EXIF metadata preserved.

Databases & indices

• TimescaleDB (Postgres extension): for long-range time series queries and joins with metadata; consider columnar/analytics engines depending on query patterns and retention needs — compare ClickHouse approaches for large scraped datasets (ClickHouse for scraped data).
• Elasticsearch or OpenSearch: for full-text search across item names, server notes, and logs.
• MinIO/S3: object store for raw payloads and archival snapshots.

Integrity & timestamping

• Compute SHA-256 for each file and publish lists of checksums each day.
• Create Merkle trees for daily snapshots and anchor Merkle roots using OpenTimestamps or optional blockchain writes (costs apply) — see guidance on layer-2 and anchoring practices (layer‑2 & anchoring).
• Publish anchor transactions and Merkle proofs so anyone can verify a record’s existence at a given time.

Verification & trust model

The archive must be defensible. Below is a practical verification checklist.

1. Collect at least two independent sources per snapshot: API response + screenshot or API response + community log.
2. Record complete raw payloads — not just parsed values — to allow re-parsing later as APIs evolve.
3. Use automated anomaly detectors to flag improbable price jumps for manual review.
4. Publish a machine-readable audit trail: who ingested the file, the source URL/IP, the hash, and the anchor proof.

Legal and privacy considerations (must-read)

Archiving live-game data can trigger EULA, copyright, and privacy issues. Plan for compliance up front:

• EULA/ToS: Some game publishers explicitly forbid automated scraping. Seek permission when possible; prefer public APIs and community-submitted exports.
• DMCA risk: Preserve a takedown workflow. If a publisher objects, the archive must be able to demonstrate good-faith preservation and negotiate access levels.
• PII & GDPR: Strip personal data. Store only anonymized identifiers; hash any player IDs and never store contactable personal data without explicit consent.
• Ethics: Avoid enabling cheating or targeted abuse by redacting live server identifiers when necessary.

Community & governance

A credible archive requires community trust.

• Create transparent governance with an advisory board, published minutes and a public roadmap.
• Open-source ingestion tools and parsers so third parties can reproduce the ingest process.
• Offer contributor recognition, but do not reveal personal data. Provide cryptographic badges for verified contributors.

Funding and cost model (practical estimate)

Initial pilot for New World (12 months of active scraping + preservation) will require funding for storage, hosting, engineering and legal review. Ballpark estimates:

• Engineering and Ops (2–3 FTEs): $150k–$300k/yr
• Storage & bandwidth (hot + cold): $5k–$25k/yr depending on retention and anchoring frequency
• Legal and compliance: $10k–$40k (one-time audit and policies)
• Community outreach and small grants: $5k–$15k

Funding paths: grants from preservation nonprofits, crowdsourced donations, institutional partnerships with universities or research labs, or sponsorships from neutral industry partners. Consider funding and investment playbooks that bridge preservation goals and institutional budgets (funding & institutional partnerships).

Use cases & impact

A verified archive benefits multiple stakeholders:

• Researchers: study virtual economies, monetary policy in closed systems, and cross-game comparisons.
• Players: validate historical price claims, learn trading strategies, and preserve cultural memory.
• Journalists: confirm market manipulation or exploit findings with archived evidence.
• Developers and historians: analyze economic lifecycles and design better in-game marketplaces.

Pilot metrics and success criteria

Define measurable goals for the New World pilot.

• Ingest completeness: ≥ 95% of hourly snapshots for at least 6 major servers during the pilot window.
• Verification coverage: ≥ 80% of ingested snapshots have at least two independent evidence sources.
• Availability: public API 99% uptime for queries of archived datasets.
• Reproducibility: independent researchers can reproduce key charts using raw archives and published scripts.

Risks and mitigations

Common risks and straightforward mitigations:

• Publisher pushback: Mitigate by seeking permission, offering redaction and restricted access, and emphasizing preservation and academic use.
• Data gaps: Use redundant collectors and community contributions; maintain a public log of missing ranges.
• Cost overruns: Start with a narrow pilot scope (select servers/items) and scale iteratively.
• Legal exposure: Use legal counsel, anonymize PII, and implement takedown/resolution procedures.

Example implementation: how a daily ingest would run

1. 06:00 UTC: API poll of market endpoints — store raw JSONL to S3 and write a SHA-256 for the file.
2. 06:05 UTC: UI-scraper captures market pages and stores raw HTML + screenshots, each hashed.
3. 06:10 UTC: Ingest worker parses raw payloads into normalized records, stores them in TimescaleDB and writes a Parquet snapshot. For large scraped datasets evaluate analytics engines and ingestion patterns described in ClickHouse architecture notes (ClickHouse guidance).
4. 06:20 UTC: Create Merkle root across daily files, timestamp with OpenTimestamps, and publish the anchor record to the archive website and ledger. For chaining and anchoring practices, see layer‑2 anchoring recommendations (layer‑2 & anchoring).
5. 07:00 UTC: Run anomaly detection; flag and queue anomalies for manual review and add reviewer notes to the audit log. Consider offline-first collectors and edge node strategies to reduce data loss windows (offline-first edge nodes).

Long-term preservation strategy

Once New World shuts down, the archive’s role changes from live capture to long-term custody. Recommended steps:

• Seal final snapshots and publish an archival manifest.
• Transfer finalized datasets to cold, decentralized stores (Arweave/IPFS + Filecoin) and the Internet Archive. See hosting and micro-region strategies for decentralized persistence (edge & micro-region hosting).
• Maintain an accessible public portal and DOIs for datasets to support citations.

Closing: why verified archives change the game

MMO economies are cultural artifacts with research value for economists, historians and players. A verified, transparent archive preserves the market story and prevents loss of evidence when servers go dark. Starting with New World provides a controlled, high-value pilot: it’s a chance to build the standards, tooling and governance that other game archives will follow.

Actionable takeaways:

• Start collecting now: aim for redundant sources and preserve raw payloads.
• Prioritize provenance: every file must have a checksum and anchor proof.
• Plan legal compliance up front: anonymize PII and prepare a takedown process.
• Open-source the pipeline and invite community audits to build trust and scale.

Call to action

If you’re a researcher, dev, community lead or player who can contribute data, compute, funding or legal expertise, join the New World Archive pilot. Volunteer to run a collector for your server, donate storage or audit our ingestion code. Sign up for the pilot mailing list and repository access — help ensure virtual-item prices and MMO market history are preserved accurately and verifiably before it’s too late.

Get involved: submit a contributor form, propose a node for data collection, or sponsor storage — help build a market history people can trust.

Related Reading

• ClickHouse for Scraped Data: Architecture and Best Practices
• How a Parking Garage Footage Clip Can Make or Break Provenance Claims
• Deploying Offline-First Field Apps on Free Edge Nodes — 2026 Strategies
• Price-Tracking Tools: Which Extensions and Sites You Should Trust
• Layer-2 Settlements, Live Drops, and Redirect Safety — Anchoring Practices
• How YouTube Could Rewire TV: What a BBC Production Deal Teaches Creators
• Communicating About Pharma and Policy: A Creator’s Checklist to Avoid Misinformation
• 10k Simulations for Markets: Adapting SportsLine’s Model Techniques to Equity & Options Strategies
• Launch Checklist: Turning a TV Brand into a Successful Podcast (inspired by Ant & Dec)
• Santa Monica’s New ‘Large-Scale’ Festival: What Local Shops and Hotels Need to Prepare