The Enduring Legacy of Disney’s ‘Toontown Online’

Massively multiplayer online games, better known as MMOGs or MMOs for short, have existed since the late 1970s. 

While earlier MMOs, then known as MUDs (Multi-User Dungeons), were very primitive, often using solely text and crude images to depict scenarios, the release of games such as Ultima Online and EverQuest throughout the late 1990s gave players around the world the chance to immerse themselves in fantasy worlds while collaborating and fighting with other players. The rise of MMOs and their popular subgenre MMORPGs – or massively multiplayer online role-playing games – coincided with the growing popularity and accessibility of the Internet. As such, individuals of all ages were able to “surf the web” and find information and pages dedicated to everything from music to fandoms to even real-world politics. 

With this rise in popularity came concerns over the safety of children as their naivete could lead them to being exposed to explicit content and strangers without their best interests in mind. Thus multiple MMOs aimed primarily at children would be put into development and saw release throughout the 2000s. While many are familiar with the snowy paradise of Club Penguin, the cuddly joys of raising an animal in Webkinz or even the varied islands of Poptropica, one of the earliest MMOs aimed at children came before them all in mid-2003: Disney’s Toontown Online.

Toontown Online had players create and step into the shoes of an anthropomorphic animal in the style of classic Disney characters simply called a Toon. For just $10 a month, Toons could roam the streets of Toontown and use slapstick antics to fight back against the oppressive Cogs. Cogs were robotic businessmen who focused primarily on stomping out all the fun and joy in the world of Toontown in favor of a bleak dystopia. Thus, it was up to the Toons to fight back with all the cream pies, seltzer bottles and anvils they could carry to prove they were “Toon enough”.

The game received frequent updates over the years with each adding a substantial amount of new content. These ranged from odd blob creatures known as Doodles that Toons could adopt as pets to new Cog building types dubbed Field Offices which provided a new set of challenges to players to even new options for customization. A variety of merchandise followed the game, as did a few real-world gatherings held in Orlando known as ToonFests. The game was lesser known compared to some of Disney’s other virtual worlds, but its fanbase stuck by it over the course of a decade.

However, in August 2013, just after Toontown’s 10th anniversary in June, it was announced that Toontown Online would be shutting its virtual doors in September. 

This coincided with Disney’s shift away from more traditional gaming experiences and into more experimental territory, as seen with 2013’s Disney Infinity. With a dwindling player count and the subscription-based system proving unsustainable for Disney, it only made sense for the game to be shut down. After over 10 years of service, Toontown’s servers officially went offline at 11:59 AM Pacific time.

The remaining player base would not let Toontown die so easily, though.

Mere moments after Toontown Online’s closure, a group of volunteers dubbed the Toontown Rewritten Team announced a plan to revive the fallen game with a project titled Toontown Rewritten. The project entered Alpha in October of that year and moved into Beta in May 2014. The game then spent 3 years in Beta before formally going live in early 2017. During Rewritten’s beta phase, multiple fan run Toontown servers emerged to accompany the remaining fanbase. Some of the other more notable early servers were the somewhat unstable Toontown House, the basic Toontown Infinite and an outlier known as Project Altis. 

Project Altis was an attempt to add a large amount of new features to the game, including new enemy types and new areas not seen in the original game. Unfortunately, the game would be hacked and stuck in controversy after an attempt was made to get it greenlit on Steam. The Project Altis team restarted development soon after and rebranded as Toontown Corporate Clash. While it had the fundamentals of Toontown in place, it has since grown to include new, original content including new locations, new items and enemies and even new lore. Similar to Rewritten, it has also risen to prominence as one of the bigger and more respected Toontown fan servers.

So where does Toontown stand in 2023?

Ten years after Toontown’s closure, the Toontown community has remained strong. Toontown Rewritten and Toontown Corporate Clash both remain very popular ways to experience the world of Toontown with other smaller servers not far behind. However, the legacy of the original game has stayed true even with the wildly different experiences each server provides. The Toontown Preservation Project was an initiative launched in June 2021 for the original game’s 18th anniversary by members of the Rewritten development team with assistance from former Toontown Online developers. The site provides a thorough, albeit incomplete archive of all official material related to Toontown Online, ranging from concept art to early screenshots to even physical merchandise. Rewritten has also held several ToonFests of its own and plans to release merchandise based on the server. Corporate Clash has also launched a campaign for the production of a plush based on the Duck Shuffler, one of the new Cogs they introduced.

Much like its fellow Disney MMO Club Penguin, the spirit of Toontown Online endures through its community and those nostalgic for the game. The efforts of a few small groups of fans have helped bring what would have been another footnote in Disney’s long history with video games into the spotlight once more.

Their spirit and courage proved that, even in the absence of official support, they were Toon enough.

Photo credit // Disney