A Year In Review

Before we delve into the interesting things that happened this year, I’d like to sincerely apologise for the lack of blog posts and reviews on the Archive.

As we approach the new year, the Revival Archive staff team will try our best to create more blog posts and reviews so that this archive can also provide more information about the surrounding community and not just the revivals/private servers.

With that said, let’s begin looking at what happened during this year!

When we broke off from 2022, we reeled in the losses of many revivals, such as Project Polygon, Crapblox and the original Tadah. Since these major revivals became defunct near the end of 2022, the first quarter of 2023 was very bleak. It seemed as if only one revival existed at a time, and the perpetual cycle of shutting down was more apparent than ever. Shortlived reboots of some revivals did appear however, such as Kapish. All of these reboots, in addition to bringing back the original version - usually also decided to add a new client, such as the 2016 version.

Compared to 2022, 2023 has an almost overabundance of modern private servers which all aim to revive newer versions of clients. Any revival that try to revive older versions are very rare to find and are typically closed-access, meaning people require an invite key to play.

Revival wise, 2023 was quite bleak. There are only a few major revivals, such as Syntax, and… that’s basically it? A majority of these revivals are hidden in obscurity and lack any promotion, which makes it even harder for people to find out about them. In a time where this community is losing its touch, we need people to start being more welcoming to newer revivals before no more show up.

In addition to the modernisation of revivals, the community has definitely changed in comparison to 2022. The increase in users that have never experienced Roblox before 2016 is one reason why revivals are deciding to use clients such as 2016+. The rampant fearmongering of problems in the older clients scare the same users into playing modern revivals - this wasn’t a problem when Finobe was still alive which goes to show how differently people look at the older clients. Bullying, harassment and unnecessary drama is very frequent and contribute to the perpetual cycle of shutting down.

The problem isn’t with these users who have never experienced Roblox before 2016, it’s with the users that encourage poor behaviour which is then reflected upon these new users, and this pattern goes on.

However, I don’t think that it’s all doom and gloom. There are many things that still hold the old Roblox community at heart, such as upcoming revivals on this Archive. There are award shows that bring many people together. Not everybody in this community are out to spread hate, and those people are exactly the people that fit in this community. Instead of gatekeeping information, helping others with creating a revival will reduce the amount of problems that arise and will encourage more people to make safer revivals.

We’ve come together to find lost media such as the RBXGS binaries, older iOS clients and things that I couldn’t possibly add because it would get too long!

Before I end this post, I’d like to say that a well-kept community brings us one step closer to bringing back that true old Roblox experience and I’m sure that everyone can contribute.

Here’s to a new year!