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There was something called WorldsAway. A 2d multi-user graphical chat world, heavily promoted by CompuServe at the time. I don't remember it being very good, but still going and is now called VZones. Intro demo is worth a laugh.

I think it is the 90s version of the 80s hit VZones, or something.

I remember trying it out when it first came about, thought it was another Alysma.

Although for all I know it might have been an attempt to take market share away from EQ?

Sounds like you might like http://www.vzones.com/ a 2D world with a lot to offer :)

It stayed running until Quantum Link closed its doors. Q-Link got bought by AOL (or was it a merger... My memory is a bit hazy, not enough coffee yet this morning...) Both services ran together for a year or two, but as the Commodore exodus continued, AOL killed off Q-Link in (IIRC) 1992.

Club Caribe still lives on (somewhat) as Caribe Isle in the Dreamsacpe world on Vzones. VZones uses a somewhat-updated engine of the old Habitat. There was a company in the Far East (Korea??) that had an even better version of Habitat, but it wasn't skinned for English, so I couldn't tell you too much about it.

I was on a panel at a convention some years back that dealt with this topic... If I can find my notes I'll post more history and any links that still work... This was 4 or 5 years ago.

I visit a chat site that has many more women than men, and has been around for more than 10 years.

VZones or as it is known in Japan, Habitat. Korea has a version called Glass City.

The software is the WorldsAway system developed by Fujitsu in the 90's.

You have to pay to play, although there is a try-before-you-buy system in operation if you can find it on the site.

Being in a chat that has more women than men leads to lots of cybersex, many RealWorld meetings and relationships. If you are from Michigan (I think that is in the States somewhere?) there are meets every few months.

Thats funny, a few years ago, B2B poured money into the same kind of project, based on the WorldsAway software (habitat in Japan, glass city in Korea and VZones in English speaking countries). It didn't turn out particularly well then, but who knows, maybe this time it might.

There is room for a killer app in the avatar based chat scene, and SWG might just be it.

Great to hear that there are fellow /.er's out there who used to use WorldsAway back in the good old Compuserve days! I practically grew up on WorldsAway and my parents footed a big monthly bill (well over $100 a month, and at the most $300.) On the other hand those large monthly costs ensured you where going to meet some very interesting people.

I more or less left in 1999, although dropped in occasionally until my account expired (for some odd reason I wasn't being billed.)

Is that first url yours? I knew quite a few former magnolytes such as Vicious Varla and maxxie, however they moved to other places (Ultima Online being a big one) and I haven't talked to them in years.

My avatar name was Cutter. It was the only name I ever used from day one way back in October of 1996.

WorldsAway is still around. What you won't see on that page is their "adult" world.

Long before the sims you could decorate your "turf" which you paid a monthly rental fee for. With thousands of different items available (anything from a steaming cup to a full size coffin), the decorating possiblities where endless. You could buy trees, ferns, and flowers and literly turn your turf in to a forest. And on top of that it actually looked good! At the time most other places where 3D, and a quite a bit clunky and ugly at that. Worldsaway was originally created by Fujitsu, and its japanese counterpart, Habitat II, artwork was clearly anime/manga inspired.

I miss those old days a whole lot. Its still around, but the people who made it good are all gone.

• VZones, the inheritors of the Habitat legacy.
• ActiveWorlds aka Alphaworld, VRML-like without using VRML, the most impressive of the bunch.
• Blaxxun, actually does use VRML but looks like IRC with a VRML plug-in viewer tacked on top
• The Palace, made by the original Habitat authors, doesn't have any pretense of being 3D so it focuses more on chat.
• Rational Rose for yet another webbrowser with avatars built in.