Talk:WorldsAway

Timeline
Edited by Stublad (talk) 15:31, 13 September 2010 (UTC) '''The original notes left by ajwkpd are here.. I will write my corrections in bold. My corrections are based on being an active user of WorldsAway from 1995 till the present day and from having done extensive research into the subject by interviewing former Producers of the WorldsAway project and speaking with others involved the entirety of my time inworld. I will be able to cite some of this information soon.. I did an interview with the Lead Producer of the WorldsAway project Jeffery Douglas also known as Oracle Vaserius in the Dreamscape where he walks us through his time being brought onboard at Fujitsu in 1994 and how the product was created from the ground up, etc. I shall post this soon as it's former online home is currently unavailable.'''

Here is a timeline based on my existing knowledge. If I can cite this, I will add it to the main entry. I was an active user of WorldsAway from 1996 until 1999. I've also done a fair amount of digging and research on my own over the years. This should be a helpful starting point for anyone else doing research. The continual name shifting causes a lot of problems. There are not a lot of dates here because I just do not know them:

LucasFilm's Habitat becomes Club Caribe available on Q-Link with the C64.

'''Habitat was launched as Habitat via Q-Link on the C64. This incarnation was only ever known as Habitat. Eventually Habitat closed and was relaunched as Club Caribe later on but it was a completely different world.'''

Fujitsu licenses technology in Japan, becoming Habitat, which is used with Fujitsu's FM Towns computer system. Visually, the biggest difference from this and Club Caribe are the colors.

Fujitsu develops Habitat II

'''Fujitsu began work on Project: Reno which eventually became branded WorldsAway. It was developed entirely in the USA by a team of Fujitsu staffers led by Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar who had originally created Habitat. Habitat II was the WorldsAway technology localized for the Japanese language brought over by Fujitsu. It appeared at a later date than the Dreamscape which launched in September 1995.'''

Habitat II comes to America via Compuserve as WorldsAway

See above

WorldsAway's offshoot is made available on Compuserve, known as Pride! This is specifically for Gay & Lesbian users.

'''Dreamscape was made available first in September 1995.. Pride! was launched a year later and was indeed targeted at Gay & Lesbian users although this wasn't a prerequisite to join the world.'''

WorldsAway 2.0 enters beta testing on the web in the form of Hotel Silicon

First it was simply known as the 2.0 beta world which shortly after became known as Hallway which afterwards become known as Hotel Silicon.

WorldsAway 2.0 is made available via the web. At some point here a split occurs and Compuserve membership is no longer required. Up to this point, I think monthly access via Compuserve was $50-$70 a month unlimited. By the hour you could spend hundreds of dollars a month.

'''You didn't need a Compuserve membership but up until late 1998 at the very least you could still access the worlds via Compuserve. I think Compuserve membership login stopped working sometime in mid 1999 around the time the technology was sold.'''

At this point, WorldsAway effectively is three seperate places - Dreamscape, Pride (possibly become Queery Universe at some point here.), and Hotel Silicon (it was renamed, I don't remember what.) I am very unclear about this timeline as this is nearing the point I stop being an active user.

'''When we went to the web around late 1997 we had Dreamscape, Pride which became Queery Universe in November 1998 and Hallway/Hotel Silicon. Hotel Silicon was moved to Club Connect which became New Radio World which became VZConnections which became newHorizone.'''

There is a world created for Delphi Forums. May just be DelphiZones.

'''DelphiZones is only a very recent world.. it's actually a small trial area that exists within newHorizone and it can't be more than a couple of years old as of 2010 so it does not fit here in the timeline.'''

As some point a Korean world named Glass City is created. I do not know the current status of it.

'''We don't know much about Glass City other than we all flocked there around 2000/2001 due to Dreamscape and VZConnections being down for quite some time due to financial problems. It's currently closed: http://vzn.eddcoates.com/worldglasscity.shtml'''

(?) Ownership shifts from Compuserve to Avatera (sp?). This company has an IPO/becomes a publicly traded company

'''Fujitsu always owned WorldsAway, Compuserve was just a partner that enabled them to reach a wider audience. Inworlds.com bought it and they switched their name to Avaterra, Inc. They did get onto the stock market and their ticker name was something like AVAR'''

Avatera folds/gets delisted, (?) turns in to VZones. As of 2009 the owner is "Stratagem Corporation" - stratagemcorporation.com

We aren't sure what happened with the company going public but in the early 2000's probably around 2003/2004 the company became known as Stratagem Corporation and it's been the same company the whole way through since the acquisition from Fujitsu.

At some point Pride/Queery closes.

On the 20th November 2000: http://vzn.eddcoates.com/worldpride.shtml

At some point, in Japan, Habitat II becomes J-Chat (http://j-chat.net/)

Several new worlds are launched: SeduCity (adults only), Enter The Night (vampires), Funkytimes, (unknown and has folded.)

'''Seducity was launched in August 2001... Enter The Night is actually just an area within Seducity that launched within the last couple of years (as of 2010) and Funkytimes was a chat room website that Stratagem had purchased and set up a world for but it closed for some reason most likely due to inactivity.'''

The last major software update was in the 90s, with the launch of WorldsAway 2.0. The introduction of virtual good sales with Avatarwares has allowed the introduction of new graphics. However, Dreamscape can today be described as a ghost town. I am unaware of the status of the other worlds.

'''Dreamscape, newHorizone and Seducity are all still going, the popularity has declined but they are still in existence. There is also a free world known as chatzone that is frequented by people when the other worlds are down and has started to grow a small Korean population: http://chatzone.vzones.com'''

-Ajwkpd (talk) 05:07, 21 March 2009 (UTC)

Hotel Silicon was always treated as the beta-test world, with limited graphics, free accounts and was often reset.. Robirrelevant (talk)

Software
Even in the very early days, WA was actually accessible via the internet, despite being a compuserve-only feature - simply access the internet, connect to Compuserve via their internet gateway, access WA which launched the standalone client which connected directly to the WA servers, then switch back to the compuserve client and disconnect from compuserve!

In 1996, a clone server was developed simply by monitoring the communications between the server and client, written in Visual Basic.

The client was mostly written in TCL, with code stored in plain text within database files. This allowed many people to patch the clients to give extra facilities, some were simply useful and some took advantage of the then fairly lax security of the servers to rather naughty things, e.g. looking into other players pockets, or duplicating tokens en-mass!

Robirrelevant (talk) —Preceding undated comment added 17:04, 8 April 2010 (UTC).