Hacker News Reader

The Active Worlds (unrelated software) universe server is still running and the client is still updated. This page has descriptions of some 94 worlds (of several hundred running, of several thousand all time total) that may still be accessible.

http://wiki.activeworlds.com/index.php?title=Category%3AWorl...

View on HN

I remember this from back in the day. It felt way ahead of it's time.

IIRC it originally had a single unified world, which was massive, and you could build stuff in it. It seemed almost endless. You'd just walk and walk and walk and keep seeing new things that people built.

Activeworlds is what I think about when people mention the metaverse. A cool concept with great execution that ultimately ends up going nowhere.

Everything you saw is still there in Alphaworld (aw 0n 0e 0a 0), quietly losing textures and sounds that were hosted on the greater Internet (GeoCities, in many cases.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com