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Worldlet Reviews > By Letter:
Reviews of virtual worldlets, both current and long gone, that deserve recognition in some way. Some of these are outstanding in their own little ways, others stink so badly, they serve as a lesson for what to avoid.



World Review: 3DEE welcome screen
World Review: 3DEE
3DEE is a social worlds system based on the ActiveWorlds codebase. Like all systems based on this code, it looks and feels a bit dated, although this one has its own unique wrinkles to help take care of that. Based in Amsterdam, 3DEE?s primary language is Dutch, and the universe?s eight entrance worlds are loosely based around that theme.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: 3DNA welcome screen
World Review: 3DNA
3DNA is a product that attempts to redefine the old WIMP paradigm (Windows Icons Menus Pointers) characteristic of modern two-dimensional computer interfaces, by placing it within a true 3D setting.
 
Rating 62.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Active Worlds welcome screen
World Review: Active Worlds
Active Worlds is a crossbreed. Nominally used as a 3D chatspace, its also a hive of creative building, the codebase for several RPGs, and the source of inspiration for many new VR ventures.

AW itself is made up of a collection of worlds, sharing the same graphical base, yet it manages to maintain cohesion as a 'worldlet' of sorts itself.
 
Rating 49.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: ActiveWorlds Gate 4.1 welcome screen
World Review: ActiveWorlds Gate 4.1
The ActiveWorlds codebase reinvented itself in June 2006 with the 4.1 version of it?s software (previous version was 3.6). In addition to a whole host of changes and improvements, they completely rebuilt the entrance and helpdesk world, AWGate, into something, which strived to be more than the glorified chatroom of the old.
 
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World Review: ActiveWorlds Gate 5.0 welcome screen
World Review: ActiveWorlds Gate 5.0
ActiveWorlds Gate 5.0 launched on November the 26th 2009, in readiness for the launch of ActiveWorlds 5.0 on December the 1st 2009. As always this gate world is the primary embarkation environment for the platform.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Adventure Quest welcome screen
World Review: Adventure Quest
Adventure Quest is a Hack and Slash, graphical style MUD. The premise is extremely simple. You are a resident of the town of Battleon, and an evil army of untold proportions is marching upon your town. You take up arms to defend it. Yes, the plot is Clich?, but that is deliberate. In fact, everything about Adventure Quest is deliberately clich?. The entire world is dedicated to quick, but satisfying fun.
 
Rating 75.5
 



World Review: AlphaWorld welcome screen
World Review: AlphaWorld
AlphaWorld is an artist?s 3D environment with a square landmass, sixty-five kilometres to a side. This gives it four thousand, two hundred and twenty five square kilometres of land ? more than some countries. All of this land is open for ActiveWorlds? paying members to build upon, almost anything they desire.
 
Rating 58.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: AWDebate welcome screen
World Review: AWDebate
AWDebate is a dedicated-purpose VR conferencing suite, the best the ActiveWorlds platform could create.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: BarbieGirls welcome screen
World Review: BarbieGirls
The first thing that literally leaps out and hits you with BarbieGirls is the pink. Bright luminescent pink. Pink everywhere. All the loading screens are pink, the world borders are pink, pink features heavily in all the rooms, the city streets glow pink, you never get away from it.
 
 



World Review: BarbieGirls welcome screen
World Review: BarbieGirls
The first thing that literally leaps out and hits you with BarbieGirls is the pink. Bright luminescent pink. Pink everywhere. All the loading screens are pink, the world borders are pink, pink features heavily in all the rooms, the city streets glow pink, you never get away from it.
 
 



World Review: Beez Hive welcome screen
World Review: Beez Hive
Beez Hive is the fourth virtual environment created by Switch In software. It is very clearly meant to copy Bee Movie, using the same character and world design as that film. Right from first glance, it is obvious they took the codebase used in their other worlds, and put this together in less than one day.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Birdz World welcome screen
World Review: Birdz World
Birdz World is another world created by Switch In software. It is also their youngest world. Of the four virtual environments they make, this is one of the lesser ones. From first glance, it is obvious it has been created fairly rapidly from Switch In world?s libraries.
 
 



World Review: Chamber of Chat welcome screen
World Review: Chamber of Chat
An isometric collection of rooms, Chamber of Chat is designed to mimic the Harry Potter franchise as closely as their technology allows, incorporating every detail from the series in some form or another. Areas include Hogwarts, the dark forest, Gringotts bank, and other locations across the UK.
 
 



World Review: Code of Everand welcome screen
World Review: Code of Everand
Right from the opening credits, it is clear what Everand is trying to do. This is a serious game, trying hard to dress up road safety just enough to be fun for kids to play, just like any other MMO. At the same time, if they are playing it, they are rote learning road safety.
 
Rating 62.5
 



World Review: Cybertown welcome screen
World Review: Cybertown
Cybertown was Blaxxun?s creation of the mid 1990s, designed to showcase the capabilities of VRML. It still exists today, serving as a social environment for a modest userbase. The technology may look and feel dated, but Cybertown represents VRML at its peak.
 
Rating 31.5
 



World Review: DigiPet welcome screen
World Review: DigiPet
Digipet is an odd little world. Produced by a firm called Mockworld, we are not sure if the company name suggests they are mocking virtual worlds in general. It was created as a demonstration world for the company?s 3D social VR capabilities, but if anything it flags them up as one to avoid.
 
Rating 18.5
 



World Review: Dive In welcome screen
World Review: Dive In
DiveIn is a little bit of an oddity. Well, it would be, if the company that makes it, did not churn out similar worlds at a rate of knots.
 
 



World Review: Dreamland Park welcome screen
World Review: Dreamland Park
A gem of a social system, tucked away, out of the mainstream, DLP offers a little slice of cyber-utopia for a small number of friendly people, outside the usual realms of 3D chat.
 
Rating 61.5
 



World Review: Enchant welcome screen
World Review: Enchant
Enchant is essentially a theme park. It is based off of a fairly large island-world surrounded by an endless ocean, full of rugged hills, quiet spots, and lots and lots of rides. Based on the ActiveWorlds codebase, it does have lots of limitations when it comes to immersion and believability, but the owners of this theme park have done their level best to overcome them.
 
Rating 52.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Everquest welcome screen
World Review: Everquest
Everquest is by far the largest MMORPG available right now with something in the region of 430,000 players, almost 120,000 of whom might be online at any one time. Now nearing five years of age, the original Everquest world of Norrath has been added to with the introduction of a fair few add-on packs such as Shadows of Luclin, or Velious Scars.
 
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World Review: Furcadia welcome screen
World Review: Furcadia
Furcadia is a third-person perspective world - you view your character from above, in an isometric view.

To connect and participate in Furcadia is free, however, there are many alluring extras, add-ons for your characters, available for purchase.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Google Lively welcome screen
World Review: Google Lively
Lively is Google's foray into the industry of VR creation. A disappointing first entry, but an entry never the less.
 
Rating 53.5
 



World Review: Graal welcome screen
World Review: Graal
Graal is an oddity. If you have ever played the original Zelda games, then you will be familiar with what Graal is. This top-down 2D world system uses an almost infinite combination of square areas one and two screens wide, which slot together to form a world.
 
Rating 40.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Habbo Hotel welcome screen
World Review: Habbo Hotel
Habbo Hotel consists of three world-hotels, each slightly different, and dedicated to a different nationality: US, UK, and Canada. Sulake Inc. state on the each of the three websites, they are pledged to ?provide a safe, moderated environment?. Unfortunately, during the three-week course of this review, no evidence of moderator presence was found.
 
Rating 37.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Hrielith welcome screen
World Review: Hrielith
A text-based world, attempting great innovation. Role-Play enforced, it has a welcoming atmostphere, but lacks a diverse playerbase. Rapidly expanding.
 
 



World Review: IMVU welcome screen
World Review: IMVU
IMVU, coming from the people that made There, is a 3D interface for Microsoft MSN Messenger, which effectively turns an IM session into a 3D, visual environment for up to ten people at a time.
 
Rating 60.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Larkinor welcome screen
World Review: Larkinor
Larkinor is a strange place, almost a chameleon. It is a web-based browser game, same as a thousand others. Only difference is, it is doing its level best to immitate something decidedly more than a game ? it is trying to be a MUD.
 
Rating 58.5
 



World Review: Leaves welcome screen
World Review: Leaves
Leaves is a world of natural wonders, wholly given over to the replication of nature, and the beauty of wild areas, online. It is a technologically created wilderness, a place with the barest human touch, virtually. A place of peace and beauty.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Marian\'s World welcome screen
World Review: Marian's World
Marian's world is a little bit of an oddity really. It is a world in which everyone is female, and tither stands about talking, walks and talks, or drives cars and talks. There's nowhere to actually drive cars to, as the entire world is a hilly, swampy island of about one half a square mile, with only three treehouse structures on it, yet everyone has a convertable sports car, and only one set of clothes.
 
 



World Review: Moove welcome screen
World Review: Moove
Moove is an interconnected virtual environment that makes no pretences about its purpose. It is designed for intimacy, romance and love. A community driven, grid computing, sprawling complex whose one goal is to foster friendships and lead to romantic engagements.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: My SecureCyberspace welcome screen
World Review: My SecureCyberspace
My SecureCyberspace is the product of Carnegie Mellon University. Designed as an environment for children to learn responsible internet habits from, it is a single-user, flash-based environment. Not a virtual world as such, it is more of a game, which teaches responsible, safe behaviour when in multi-user virtual environments.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: PeaceCity 3D welcome screen
World Review: PeaceCity 3D
PeaceCity 3D is an ActiveWorlds codebase based social VR platform. A single graphical world with its own installation program ? rare for an ActiveWorlds world, it is 750 metres wide and five kilometres long. A rectangular world with blank space around it, this unusual shape immediately sets it apart from the pack.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Planet Virtu welcome screen
World Review: Planet Virtu
A small community hamlet, nestled away from the more frequently trodden paths, this builder's worldlet clings to the dream of low-polygon freedom.
 
Rating 46.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Playdo welcome screen
World Review: Playdo
Playdo is a purely social world system. Created in the image of a small city, the entire apparatus runs under shockwave applications ? so it will run in almost any browser. There is no client to download, and everything is broken up into sections.
 
Rating 22.5
 



World Review: RuneScape welcome screen
World Review: RuneScape
Runescape is basically a massively multiplayer Diablo like game with RPG elements. It has some clever twists thaty set it apart, such as the panning display, and incredibly intuative interface system, but ultimately ends up lacking.
 
Rating 46.5
 



World Review: Sacred Seasons welcome screen
World Review: Sacred Seasons
Sacred Seasons is a gameworld. Designed and constructed using Flash, it attempts to show a cohesive world, using the MMO paradigm, and two dimensional graphics in an isometric-appearing world. Drawing cues from the BattleOn series of MMOs, this world is nothing special, instead being almost a checklist of every clich? and bad design decision in MMO history.
 
Rating 43.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: SCRYmud welcome screen
World Review: SCRYmud
An unusual MUD, this one. Class-based, but utilises a class-less skills system, whereby what the creature has learnt before, determines what they can learn next. Not a RP world, but it has the single largest, and best implemented skill web seen so far in a virtual world.
 
 



World Review: Sherwood Dungeon welcome screen
World Review: Sherwood Dungeon
Sherwood Dungeon is a shockwave based, gaming virtual environment. It is in essence, a MMO boiled down to its finest base elements and given a 3D feel. A combat world, with chat added on the end, it often feels lacking, and even boring after prolonged participation.
 
Rating 39.5
 



World Review: Switch In welcome screen
World Review: Switch In
Switch In is the flagship of its parent company, Switch In software. Of the four virtual environments they make, this is by far the most sophisticated. It is a shockwave based virtual environment, that the company refer to as ?lightweight Second Life?.
 
 



World Review: Taurius welcome screen
World Review: Taurius
Not every persistent, immersive virtual environment is geared for kids, or is even suitable for them. At the same time, adult does not have to mean sexual. Adult can simply be a nice, mature environment where friends can relax and interact.
 
Special Client Required
 



World Review: ToonTown welcome screen
World Review: ToonTown
The first MMO created with young children in mind, ToonTown is full of bright, cheerful, oversized graphics, and, perhaps unsurprisingly for an MMO created by Disney Studios, has a Disney cartoon feel throughout. All the menus are ?big and squishy?, almost like baby toys in their design and blockiness. Designed to be 'child safe' and make it impossible for iffy people to gain access to young kids, this world certainly lives up to its promises.
 
Rating 69.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: ToonTown welcome screen
World Review: ToonTown
The first MMO created with young children in mind, ToonTown is full of bright, cheerful, oversized graphics, and, perhaps unsurprisingly for an MMO created by Disney Studios, has a Disney cartoon feel throughout. All the menus are ?big and squishy?, almost like baby toys in their design and blockiness. Designed to be 'child safe' and make it impossible for iffy people to gain access to young kids, this world certainly lives up to its promises.
 
Rating 69.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Universal welcome screen
World Review: Universal
Universal is the latest in a long line of ?IOI? worlds ? infinite object interactivity. The PR blurb proclaims a world where you can do anything. As a member of a galactic, spacefaring civilisation, it seems like a mix between Eve and Elite, with a bit of everything else thrown in.
 
Rating 46.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Virtual Forbidden City welcome screen
World Review: Virtual Forbidden City
Opened to the public in mid October 2008, IBM?s virtual forbidden city is a to scale replica of the Chinese city of the same name which served China for centuries as an exclusive realm for the nation's emperors. To create it, IBM spent more than three years working with Chinese officials and the Palace Museum to construct an interactive, animated replica of the 178-acre walled fortress in the Dongcheng District of Beijing.
 
Rating 61.5
Special Client Required
 



World Review: Wizard101 welcome screen
World Review: Wizard101
Wizard101 is not a social space by any means; it is a pure gameworld, a massively multiplayer online system which is designed primarily with children in mind. It is a MMORPG that launched in late 2008. Within it, you play a schoolchild, about to enrol in the school of witchcraft and wizardry, based amongst the towers and parapets of a purpose built fortress-town.
 
Special Client Required