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| * AW Version 8.2 |
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| * 3rd party world hosting has been disabled |
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| *As from january 2024, all private worlds are hosted by Activeworlds. Activeworlds does not charge for the world hosting. |
| Before 2024, world owners had to choose one of the 3rd party world hosts , they were Arsene, Thunder Jack, Maxpoly and Doverstar. |
| Before 2019, world owners could host their world themselves. |
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| * Change in policy of Bot / SDK usage |
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| * On 15th january, Chris (#290065) has announced that Bot usage and SDK usage (=server development kit), will be available under new conditions, primary for games and entertainment. |
| In march 2024, bot usage has been disabled for almost all citizens. |
| Except for game purposes (e.g.the bot in the world ToTheTop). |
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| * Personal World Management App |
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| * At the same time, Chris announced that the World Admin Tool , which was available a decade ago , will be replaced by a Personal World Management App. This app will be primary for Backups and Restore. |
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| * As this tool is not ready yet, but bots for backups have already been disabled, AW will make 2 backups per month. |
| * Requests and questions can be made on the Support page of the Activeworlds website. |
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| Party in the world SonasPrime (26th may) |
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| * All changes in Activeworlds over the years |
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| People which are new, or which have retured after years , will have to know about these changes : Activeworlds isn't the same as it has used to be. |
| * Citizen & building related |
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| * Before 2013, there were tourists and citizens. You had to pay a yearly amout of money to be a citizen. Citizens could build in the public worlds, and had access to a lot of worlds. Citizens could even run their own world. When owning a huge world, they could even give citizenships for free to some tourists. Citizens could add other citizens as contacts and send them telegrams or join or invite their contacts. Tourists didn't pay and didn't have access to all the worlds that citizens could go. Building was disabled for them. By winning a bingo game, a tourist could win 1 month of citizenship. |
| * Between 2013 and 2022 , after a drop in the number of visitors in 2012, citizenship became free, there were no tourists anymore. Everyone could build in the public worlds, and could add contacts and send telegrams/join/invite these contacts. |
| * In 2016, buildig in the public building world AWTeen has been disabled. Later in 2022, this was also the case for the worlds Winter, America, Mars, AWReunion, Atlantis, ... Some of these worlds even went offline. Now, there remain only 4 building worlds : Alphaworld, Cofmeta, WildAW and Yellow. |
| * In 2023, you have to pay credits if you want to build in a public world : 5 AW credits for 1 day. Object selection is possible, but you cannot view the action command script unless you pay the AW credits : then you can see it for 1 day. You have to pay additional AW credits for building with V4 objects (movers, particle emitters, zones, camera, cloth). |
| * In 2023, the use of object groups (AWG files) has been disabled in the public worlds. |
| * Also in 2023, urls for the picture command has been disabled in the public building worlds. This has been replaced by the userpath, which can be found in the tabsheet Notepad of the F9-tabsheets window, when you are in one of the public building worlds. This has the advantage that there are not error messages anymore of pictures websites that don't exist anymore or freeware websites that suddenly added watermarks to the pictures that citizens had uploaded. |
| * In 2024, as a citizen, you need to have AW credits on your account. If you don't, then you cannot add contacts and send telegrams or join or invite the contacts. You also don't have access to the AW forum. |
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| * World related & Galaxy/Universe related |
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| * Before 2013, for starting a world, you needed to pay for citizenship and you needed to pay a setup cost, and you also needed to pay if you wanted to give access to tourists in your world. The price of world hosting by Activeworlds was expensive, but there were other citizens and also 3rd parties offering world hosting, and you could also host your world yourself. When purchasing a large world, you could offer free citizenship for some tourist (e.g. for a size p100,this was for 6 tourists). |
| * Between 2013 and 2018, world owners did't have those costs anymore, and AW credits were introduced to purchase the worlds. World hosting by Activeworlds didn't exist, so you need to look yourself for hosting. |
* In 2019 , world owners were not allowed anymore to host their world themselves. |
| * Between 2019 and 2023, you had to choose one of the citizens that offered world hosting : Maxpoly, Thunder Jack, Karten, Keshi, Heiko, Dovestar, and Arsène. Later in 2023, there were 4 citizens left offering world hosting, but also Activeworlds offered world hosting again . |
| * In 2024 , world hosting by other citizens has been disabled, only Activeworlds offers the world hosting, but the price is included in the purchase price of the world. |
| * Between 2002 and 2010, there were a lot of universes and galaxies running on the Activeworlds software. Those who had bought a galaxy or universe could run and host independantly from Activeworlds. As from 2016 all new & updated galaxies or universes had to run on the servers of Activeworlds. In 2020 there were almost no universes or galaxies anymore. |
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| * Bot related |
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| * Before 2013, world owers could use a bot when they wanted, also in the public worlds, a large number of citizens were specialized in bot scripting and bot developing. When purchasing a world, you had bot rights as well. There was also a World Admin Tool |
| * In 2013, you needed to pay AW credits for the use of a bot : the more bot limits you had bought, the more bot programs you could start up simultaneously. Buying a bot limit was a 1 time fee, you didn't need to pay it yearly. |
| * In 2019 bot use has been restricted: citizens were not allowed to use their bots in the AW Landing Zone. For instance Strike Rapier and Tomas used these bots to publish visitor statistics on their websites, Chris has disabled that. |
| * Also the World Admin Tool was disabled during that time ,and bots like Chkworld didnt work anymore becaue it was not allowed anymore that the bots could run on "universe" level , but only for 1 world. |
| * Later in 2021, it was not allowed anymore to use bot in the entire world of Alphaworld. |
| * In march 2024, bot use has been disabled for some users , even if you had bought a bot limit in the past. It's only allowed for gaming (e.g. in the world ToTheTop), and not anymore for backups of your private world. |
| * In june 2024, bot use has been disabled for ALL users. |
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| * Content related |
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| * From 1998 until 2013 , there was the AW newsletters |
| * In 2013 this website started the AW Times newletters, which is still updated today |
| * Between 2010 and 2016 , the Yellow Gazette has been published, and in 2014 the AW World Magazine |
| * In the beginning of AW there were Newsgroups, and there was also an AW forum . |
| * There were a lot of other supportive websites over the years but most of them have gone online again, or not updated anymore. Some websites have been restricted , like the one of Tomas , where you could do an object property search has been disbled, the object property search is now a part of the AW Forum. Other website is AWPortals, where Chris disabled the bot use in 2019, so that the citizens search on AWPortals became outdated. |
| * In 2013 there has been established a new AW Forum, which is still online today, the former forum has been archived, but is still viewable in the current AW Forum. |
| * In 2022 the AW Forum is not viewable anymore outside the Activeworlds program. |
| * In 2023 the AW Forum has been moderated: if you post a message, the content will only appear the next day, after a moderator has been reading the content first. |
| * There is also a AW Wiki website, which shows all examples of building commands, and program updates. These pages have been updated until 2021. |
| * In 2024, the AW Forum can only be viewed if you have AW credits on your citizen account. |
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| * Management related |
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| * Before 2012 , there was a whole community of greeters , gatekeepers, and peacekeepers supporting and helping all visitors in Activeworlds. There was also a promotor (Tom), who had left around 2010 , also Stacee left, she was a modeler working for Activeworlds. |
| * From 2012 on, there number of greeters and peacekeepers decreased, also because some of them had passed away (e.g. DMC2U and Nitecap) , while others had left ( Genevieve, Nursemom). Later, around 2019, the team of greeters, peacekeeprs has been stopped. |
| * Between 2014 and 2019 , Bach Zhaa did lead the monthly community meetings until Chris had banned him. After Bach Zhaa was banned, there have been only occasional meetings, mainly focused on the AW Landing Zone contest. |
* As from 2013, besides the CEO, Rick Noll, who is rarely online in AW, there is a small team of moderators left: Chris, Gremot and MeL, who also run the AW Facebook group and the AW Forum. MeL left the team in december 2023. |
| * In june/july program updates are done by Xify.io and not by Activeworlds anymore. |
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| * New worlds |
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| * GolfersWorld |
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| * This p20-sized world is owned by DragonGolfer (#404959), and is still in construction mode. |
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| * LearnToBuild |
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| * This world is owned by Panne (#365962). Here you can view all the building commands with examples. The content is the same as in the world Yellow on position 1900N 1400W, but in LearnToBuild, all the info is inside the small p10-sized world. |
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| The world LearnToBuild |
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| * Norden |
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| * This p40-sized world is owned by Lady Pippin (#308688), and the theme is "winterworld all year". You will find a christmas village, an ice skating rink, an ice palace, a cinema , a diner bar, a slide with "gravity snowballs" , a dome with santa's house and an ice cave maze. |
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| * Storyteller |
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| * This world is owned by Ian Few (#409263) and is still empty. |
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| The world Norden |
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| * TartsStudio |
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| * This p10-sized world is owned by Tart Sugar (#331363), and is still in construction mode. She is the builder of the best object yard in Alphaworld on position 27431S 12596E , where you will also find teleports to other yards. |
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| * TrustMe |
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| * This world is owned by Charlies (#364315) |
| Theme of the world is science fiction, just as the 2 former worlds that he has had (Deepspace9 and MysticStar) |
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| The world TrustMe |
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| *Activeworlds 2023 statistics |
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| * After a program update in december, citizens that closed the AW program with the X in the upper right corner, remained as being online in AW. Now, leaving AW needs to be done like this : go in the AW menu to : File - Exit , or go to the tray icon menu in the bottom right corner and close the AW-icon. |
| * This makes again a false represetation about how many citizens are online, which makes it impossible to judge if AW gets more visitors or not. |
| * Finally, there is the overview of the private worlds |
| * Colors of the signs: |
| yellow = existing world |
| green = red world |
| red = closed to the public |
| blue = name of the world owner |
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| * In january 2022, there were 85 private worlds (some of which are not certain to be called private worlds) |
| * In march 2023, the number of private worlds had dropped to 70, this with the new worlds included. |
| * In april 2024 , the number of private worlds had dropped to 59. |
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| Private worlds overview in april 2024 |
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| * Activeworlds also receives money now from citizens that pay credits for building in the public building worlds. But the number of private worlds is still decreasing for various reasons : |
| * Some world owners got banned (e.g. OldChineseMan, Vampire) |
| * Some owners had less budget for it ( e.g. Dovestar) |
| * Some owners passed away (Dearheart, Keshi, Karten) |
| * Some world owners didn't have enough visitors |
| * Some owners didn't have time to run a world (eg. Jackson) |
| * There are less builders as they are not tempted to learn to build : the action command script isn't visible anymore if you don't pay. |
| * The number of private worlds is still decreasing after april : world hosting parties have been disabled (e.g. Arsène) , and bots have been disabled (e.g. Firstr) |
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