A Quick Peek at Onverse

With the collapse of There.com, a lot of former Thereans are now virtual homeless.  Many members of There avoid Second Life for various reasons, so they have been visiting many other worlds.  One that is getting a lot of buzz among the ex-There people is a little known virtual world called Onverse.  And for good reason, Onverse is probably the 3D virtual world most like There.  You won’t find vehicles, but you find cartoon avatars, houses to decorate, There like environments to explore, and social events with decent sized crowds to hang out in.  So I decided to take a closer look at Onverse.

There are basically two strategies in business. Go big, and try to be everything to everyone, or go small and cater to a small audience. Part of the go small strategy is to get by with as little overhead as possible, and rely on word of mouth advertising.

Onverse is definitely in that small category. The company consists of five guys working out of a garage in Tempe Arizona, a town I am very familiar with (Google Lively was also based out of Tempe before it closed down).  It also seems to have only a small advertising budget relying on word of mouth advertising.

They have been around almost a year and they have seen quite a bit of growth.  When I first logged in last June, there were very few people, a typical result with most new worlds I visit.  Since then the number of people I see keeps getting bigger, the environments have more and more instances, it has become a small and busy place.

Onverse is not limited to PC, it runs on Mac and even Linux.  The graphics are simple and cartoon like, designed to work on any computer.  Possibly even a phone app in the future.  Basically it can run on anything, and probably works just fine on a dialup modem, assuming you want to wait for the large download.  All the graphics in the game are pre-loaded in the client, meaning there is no graphics lag, but you will have to occasionally update your client whenever new items are added to the game.

The disadvantage is that there is no user created content.  You can customize your avatar and you can get a free apartment to customize too, but you can’t create your own clothes or items due to restrictions of the Torque engine.  This will no doubt limit the appeal of the virtual world to many.  Another limiting appeal might be the strange looking avatars.  They are definitely of the cartoon variety and the customization is a little limited.

On the upside, the virtual world is family friendly, and very easy to use.  Onverse has one of the best tutorial areas I have seen in a 3D virtual world.  By the end of the tutorial section you will know all that you need to know. The interface is simple and uses the normal keyboard and mouse controls you probably used in other programs.

Bottom line, Onverse is a small virtual world that won’t appeal to everybody, but it should find an audience that likes the cartoon look and feel.  Kids and young teens, especially young girls, will likely enjoy the environment and social activities the most, but it is appealing enough for all ages to check out.

Favorite There Moments

So I need to make one last There.com post just to say goodbye.  The pic above is the first screenshot I took in There.  Most of the people in the screenshot, especially Twiddler, Marykins, and Emilia are people I knew in The Sims Online, and they encouraged me to sign up for beta.

Our primary activity in The Sims Online was making gnome statues to the point we were getting pretty sick of it.  The first item I submitted (and got approved) was a shirt with a gnome on it.  (Don’t tell anyone, I stole the gnome image from the TSO load files)

I never became a big developer in There, I sold enough stuff to get by. I lucked out and got a funzone (Ebony Rock) and made enough money to pay the rent on the thing. I left the funzone open for anyone to schedule events, because I was mad that There sold them off and left it up to the owners to decide who gets to use the funzones.  There was much more fun when they were all open and anyone could schedule an event.  So I was able to buy one that I could save and leave open.  Eventually, I stopped playing There and was running short of therebucks needed to keep up the rent so I sold it via auction. The thing sold for T$300,000 (about $150 US), and never had to buy Therebux again.  I think I still had around T$220,000 left when There closed.  When all the gains and losses are added up, I basically played for free, so Makena can keep my left over Therebucks if they want.

A community as large as There is going to attract some troublemakers, and no one was as notorious as Jopy. He got into There in early beta and took to heart the beta mantra of testing everything.  In the early days before port-a-zones, we could drop stuff anywhere we wanted, Jopy purposely ruined every scenic location in There with gigantic signs and lots of other crap.  He was well hated, but after a while many of us just started laughing at his exploits. A ton of improvements were made thanks to Jopy.  Anyways, one day I found Jopy left his custom buggy out for me to steal, and I hid it in the last place he would ever look… the egyptian sarcophagus.  It was very Jopy of me.

My first day in there, I got a “try it” hoverboard and liked it so much, I bought a jet black advanced hoverboard and rode that thing everywhere.  From day 1 until my very last day in There, I was on that board wandering around the countryside.  Somehow I never achieved “Legendary” status on that thing, but came damn close. I never achieved legendary status in any activity, but ended up as “renowned” in most of them.  Hoverboarding was my favorite activity…

… with underwear parties coming in a close second.

One of the There newspapers had a contest for a There version of a famous painting and I submitted a There version of “Nighthawks” by Edward Hopper.  I came in second if I remember.

One of the bigger There independent developers Kittenkat came up with a way to change all the graphic files in There and turn There into a winter wonderland.  The idea of a wintery landscape eventually was added to the game in the form of “frosty” island.

Nudity was not allowed in There of course, but there were plenty of ways to fake it.  All you had to do was replace one of the shirt files with a skin tone file.

In the early days of There, I created a “nude patch” replacing the lame reward shirts with female bare chest shirts.  The reward shirt for hoverboarding “Ride” was the female bare chest for caramel skin, the most popular skin tone.  Eventually, they replaced the reward shirts with better prizes.  Months later hoverboarding “Ride” shirts became rare and were selling for ridiculously high prices.  The culprit was my nude patch which somehow became an underground sensation, especially at dance clubs.  If you had carmel skin, and wore a “ride” shirt, everyone with my nude patch would see you topless.

I preferred the Latte skin color which used the much less expensive “Host” shirt.

That is not all that I was famous for. I created the first ever “picture quest”.  Quests that tell stories were all the rage, but one of the things you could do with the quest kits was link to a web page.  So I took screen shots of me at 10 nearby locations, and in each quest clue I would give you a general direction to follow and a link to one of the screenshots.  The next clue would be located wherever I was standing in the shot.

I only did one, but the concept was popular enough that dozens of other picture quests appeared around There. The most popular variation on the theme, however, was the cross country buggy races. I loved those events, and won at least twice.

I mentioned before that the first ever official live concert in a virtual world by a signed band was held in There by British band Steadman.  You can listen to the concert here.  After the concert I was caught ass grabbing one of the band members

So many memories, but it is now over   One last pic to post.

Wish I was too!

Metaverse Reactions to There Closing

Many of the smaller 3D Virtual Worlds are trying to lure in There.com members.

Twinity wants to attract There.com developers by exchanging some Therebucks for Twinity Globals.

Active Worlds is offering 6 months free to former There players.

Frenzoo is offering free lifetime VIP status to There members.

Moove has a special sign up area for There members.

Kaneva has a There Channel available.

Blue Mars has a new region called Pavonis, designed by a member of There, with the same tropical archipelago theme of There.

Utherverse, makers of adult oriented virtual worlds like Red Light Center have created therenewworld.com Not sure how that will go over with the teenage crowd that dominated There.

Second Life created a special greetings area just for There members who join SL

A blogger at Second Life left a stirring farewell:

This week brought the sad announcement that the online world There.com would  be closing its doors come March 9. We were sorry to hear the news;  There provided a valuable service to its users, and is one of a very few  pioneers in what is generally know nas the “social virtual worlds” space. There  helped prove that 3D online worlds could be more than just chat rooms  with moving pictures. They provided a wonderful space for their vibrant  communities who gathered to hang out and have fun — even before the  paintballs became free.

Though Second Life has to an extent  served a different audience, we do hope that those who care to (and who  are 18 or over) can find as much enjoyment in Second Life as they did in  There.com. Our two platforms have developed along very different paths,  but each offers the opportunity to interact with other people in ways  that can’t be found anywhere else online — the opportunity for  unparalleled expression in an environment that offers experiences that  are every bit as meaningful as those that take place in the physical  world.

Many of us at Linden Lab know — or are –  There.com members. Others — myself included — have friends who work at  There. It’s safe to say that all of us are sorry to see the end of a  truly innovative company and product, but I’m confident that the people  involved with it, whether as employees or as members, will keep on  creating and exploring the most social and expressive technologies  available today and in years to come.

The end of any community  platform is an unhappy moment, and we certainly feel for the community.  Although it may not be the same as the world you know and love, we hope  you will come and explore another online world of possibility and  engaging experiences. We are working on creating some new places for  you, so look for news of those in a future post. We’ll look for you inworld.

What would Second Life be without There.com?  Both have as their original source material, the “metaverse” of Snow Crash, though their interpretation varied. Both opened their beta in 2003.  Approximately half of SL beta members were also There beta members. Because at the time There had more stuff to do, while SL was a pure build it yourself world, a lot of the early SL builds were inspired by There.com.

Many prominent SL pioneers came from There. Yadni, of Yadni’s Junkyard, the first great “freebie mall”, was from There. As was Starley Thereian of Celestial Studios, the first great high end fashion boutique, Desmond Shang who owns and operates Caledon, the largest privately owned themed continent (50 regions), Cristiano who runs sluniverse.com the largest independent forum dedicated to Second Life (and named after a once popular, now non existent independent forum called there universe dot com), to name a few.

Thanks to competition from There, SL gave us freebie basic accounts, auctions, classifieds, camera controls and voice capabilities.  Former There software engineer Jeff Ventrella joined Second Life for a while and gave us flexi prims, and improved avatars.

Second Life would be a very different place, and probably a lot smaller place, without There.com.

There.com Coming to a Close

There.com was the second 3D Virtual World I joined and from June 2003 to May 2004, it was my only virtual home.  I was a Beta and a regular, well known throughout the early days of There.

On Tuesday May 9th my former virtual home will close for good.  My former residence at the Ebony Rock Funzone will disappear in the virtual ether.

The announcement comes as a surprise to everyone, including some of the employees of Makena.  This thread at sothereforums.com is where a lot of former Thereans as well as former employees are going to talk about the closure as the official forums have closed completely.

From a technical standpoint, There was above everybody.  The biggest wants of Second Life players today is copy protection, smooth transition from region to region, better ways to market products, and better vehicles.  There had these things from day 1.  Avatars in There have capabilities still not seen in any other game.  Planet There was the largest avatar navigable 3D object, just slightly smaller than planet Earth.  Actual land mass is about 650 sq km, about 1/3 the size of Second Life.

If I were to design a new “ultimate” 3D Virtual World, I would start with There, radically improve the graphics, the avatars, and steal IMVU’s awesome interface, steal Second Life’s system of building, add scripting capabilities, and animation import.  At the heart of it though, it would still be There.

So long There, I will miss you.