I discovered Active Worlds in 6/97 and found dealing with the "company" side of COF annoying and irritating since Rick and JP seemed to have their own agenda for Active Worlds, despite it still, for the most part, floundering like it did when Worlds owned it. I mostly dealt with Roland and very little with Protagonist. COF announced that citizens would have to pay (registration) starting 10/1/97, along with the delayed promises (used to bait citizens into paying) of opening more public worlds of theirs (Atlantis, New Metropolis, and Yellowstone), and a new world, Mars, to building, which didn't actually happen until a couple months after registration took effect. I even filed a Better Business Bureau consumer complaint because of it. COF also promised citizens would be able to delete non-citizen "trash", but this hasn't been fully realized yet either since there's a long annoying, ardruous, process one must go through (filling out an object removal form: old 
, new), waiting, then wondering if/when the trash will ever be removed) just to do it. I'm not sure when, but Dale and Graham eventually left COF within a year after registration was introduced. Around this time, Bill Hoover (Calpantera) came on as tech support.
Within a few months after coming to Active Worlds, I was already bored with AlphaWorld's objects and wanted to make my own. Around the time the citizen registration was introduced, a neighbor who was building near my property was thinking about getting a world, so we made a deal where my citizenship would be taken care of in exchange for helping run the world. I had never run a world before but I was willing to give it a go, and I could use it to experiment with learning about making RenderWare objects.
This world was "Saxon" and I was basically given free reign to do what I wanted. I felt guilty though because it wasn't actually my world, so I didn't do much at first. Just getting used to all of worldrunning idiosynchracies took a good chunk of time anyway. However, eventually I got into it and started messing with RenderWare scripts (RWXs, AW's objects). I mostly built Saxon up as an urban environment, with asphalt streets, cement sidewalks, orange construction cones/pylons, chainlink fences, oil drums, barriers, moving spotlights, streetlights (and the "light" itself), etc. I got so into object creation I eventually created my own website devoted to it.
But within a month or so, Saxon was down and I still don't know exactly why. Perhaps the owner just wanted a trial world to experiment with before getting a world to run on their own. Who knows. I'm grateful for the support, but the whole experience was just kind of odd. Anyway, Jetta Lewis wanted to expand his American network of worlds and we got to talking about me running one of the worlds. Since Saxon was going down, I no longer had a world to play with so I said yes. "Arizona" was my choice of world. However, within a week, a minor point about my objects caused me to leave Arizona and I was worldless once again. But there was still hope.
But as luck would have it, Jetta Lewis once again offered me a world (but without the object issue this time) so "Utah" was born. I had big plans for Utah based on the premise that COF would be releasing their modular groundmaking program that could convert DEM files to RWX. I was planning on making accurately modelled Utah buttes/mesas (like those tall rock formations in Monument Valley, for example). However, COF failed to deliver on their word (as usual) and it would be too much work to do manually (and by this time I was getting burnt out on object-making anyway), so Utah's development stagnated.
The transaction by which we acquired the stock of Circle of Fire Studios is referred to as the "Circle of Fire Acquisition."
Dthknight's Story of an Avatar
Mauz's AW citizens list
AWSUX : filmkr/Insanity's rants
Ron Britvich (Protagonist) is in the process of suing COF for stealing AW.
According to this newsgroup post:
Subject: conversation at gz weds 5pm edt
Date: Wed, 30 Sep 1998 17:43:56 -0400
From: HiFlyer
Newsgroups: AWDiscussion
"Protag AKA Ron: I have been forced to defend myself in this action and have countersued them on 7 counts of various charges...including securities fraud.... breach of contract and breach of fiducary duty....
Protag AKA Ron: Our first hearing in Federal court was yesterday and things went very well... The judge upheld our temporary restraining order against CoF to prevent them from selling AW and running off with all the money
Protag AKA Ron: Yes, this is just another example of pettiness of CoF's part.... I am looking forward to having our complaint resolved in court... I feel that it is the only remedy that will have any effect on them honoring their agreements.
Protag AKA Ron: Wep, I think a basic issue is this... Should someone be removed from this program simply because of who they are or what they say....
Protag AKA Ron: I understand removing someone who is attempting to damage or attack the program itself.... To protect the interests of others.... But to just remove someone because you diagree with them is going too far"
And here's a more complete log of the text, courtesy Dthknight. Note that unrelevant lines (like from tourists, people speaking in other languages, etc) have been deleted. For the disturbed (yes, you, Timmy), here's the full log.
AW press releases
Subject: Activeworlds.com info
Date: Sun, 24 Jan 1999 02:55:20 +0200
From: Mauz
In case you're interested, Cryonics just told these things in our Gatekeeper meeting:
"Circle of Fire merged with a Company called Vanguard, which is a public company. In this merger transaction, we raised $1 million dollars and the condition of the merger was that myself and Rick would retain majority control of the company. In this capacity Rick is the President and CEO and I am the Chairman and CFO. The company Circle of Fire which has been renamed to Activeworlds, Inc. is now a wholy owned subsidiary of Activeworlds.com, Inc. which is the public company. Circle of Fire while a cool name for us all was just not Wall Street friendly ;) As you all know the stock symbol for Activeworlds.com, Inc is AWLD. What this means in a nutshell, is WONDERFUL THINGS for the future of Active Worlds and its development :) For those of you who thought you had gotten rid of the two of us..... sorry we are still here to stay ;) The stock traded quite steadily in the $6 per share range on its first day on Friday. Vanguard used to be in TV marketing business and was looking for a business that had a much brighter future. Upon the merger, the officers of Vanguard were voted out and Rick and myself and a 3rd director were voted in. The 3rd Director's name is Jim Lanschee, he is a Harvard Graduate, very nice guy and very bright. The only way this will affect the citizen base is in a positive way as Activeworlds now has the resources and the means to to great things. Jim Lanschee is a board member and will perform his duties as a board memberand not as a business associate. Board members are designed to help advise the company on corporate directions etc.... The giant logo has not been up for a day now. That was just our way of annoucing the events of Active Worlds being public. You will see lots of great stuff happening, new programers hired, faster development of features for Active Worlds ect... It is our goal to make AW a household name."
2/7/99: This site has been temporarily taken down in protest to Activeworlds.com, Inc.'s locking out my Active Worlds (AW) citizen account. The only thing I can think of that would have caused JP and/or Rick to do this for the second time is because of the now-deleted newsgroup post (shown below) I posted to the Active Worlds newsgroup awcommunity about AW.com's press releases containing incorrect information. I have of course emailed AW.com but, also of course, have not received a reply. I will be going to the Better Business Bureau (BBB) and filing yet another consumer complaint (the first time against Circle of Fire—AW.com's old name—for those who may not know).
If you want this site reinstated, I urge you to inquery [inquire + query] JP and Rick and ask why citizens' accounts are being locked out and banned. I apologize for any inconvienence this has caused you, the students of RWX, but I feel being locked out of AW is an inconvienence too.
Newsgroup Post
Subject: press release misconceptions
Date: Sat, 06 Feb 1999 22:01:49 -0800
Newsgroups: awcommunity
"I tire of reading blatantly wrong information in AW's press releases:
From http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/990121/ma_activew_1.html:
"Active Worlds(TM) currently has a user base of over 300,000 users worldwide on the one Universe server (Uniserver) COFS operates. This Active Worlds 3D universe receives over 1 million impressions per day."
According to Roland Vilett, AW's "lead" (only) programmer (after COF dumped the original programmer, Ron Britvich, who is, I believe, still in the process of suing COF for stealing AW):
Telegram from Roland (Thu Nov 12, 1998 6:49 PM):
"oh, you asked earlier...AW has about 14,000 paid citizens now."
Note that is PAID citizens...people who have shelled out a measly $20 for one (1) year of citizenship. The "over 300,000 users" is misleading, too, since most of those "users" aren't users at all, but tourists, and because most tourists don't ever come back!
More from Roland:
Telegram from Roland (Thu Nov 12, 1998 6:52 PM):
"usage frequency? Like how often does a given person log in? I don't know that, it isn't being tracked...I know we get about 700 new users a day, and average around 300 people in the system 24 hours a day"
and:
Telegram from Roland (Thu Nov 12, 1998 6:52 PM):
"the ratio of citizens to tourists in the system at any one time is usually around 3 to 1."
And a bit of information on Vanguard Enterprises, Inc. (the "company" who supposedly "bought" COF):
Telegram from Roland (Sat Jan 23, 1999 7:20 PM):
"I have no idea who Vanguard was...I only just found out about all this myself...my understanding is that Vanguard was just some empty shell of a company sitting dormant on the stock market that was merged with COF for the purpose of making COF public."
To all the investors and potential investors, learn more about AW before you blow your money on a scam.
http://tnlc.com/mauz/awhistory.html for a THOROUGH history of AW."
2/7 (9PM PST): Well, just as suddenly as my account was locked out, it's been reinstated without reason. So, this site will be resuming normal operation and this info moved over to my AW page. Again, I apologize for any possible inconvience not having this site's info may have caused you. Thank you for your understanding.
Oh and I forgot about this telegram:
Telegram from Young Shamus (Mon Jan 25, 1999 6:11 AM):
"I didn't understand the whole vanguard enterprizes thing myself. I didn't find out avout any of the news until only a day or so before everyone else. I probably wont get the whole stroy until I meet with rick and JP face-to-face."
2/8: I have learned that around at least 10 other PAYING CITIZENS of AW have been locked out or banned from AW. There seems to be something deeper going on here and I don't like it. http://oasis.fortunecity.com/skegness/211/freedom.html for more info. I think it may be time for a revolution within AW...I know I tire of the tyrannical "government". I will also be going to the United States of America Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) and Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offices to submit consumer and advertising fraud complaints against AW.com, Inc. I urge other people to do this also. The more people who get involved, the quicker AW.com will be put in its place!
Subject: Legal Action by Activeworlds.com, Inc.
Date: Thu, 18 Feb 1999 19:16:13 +0000
From: thughes@pepehazard.com
To: Eep
CC: COF@activeworlds.com
TIMOTHY M. HUGHES, ESQ.
PEPE & HAZARD, LLP
(617) 695-9090
thughes@pepehazard.com
Dear Sir:
This office represents Activeworlds.com, Inc. (*Activeworlds.com*) in connection with possible legal action which Activewords.com is considering against you as a result of various false, misleading, and defamatory statements which you have made concerning Activeworlds.com and its predecessor, Circle of Fire Studios, Inc. (*COF*) on the World Wide Web. As set forth more fully below, Activeworlds.com hereby demands that you cease and desist from making such statements and that you take all necessary steps to remove such statements from the Web or to otherwise retract them.
Activeworlds.com had advised us that you maintain the Website *tnlc.com/eep/aw/history* and that the site contains numerous false and misleading statements, including without limitation the following:
1. *Ron Britvich (Protagonist) is the process of suing COF for stealing AW.*
2. Activeworlds.com has engaged in *consumer and advertising fraud.*
3. Activeworlds.com has included *blatantly wrong information in [its] press releases.*
4. Activewords.com is, or is engaged in, a *scam.*
Activeworlds.com has further advised us that you have posted the following false and misleading statements on the newsgroup Raging Bull (http://www.ragingbull.com/):
1. *[Activeworlds.com*] is *for the most part stagnant.* (Posted on February 18, 1999 at 2:44 EST.)
2. Activeworlds.com has, and in the past has had, only one programmer. (Posted on February 14, 1999 at 5:29 p.m. EST.)
3. *RenderWare, AW*s 3D engine ... is an outdated, obsolete software-based 3D engine.* (Posted on February 11, 1999 at 9:37 EST.)
You are hereby advised that each of these statements is false and/or misleading. Activeworlds.com therefore considers them to be defamatory, and to constitute unlawful trade/product disparagement and intentional interference with advantageous business relationships. Activeworlds.com therefore intends to hold you legally responsible for any damages that if has suffered or may suffer as a result of these statements. Further, Activeworlds.com demands that you (1) immediately withdraw the false and/or misleading statements from your Website, and (2) that you refrain from making, via the World Wide Web or otherwise, false and misleading statements concerning Activeworlds.com in the future.
You are further advised that if that you fail to withdraw these statements, or make further false and/or misleading statements concerning Activeworlds.com in the future, Activeworlds.com intends take all appropriate legal steps against you.
We respectfully request that if you are currently represented by legal counsel, you refer this correspondence to them, and provide their name and address to us. If you are not represented by counsel, we
request that you provide us with your name and postal service address, so that we may communicate with you in a formal manner. In the event that you refuse to provide us with your name and address, we will take all necessary steps to obtain this information from your Internet Service Providers, Concentric Research Corp. and Beaverbrook Kennel (tnlc.com) by subpoena or other court process.
Very truly yours,
Timothy M. Hughes, Esq.
Pepe & Hazard, LLP
150 Federal Street
Boston, MA 02110
(617) 695-9090
My Response:
Regarding this page:
1. I have added appropriate reference to where I first learned of Ron Britvich's lawsuit against Circle of Fire Studios (now Activeworlds.com, Incorporated).
2. I consider consumer fraud to be when consumers are locked out of their accounts for no reason (as I was). Advertising fraud, to me, is misleading/incorrect/false advertising.
3. Until Activeworlds.com, Inc. provides universe logs of every login, with unique citizen and tourist counts, Activeworlds.com, Inc.'s press releases will continue to be unproven. And since I have telegrams from Roland Vilett disproving the first and subsequent press releases where user numbers were stated (at least the 300K/650K figure), I feel the press releases include "blantantly wrong information". Duh.
4. I consider a scam to be when a company pads their user numbers to make their product seem more popular than it really is just to get investors.
Regarding my posts (click #s) at Raging Bull:
1. Considering my history with Active Worlds and personal dealings with its staff, I feel I am justified in saying this.
2. This message does not have "Activeworlds.com has, and in the past has had, only one programmer." in it, therefore this point is moot.
3. First of all, you didn't get the full quote (did you even read the posts, Timmy, or did AW.com spoonfeed that into your gullible mouth too? My full statement reads: "More info about RenderWare, AW's 3D engine, can be found at http://tnlc.com/rw. It's an outdated, obsolete software-based (although it has a Direct3D driver which doesn't work too well--see, http://tnlc.com/eep/aw/direct3d.html--and 3Dfx driver which I have no experience with) 3D rendering engine compared to the Quake, Half-Life, Tomb Raider, and most other current 3D engines in today's (and yesterday's games)." Try to stay in context, Timmy. Compared to those other game engines, RenderWare is outdated and obsolete! Idiot.
Go look at Criterion's RenderWare website and tell me when the last update was. I'll save you some time since you don't seem to be too adept at providing URLs anyway: June 6, 1998. That update, by the way, was a very minor one, as were the previous two or three updates before RenderWare 2.1's initial May 1997 release. Now in case you don't know about computer industry time, even six (6) months is outdated and obsolete for hardware and software. And as for RenderWare being a software-based engine, it is for the most part. Sure it has piddly li'l hardware drivers: a Voodoo driver (which doesn't work with Active Worlds) and a Direct3D driver (which barely works with Active Worlds), but RenderWare is still primarily a software 3D rendering engine. Dig? Now don't make me get all technical on you, Timmy. Perhaps you'd like to visit my RenderWare script (RWX) creation site and learn a bit, eh? There'll be a test later.
These are my opinions. Whether or not they're "false" or "misleading" is irrelevant. Opinions can be as "true" or "false" and as "leading" or "misleading" as they want to be. That's why they're called opinions! Duh. What's considered "false" and "misleading" is relative. Do you lawyer types need everything spelled out for you? You, Tim Hughes, are herby ordered (not advised) to leave me alone. I am not responsible for Activeworlds.com, Inc. If Activeworlds.com, Inc. can't handle the truth, it shouldn't be in business. Period. Think about it: if they went to all this trouble just to try to intimidate li'l ol' me, what are they going to do when people start filing SEC, FTC, and BBB complaints against Activeworlds.com, Inc., hmm? Drive through...
2/99: A new citizen by the name of Daedelus has been building some interesting land formations just west of ground zero. Check 'em out while Utah's still up. Supposedly Jetta hasn't renewed Utah's subscription (yet it's still up) so who knows how much longer it'll be up...
3/2: I need to make a correction to this statement in my newsgroup post:
"Active Worlds(TM) currently has a user base of over 300,000 users worldwide on the one Universe server (Uniserver) COFS operates. This Active Worlds 3D universe receives over 1 million impressions per day."
Telegram from Roland (Thu Nov 12, 1998 6:49 PM):
"oh, you asked earlier...AW has about 14,000 paid citizens now."
Note that is PAID citizens...people who have shelled out a measly $20 for one (1) year of citizenship. The "over 300,000 users" is misleading, too, since most of those "users" aren't users at all, but tourists, and because most tourists don't ever come back!
Most of the "over 300,000 users" are not tourists (since tourists have the same citizen number of 0 and are not included in this figure) but NAC (not a citizen)s and duplicate/multiple accounts. NACs are all the post-registration citizens who didn't buy their accounts when Circle of Fire started charging for citizenship on 10/1/97. As for the duplicate accounts, http://tnlc.com/mauz/awcitizens.html and just look at the some of the "Activeworlds.com" citizens numbers. Duplicate/multiple accounts are not unique users as the Active Worlds - Universe Traffic states (which now has an even more false figure of "over 680,000" total unique users). Pathetic. Why AW.com, Inc. feels they have to blatantly mislead people into thinking AW is more popular than it is can only be because they are that desperate for investment.
After reading that page more carefully, I find my original statement is even more accurate (in addition to what I added above)!
A "unique user" is defined as a person downloading Active Worlds for the first time, installing the browser and successfully entering and exploring the Universe.
This implies that this figure does includes mostly tourists since it's unlikely a citizen would download AW again for the first time.
"Unique paid users" are users that paid for their citizenship either through direct registration or world purchase.
This figure is innaccurate because people who buy worlds most likely already have a citizenship, so what happens to all those "free" citizenships included with world purchases? Some are given away (in which case, yes, those citizenships would then be unique if given away to a tourist, for example. However, this page doesn't mention this figure or provide a breakdown of the "total unique paid users" either.) And some are used to extend the world owner's own citizenship another year.
Oh and no word from Timmy...
|
3/99: I decided to dust off Saxon and give it another go. Hole is currently running Saxon. According to Jetta, Utah hasn't been renewed so it probably won't be up much longer. On 4/13/99, Mauz purchased "Cubed" world so ³ will be running there now.
3/8: Homeless Joe gives more info about AW fraud in Banana Fraud.
3/18: Homeless Joe gives us more info on various citizen repressions by COF/AWCI, with Peel Press .
4/13: Apparently many previously-deleted newsgroup posts are coming back. It would seem either AWCI's "lawyer" has "advised" them to restore the newsgroup posts, or AWCI is finally getting a clue in how not to be moronic. I've added a link to my newsgroup message.
5/24: Even more evidence of AW not having 680,000 "total unique users" as the universe stats claim. Today, AWCI held yet another lame public relations (PR) attempt to make AW seem more popular than it really is. With the about-time release of the movie, The 13th Floor, a "premiere" was shown in (appropriately-named) "Premiere" world for it. Although I came about an hour after it began (lucky me), before I entered the world I noticed the unusually large (bloated) population of "Premiere": 305. Now I can't recall any world ever having that many people (not even "Transcen" during the last silly PR attempt when The Vote™ took place) in my almost 2 years in AW. Anyway, for that hour before I was there there was no public speaking and just a silly banter of "moderators" supposedly fielding whispered questions from the "crowd" to the "stars" of the movie (who were supposedly also at this so-called premiere). I also noticed many "Pepsi#" names (after Queen Bee's newsgroup post indirectly reminded me) which, combined with the bloated world population, inspired me to see just how bloated AW's "unique" citizen counts really are.
Some bots (namely ImaGenius' ChatBot and Faber's Preston) can look up citizen names/#s and if you bother to check citizen #s, note the blocks of no citizen names (particularly near the beginning), names with "Peacekeeper #" (1-100; 911-301446) in them, and we can't forget about all the "Pepsi#"s (1-915; 300425-301338)! Note that these #s aren't necessarily in succession (although "Pepsi#"s are 913 #s in a row!). "Gatekeeper" (268579) is also an AWCI account, as well as the numerous Star Wars names near the beginning (Rick is a fan). These "citizen" names are not unique, actual citizens and are included in AWCI's so-called "unique" user counts! This is fraud and should be reported to the FTC. Why Rick and JP have to be so blatantly stupid, idiotic, and moronic is beyond me, but it just shows how desperate they are (which is damn pathetic in my opinion) to make AW seem more popular than it truly is.
Get over it, Rick and JP; quit acting like lamers and try promoting AW legitimately and cease and desist all the stupid, silly PR stunts. It's not winning you any brownie points with those that know what's going on...and don't even think I'm going to stop reporting on all your bullshit either, because I will continue until you straighten up and start running AW legitimetally! And no amount of legal pressure (hi Timmy!) will stop me either because I am perfectly within my First Amendment rights! Instead of ignoring the mounting problems people have with you, try dealing with them in a direct, professional manner and maybe (just maybe) you might have better relations with the people who support your skanky asses! Think about it! Without us, the "citizens" of this so-called "community", AW wouldn't exist! We bailed your asses out of bankruptcy and this is how you thank us? What a crock! What is with idiotic companies who think they can blow off the people who support them? They don't last very long that's for sure! Duh!
And note in the latest AW press release (new):
"Activeworlds.com, Inc. is a leading developer of three-dimensional (3-D), 'community-based' environments on the Internet and among the only technology platform's developed that is completely interactive, operating in real-time to create a true to life virtual reality experience. Activeworlds.com, Inc. offers a complete range of client, server, and development applications in a turnkey approach that enables the individual and business users to create rich and compelling online 3D worlds. The Company's 3D multi-user environment, Activeworlds.com, is leading the trend towards 'social' computing in 3D, to create a sense of virtual reality. Activeworlds.com, Inc. has also developed a suite of software, clients, servers, and authoring tools designed to allow people to communicate, play games, and conduct business in an infinite number of shared environments on the Internet in real time. This statement may contain certain forward-looking statements, which may involve known and unknown risks, uncertainties, and other factors not under the Company's control which may cause actual results, performance and achievements of the Company to be materially different from the results, performance, or expectations of the Company. These factors include, but are not limited to those detailed in the Company's periodic filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission."
Why the hell are "community-based" and "social" in quotes?? To me that just shows AW is a pseudo community with very little social interaction (aside from chat, but how social is that??). Feh...feh, I type, damn it! And dig the last two sentences...how hypocritical is that, eh? Are they implying their SEC filings are unknowingly risky, uncertain, not under their control, and actually "different from the results, performance, or expectations of [AWCI]"?? Sounds like fraud to me!
6/17: About a week or so ago, Utah was taken off-line. Shamus released Terraformer into beta, which just so happens to be the rumored modular groundmaking program! About time, AWCI...
6/5: Well, well, well, looks like Ron is doing it again with GEL! Watch out, AWCI! :)
6/9: Apprently AWCI doesn't like talk about GEL and my new improvements page at AWGate. Here's the situation: a couple days ago I saw E N Z O was in AWGate, so I decided to publically ask him about GEL. He acted like he didn't even know what it was (which is quite possible giving his track record of being fairly clueless as to what's actually going on with AW and things related to it, like newsgroups, what JP does for "fun", etc.). Anyway, I mentioned how GEL is being supported/contributed to by Ron and how they (AWCI) alienated him. Then I asked if Rick had seen my new AW improvements page and I made up a little diddy (song): "Makin' a list...checkin' it twice...gonna find out how bad AWCI screws up AW..." or something to that effect. Hell, it didn't even rhyme but before I knew it I was ejected without warning. Now, unless "screws" is on the Customs Aide's censor-eject list, Rick, the Gatekeeper (forgot the name), or someone else with ejection rights there ejected me.
A telegram to Rick resulted in no response (as usual) and I was a tad pissed by this point, but was about to get even more pissed because the next thing I knew, my name was off my contacts list (yes, I have myself in my contacts list—you can do that, you know...). Anyway, I thought that was odd (obviously) so I went into my citizen options to see if my name had changed. Sure enough, the options said there was no citizen named "Eep" and I couldn't change anything in this window as all the fields were disabled. After closing it, I scrolled down my contacts list and found the name "pEepee" (or something similar—I don't recall specifically now). After another telegram to Rick (again with no response), I was able to edit my stuff again, but after a few minutes the email address field changed to "cof@activeworlds.com", my privilege password was blank, and for the next half hour or so my name kept changing to various insulting names like "peepee", "Twit", "porky", "hes my mama", "mommy", "Eep has a cat" (I actually don't), and "Eep is a Twit". After changing my name back and my passwords a few times to try and prevent these unauthorized name changes, I finally decided to express my feelings about what was happening, so I changed my name to things like "AWCI IS SHIT", "FUCK OFF AWCI", "ENZO IS A FAG", "ENZO SUCKS COCK", "AWCI BITES", and finally "Eep2".
Well, my name changed to "I LOVE E N Z O" and I finally got sick of this shit so I just logged on as a tourist, but I couldn't get back into my account since I forgot the password I last changed it to in my frantic attempt to try and thwart this annoying predicament I was in, and my email address wasn't working for the last-changed name. All this just because Rick and JP didn't like what I had to say about GEL and AW improvements... Pathetic, If they can't take a little criticism and truth, and learn to deal with it in a much more professional, businesslike manner, they aren't going to survive as a publically traded company for very long.
I later found out (from someone who wishes to remain anonymous) in a log they emailed that Rick claimed it wasn't him screwing with my name, he didn't see some of the above name changes, and he had the nerve to ask why I was so mad at them (AWCI). If he is that clueless (surely he knows about this page!), then he really isn't fit to be CEO of AWCI or to be setting AW's development priorities like Roland implies him and JP do!
6/19: GEL has an official website now.
7/13: Seems HamFon is indeed the "new" additional AW programmer. Hopefully AW development will speed up a tad now...
8/3: Well, well, I finally got to see Rick in action on his latest press excursion to CNN (interesting absent from new 1999 press release archive...) where he got basically ripped to shreads by the interviewer. The end quote sums it up best: "In the future when we all think of Winnebagos we'll think of Rick Noll." To which Rick quickly interjected "Please don't."
See, it should be really obvious to Rick, JP, et al that AW is just not a good product for e-commerce and other business marketing buzzwords. AW's strong points are its entertainment aspects and that is what AWCI should be concentrating on. One look at the 3D gaming industry should give them a clue as to how lucrative it is. If only AWCI concentrated on making AW more entertaining instead of trying to overhype it enough to seem like "the next big business thing". If a method isn't working, Rick, that's usually a good sign you're not doing something right. Perhaps a change in attitude and direction is what's needed for AW, eh? Wake up before it's too late and AW is branded as a flop... Start making AW more like a game and up to current 3D engine game specs. Get developers working on it who actually know 3D engine programming and don't have to rely on some outdated, obsolete 3D engine which is barely hanging on.
8/4: The CNN interview mentioned above also incorrectly states that Amazon.com is an AW customer. This error was also stated in an E-Commerce Times article after COF went public (and changed their name to AWCI), in which the website promptly made a correction stating that AWCI is in fact in Amazon's affiliate program (like anyone can easily be in) and was in no way a "partner" or in a direct business relationship with AWCI.
8/11: AW's website has been redesigned and there's even more hype and bullshit to attempt to full the masses with. AW's build section states "Our simple drag and drop editor allows you to customize your space in minutes, with no special computer language knowledge or skills required." This is false. There is no drag-and-drop anything in AW! Building uses the keyboard (or if you're a masochist, mouse clicks on buttons) to move objects around. Just look at AW's building help and see for yourself. Don't be fooled by AWCI's hype!
8/22: Well, because the "total unique paid user" figure at AW's universe stats keeps unrealistically bloating, I feel another example of proof to the contrary is necessary:
This list shows what a citizen lookup bot determined from citizen #s 1-200,000 (312,219 as of 1999). It shows only 1,400 citizens out of 200,000 #s, or .7% as actually being legitiment (not "Not A Citizen"). Of those 1,400, some are obviously also not legit and duplicated like AWLD, AWLD2, different spellings/spacings for "JP" and "JP McCormick" (Cryonics), other AWCI employee real names (Rick, Bill, etc), and the Star Wars and X-Files names near the front (AWCI--or at least Rick and JP anyway--are a fan of both series). All-in-all, another 30 or so #s could probably be removed to represent a more accurate citizen count of 1,370 up to citizen # 200,000, or .685%.
Don't be fooled by AWCI's tactics to make AW seem more popular than it TRULY is. Hopefully a "report" from citizen #s 200,001 - current will be available soon. You can always get a bot and look up citizen #s for yourself if you don't believe these stats, of course...
8/25: Mauz has released actual citizen #s for 200,001-on (now 312,220+) here. According to the lists, only around 1% of the citizens, before paid registration was put into effect, paid for their citizenships. After that, only around 28% of the total citizenships have been paid for. The grand total # of citizens is 23,492. There are a few thousand non-unique citizen names like the Peacekeepers, Gatekeepers, Pepsis, cus, Newmans, dialos, CreditFrauds, PropertySeizeds, and DeadbeatPayers, so the actual unique, original, paid citizens comes out to about 20,000, according to Mauz.
10/1: More fuel for the AWCI lying fire from the 10/1 TechTalk (log) regarding the "Average hits per day on 3D site" statistic:
LordDragon: I find it hard to believe that there are more than 1 million hits to the AW Website
Roland: they are talking about the object server, I believe
Roland: that server does a huge amount of hits per day....
Roland: over 1.3 million hits to the object server yesterday...
Note that this figure used to be the "over 1 million impressions per day" lie from the 5/7/99 press release (new) and before. The object server is AWCI's server for either one (1) world, AlphaWorld, or the figure could be for all of AWCI's worlds (AWGate, AlphaWorld, Mars, Metatropolis, Yellowstone, and any other world which uses an AWCI object path), so their hit/"impression" count is really irrelevant. It's just yet another dirty trick AWCI uses to attempt to make AW seem more popular than it really is. Don't be fooled.
Oh and I've decided not to renew my citizenship until I see a substantial improvement in AW's development. And I don't think RenderWare 3 will help AW much either.
10/5: From Mauz in the AWCommunity newsgroup: "Hmm better clarify some definitions here, now that many of those citizenships are starting to expire who took the 2 year deal back in October 1997 when the registration fee was introduced.
NAC's, or people whose property shows "Not a citizen", are those who didn't register then. Their accounts were subsequently purged from the database.
But the people who haven't renewed their citizenship since then, haven't become NAC's, unless their account was downright deleted. Their name still shows on their property and on contact lists etc.
At least that's what Roland said at TechTalk Sep 24th:
Mauz: are all who don't renew citizenship turned into Not-a-Citizens right away?
Roland: Mauz: no
Roland: there is no time limit...once an account expires, it just sits in the database expired. maybe someday we'll clean out all the expired accounts, but who knows
Mauz: oh so no new NACs are formed anymore?
Roland: no Mauz...unless an account is deleted. then it becomes NAC if you look at an object built under that account. it happens from time to time :)
Mauz: hmm so no way to know which accounts are expired? with a bot?
Roland: no, no way unless you have universe adminstrator rights"
10/17: Finally, AWCI's SEC Edgar report appears! Now we learn the real story. History updated accordingly. Oh and it would seem AWCI's lawyer actually does exist...well, the company, Pepe & Hazard, anyway. Guess they dumped Timmy. ;) Oh and dig this honesty (about freakin' time!) on pages 8-9:
"RISK FACTORS
An investment in our units involves a high degree of risk, and you should only consider purchasing our units if you can afford to sustain the loss of your entire investment. You should carefully consider the risks described below and the other information before deciding to purchase any units.
We have not generated significant revenue, and we have never generated profits. We have not been profitable since our organization."
...
"For the three months ended March 31, 1999, we had a net loss of $136,615, or $.013 per share (basic and diluted) on revenue of $95,946, and for the year ended December 31, 1998, we had a net loss of $9,081 on revenue of $576,163. Our net loss for 1998 reflects an extraordinary gain of $79,061, which resulted from our eliminating debt related to a litigation settlement." [Probably from Ron's lawsuit.] "Our loss before the extraordinary gain was $88,142. We believe that we will continue to incur losses. We expect to continue to incur significant operating expenses, and we cannot assure you that we will ever generate sufficient revenue to enable us to operate profitably. If we do not generate sufficient revenue or if our operating expenses exceed our expectations, the results of our operations and our financial condition will be materially and adversely affected.
Our revenue from advertising and e-commerce has been nominal. Substantially all of our revenue has been generated from registration fees of citizens, the sale of our servers, licensing of software and, to a lesser
extent, contract software development. We believe that our long-term success is dependent upon our ability to generate revenue from the licensing of our technology and from advertising and e-commence. Our revenue from these sources has been nominal, and we may never be able to generate significant revenue from either of these sources. In order to attract advertisers to our website we must be able to demonstrate that we have a substantial base of users who use our website frequently and for sustained periods of time. We believe that our present user base is not sufficient to attract any significant advertising revenue.
We need additional cash to fund our operations. Our present cash requirements include the development and implementation of a marketing program directed at both potential users and licensees of our technology and the
enhancement of our technology. At June 30, 1999, we had cash of approximately $1,100,000. Our principal sources of working capital were two private placements. The first was a $1,000,000 private placement completed in January 1999, from which we received net proceeds of approximately $940,000. We used $275,000 of the net proceeds to settle pending litigation." [Ron's lawsuit again?] "The second was a $900,000 private placement completed in June 1999, from which we received net proceeds of approximately $780,000. Although we believe that the net proceeds from this offering will be sufficient to satisfy our working capital requirements for the next twelve months, we may need additional funding during the next twelve months. We cannot assure you that additional funding will be available when we require it. If we are unable to obtain any required funding, our business will be adversely affected. Furthermore, if financing is available, the terms of the financing may result in significant dilution to our stockholders.
We may not be able to market our technology for business and other commercial applications and this would adversely affect our profitability. We intend to market our technology for business, educational, entertainment, leisure-time and other commercial applications, and we believe that in order for us to operate profitably, we will need to be successful in licensing our technology for these purposes. If we are unable develop a successful licensing program, our business will be materially and adversely affected.
We do not have a sufficiently large user base to attract advertisers. More than 800,000 persons have downloaded our browser and visited our three-dimensional environment. We have approximately 20,000 paying citizens of Active Worlds. We do not believe that this user base is sufficient to attract significant advertising revenue. We believe that, in order to attract advertisers to our website, we must make the website attractive to the categories of persons sought by the advertisers. In order to attract this type of usage, we must both market the website to potential users with the demographic makeup sought by our prospective advertisers, and we must offer our users content to induce them to become regular users of the website. We can not give any assurance that we will be successful in developing a user base acceptable to advertisers."
...
Page 13: "We may be unable to respond to the rapid technological change in our industry. The computer and Internet industries are characterized by rapidly changing technologies, frequent new product and service introductions and evolving industry standards. The recent growth of the Internet and intense competition in our industry make these market characteristics more pronounced. Our future success will depend on our ability to adapt to rapidly changing technologies by continually improving the performance features and reliability of our services. We may experience difficulties that could delay or prevent the successful development, introduction or marketing of new products and services. In addition, any enhancements must meet the requirements of our current and prospective users and must achieve significant market acceptance. We could also incur substantial costs if we need to modify our service or infrastructures to adapt to these changes. The failure to offer the most current technologies could have a material adverse effect upon our business. Furthermore, if three-dimensional Internet standards evolve in a manner which is incompatible with ou[r] technology, we may not be able to market our technology."
This has already been happening for as long as I've been in AW (since summer '97). 3D technology is far surpassed what RenderWare (AW's 3D engine) can do, and I don't think RenderWare 3 will improve AW much either (which is why I didn't bother renewing my citizenship this year), especially since it's not even immediately backward-compatible with older RW versions! (Roland and HamFon are working to add support for AW-specific RW functions--see AW-RW updates--but it's taking development time away from improving and adding new things to AW).
Page 15: "We are controlled by our management. Mr. Richard F. Noll, our president and chief executive officer, and Mr. J.P. McCormick, our chairman of the board and chief financial officer, own approximately 68% of our outstanding common stock and have the power to elect all of our directors and approve any corporate
action."
This proves what I wrote in the 10/1 update: (page 30) "We operate one uniserver, which currently has a base of over 800,000 users. This Uniserver receives more than 1,000,000 hits per day, with each hit representing an incidence of access to one of our 10 company created worlds such as downloading of building objects."
11/9: Newsgroups still down; I've taken down my RWX site in protest. City4All (another AW universe) has an AWCommunity newsgroup.
11/11: Yet another bad move by AWCI: the newsgroups now require a citizenship to post. So much for community. I guess AWCI feels they need to alienate tourists and old users even more with their Microsoft-like governmental "Big Brother" practices. This sure isn't making me feel like renewing my citizenship... Besides, AWCI hardly ever posted in their newsgroups anyway, so City4All's free newsgroups are sufficient for me. I think I will keep my RWX site down permanently, and perhaps even take down my AW pages as well (except for the history, improvements, and introduction).
11/12: I suggest a complete, total boycott of all things AW. Don't go to any of AWCI's "special events" (games, contests, Cy Awards, holiday-related things--ANYTHING!). Don't renew your citizenship. Don't encourage tourists to register. Don't build. Don't chat. Don't even go into AW at all! Don't let AWCI push you around. Supposedly newsgroup posts about AWCI's SEC filing are already getting deleted so it seems AWCI is back to their tricks (again). Screw that bullshit. Make AWCI's life as hard as possible. Hopefully they'll wake up and get a conscious some day and learn to treat their customers (and potential customers) with more respect.
11/21: Welp, now my AW site has been removed from the AW webring. From Lucrustia (AWCI's tyrannical dictatorette): "We reserve the right to suspend any site that attacks AWCOM, its staff, or it's product from the web ring." Funny how Shamus (who ran the ring before the dictatorette) never said anything about my site or removed it...guess he was more accepting of the truth, eh? The truth hurts, AWCI; you must be hurting bad! Good. Maybe you'll wake up and start doing things differently before AW completely goes down the toilet, eh? Duh. Idiots...
12/3: Seems 3D Anarchy has been aquired by Adobe. Hopefully they'll actually do something with it and perhaps even make it a competitive threat to AW...
12/29: ...especially since nothing seems to be happening with GEL.
1/20: A new SEC Edgar report on AWLD which was supposedly filed 11/5/99 (the first report was supposedly filed 8/13/99) but I learned about the "new" one today from mgib in City4All's AW community newsgroup. It contains (as expected) more bad news for AWCI with greater revenue loss, decreased galaxy/universe server sales, but a slight increase in citizenship purchses. Remember, AW's main revenue comes from citizenships so by not renewing yours (or not becoming a citizen in the first place), this will hurt AWCI even more--hopefully enough to the point they start listening to the users and stop acting tyrannical. One would think with a company in such bad shape as AWCI seems to be in they would at least have the decency to act with respect towards the people supporting them (the users, in case Rick and JP forgot). Duh.
3/30: I'm still amazed at how much AWCI still exaggerates its user base. From the latest press release (new): "Activeworlds.com, Inc. currently has a worldwide user base of over 1,000,000 users on the Universe server it operates..."
What a crock of shit, considering the citizen count is at 315825 as of 3/29 (courtesy Mauz). So where are the other 700,000+ users coming from, besides AWCI's disillusioned puny mind? Give me a break...
I really feel sorry for all these supposed European, Australian, and Asian companies getting baited and hooked by AWCI's pathetic-excuse-for-a-company fishing line. These companies must not be very adept or they would have researched AWCI's history better to learn just how they manage their product and users. Sad...
From Mauz: "The latest citizen number is 315854, but most of those 300,000 were purged into "Not a Citizens" in 1997 when the registration fee was introduced. So now there are 28,500 active accounts in the citizen database. However, there is no way to tell, with an ordinary user's privileges, how many of those have expired when somebody hasn't renewed their account. With the current rate of 24 new citizen numbers per day, in the average, there should be about 9000 new citizens this year."
From Mgib: "And to find how many *more* citizens you have, you have to substract to the "new" citizens those who quit. And as you said, no way to know. Beside the fact why should we believe this "24 new per day" coming from people showing day after day they lie? The reality is AW is mostly stagnant while people connecting to the net at the world-wide level is increasing exponentially, and so do most of the good services and products. The only thing I believe in, is official [SEC] reports where they can't lie. And the last one shows the financial situation in 99 has drastically deteriorated comparing to 98 (already bad). Nothing surprising."
5/12: AW3 is in beta (has been for a few weeks now) and I must say my faith in AW as a technology is improving even if my likeness for AWCI as a company and management is the same. AWCI's stock has been going through a few transitions in the past couple months or so: from a 3-for-1 reverse stock split (that's bad) to at least 3 symbol name changes and from the OTC BB to small cap NASDAQ. Yet it's still not trading more than what it has been for the past 6 months or so. I managed to snag AWLD's stock price history ( , ) from a couple sites before AWCI could pull another fast one and make themselves look new again, so don't be fooled by their petty tricks. Prediction time: AWLD will probably go up after AWCI makes a press release about AW3 (especially since it is markedly better than AW 2.2) so I would recommend buying some now.
5/24: I found out about this a week or so ago, but, amazingly, it would seem AWCI is actually making a profit! At least according to their latest press release (convienently missing from new 1999 press release archives...) anyway. And AWCI has expanded its job opening page (new) so let's hope this momentum continues and AW continues to develop!
6/6: Some interesting comments from mgib posted in response to my somewhat optimistic post on Raging Bull. Oh well...
6/22: SEC EDGAR archives for Active Worlds
12/8: It seems JP (Cryonics) is also as immature as his butt buddy Rick (E N Z O). JP decided to screw with my name ever since I went into JunoDome and started talking about AW truthfully. I first noticed it when the JukeBot referred to me as "Iam Eep theMoron" but I didn't think much of it because to me my name still showed "Eep" in my contacts list and in the chat text window when I wrote something. A little while later a tourist named "Jed" asked me why my name was that. I told him it wasn't but he wasn't convinced. To me my name was still "Eep", but when I went back to the bot it still said "Iam Eep theMoron" so I left and reentered JunoDome, went back to the JukeBot, and it correctly said my name as "Eep".
Now, I know it was JP because after I added "JP" to my contact list, sure enough, there he was listed in JunoDome along with Lucrezia, who I telegrammed first because I thought she was screwing with my name. After getting no response from her, I telegrammed JP and he replied with something to the effect of "Do I know you?" and then had my name, "Iam Eep theMoron" in quotes claiming he didn't know anyone by that name. What a twit. He continued to act stupid like this as I told him to quit screwing with my name, calling him immature, etc. When I would change my name back to "Eep", he would change it to "Panzy Eep" soon after. Then when I telegrammed him again, he replied with:
Telegram from JP, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:23 PM:
hmmm... why are you now telegraming me with "Panzy Eep" I am sorry I do not know you and I am not gay, quit bothering me
Then after I replied and changed my name to various names against JP like "JP Is A Fag", "JP Is A Twit", to which he had a bot/macro that would immediately change my name back to "Panzy Eep" (seems he's done this to other people before). Then he replied with:
Telegram from JP, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:25 PM:
please leave me alone or I will have to report you
As if. Report to who, himself, or perhaps his butt buddy Rick? What an idiot! Then he has the odacity to reply with this after I told him I knew it was him screwing with my name:
Telegram from JP, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:27 PM:
I think you have the wrong person
But I didn't. I had him figured out from a mile away!
JP then changed logged off and I tried to change my name back to "Eep" but AW said it was already in use so I added it to my contacts list and, sure enough, there was JP as me. I telegrammed him calling him a twit and he replied:
Telegram from Eep, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:41 PM:
I agree with you he is a twit
and
Telegram from Eep, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:41 PM:
I think we should rip his eyes out
and
Telegram from Eep, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:42 PM:
sucks to be you
Then he claimed he was reading my telegrams:
Telegram from Eep, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:43 PM:
man the telegrams are just pouring in. You have pissed of a lot of people
Telegram from Eep, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:44 PM:
be gone, or I shall drop a house on you!
Telegram from Eep, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:45 PM:
I cannot believe all these telegrams. People really hate you. What have you done to them?
But what the twit didn't realize was that unless people added me to their contacts list in the few minutes before he telegrammed me, he could not have been getting my telegrams and reading them. The stupid sap doesn't even understand how his own program works...pathetic.
Then he ("Eep") logged off and "JP" back on which confirmed it really was JP. I telegrammed him after and he stupidly continues his charade:
Telegram from JP, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:53 PM:
do I know you?
Telegram from JP, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:54 PM:
are you that eep guy that was bothering me earlier?
Telegram from JP, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 6:56 PM:
I am sorry, I must have had the wrong person, I just received a telegram from Eep. Who are you?
Which he could not have since he just logged off as "Eep". Duh.
Then I told him to free up my account and he replied:
Telegram from JP, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 7:01 PM:
Well it was nice meeting you, I am going to go play Sacrifice
After talking to some people about what just happened, a little while later I tried to change my name back to "Eep", despite it still showing up in my contact list as already in use. However, it wasn't and I was able to change it back, oddly.
Another odd thing, Rick comes on and telegrams me out of the blue:
Telegram from E N Z O, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 7:41 PM:
hey
To which I responded with "yes?" and he replied:
Telegram from E N Z O, sent Fri Dec 8, 2000 7:42 PM:
which eep are you?
Uh...I replied "which would you like me to be?" and he never replied back. What a twit. I guess JP ran to him to show how much of an idiot he can be like his immature partner.
Now, you may find this funny, but I don't. If you recall, Rick did something similar to me about 6 months to the day ago. These immature twits do not deserve to be running AW. They constantly abuse their "power" and this stunt is just the latest example. Recall when JP "flooded" AlphaWorld GZ after Protagonist left. This is yet another reason not to support AWCI or their shitty program. I have not ever paid for a citizenship, world, or anything to AWCI and I never will until it either comes under new management or Rick and JP evolve and mature into adults and start treating their users/customers with respect.
12/26: Xavarella's Active Worlds Chat forum had an interesting post the other day. Since the forum doesn't retain messages very long, I'm providing a direct link to the Rob Britvich article ("The Moyes Report - Searching for Ron Britvich"). If you're skeptical about the validity of it, as I and others are, perhaps this post might make it easier to accept.
Also, Syzygy's post (also posted to the community newsgroup) about accurate unique citizen counts has me skeptical about the validity of such a list considering it's criteria is:
1) Expire date is not "never"
2) Expire date is later than "now" (not expired yet)
3) Owner e-mail does not contain "activeworlds.com"
However, it is another look into the true validity of these counts which shouldn't be ignored by people seeking the truth. The results are "11470 of 33329 users are paying for citizenships" and "964 of 2313 worlds are paid for by users".
2/8: Facter, a longtime AW user and recent AWCI employee, has decided to take it upon himself to attempt to ban me from posting to the AW newsgroups. Why? For my opinion of him in how he dealt with my response to him in a recent newsgroup problem in which I could not post. I emailed AW support asking why I couldn't post to the newsgroups ("community" anyway since it's the only one I tried) yet I could read them and hadn't changed my name/password. I received an email back from Facter (who I wasn't even aware of being an AWCI employee, let alone in support, and it turns out he's now in charge of the AW website and newsgroups too--quite the burden for such a new employee, eh?) saying he was working on the newsgroups and that he took them down (vague, eh?) and that I should check the system status page (which was even more vague and offered no explanation whatsoever). I'm not sure if I replied asking for a reason as to why he took the newsgroups down, but I do remember him telling me something to the effect of "not everything is a conspiracy against you", which I thought was odd.
Anyway, I was a bit pissed off because of his response so I decided to post in "community" about this latest act of AWCI incompetence (it takes so little of it to get me wriled up about it lately) and it caused quite a stir from him. He wrote how I was being all mean (as usual) to him and that he wouldn't stand for it--blah blah blah. Read the newsgroup if you want the full thread. To make a long story short, he eventually gave an ultimatum to the newsgroup of him or me, which I thought was very childish. Shortly thereafter he posts this "user ban vote" where everyone gets to vote if I am banned from the newsgroups. Wee...so some people started voting and others abstained, protesting the rights of it all--including me. As more and more people started posting (especially some who don't usually), it became clear that Facter made a bad decision (duh). Some people even started votes of their own if AWCI should remain in charge of AW and if the user ban vote should be stopped.
I didn't think even Rick or JP would have agreed to this, but Facter claims they did. This is yet another example of their incompetence and immaturity. They (mostly by pressure from Lucrustia, I'm sure) made the newsgroups moderated a while back, and all it ended up doing was make the newsgroups go silent. It seems either they "forgot" (conviently, no doubt) about that or just don't care and see this as another opportunity to take away another "privilege" of mine in being an AW citizen (the last most recent being the AW 3.1 closed beta test--I used to be a beta tester but now that Roland doesn't like how I report bugs I'm no longer on it even though I've found bugs months and sometimes years before anyone else, including Roland, have).
Censorship is not the way to go, but AWCI still doesn't get it. Perhaps when their user base has dwindled down to the amount their stock price has (~$1 currently) they will realize how dumb they've been all these years in trying to silence the users who simply point out the error in their ways. They continue to fail to understand the consumer is what keeps them in business and going and that without consumers business would be nothing.
At any rate, in the end Facter called off the vote from pressure from many people. He now thinks he can moderate the newsgroups according to the so-called newsgroup "charter". I don't think it will work...
3/27: Remember 3D Anarchy? Yea, I barely do too. Anyway, Adobe (which acquired them a while ago) has finally released Atmosphere. Click here to download the builder until Adobe can get some competent webmasters... Hopefully with a big-name company like Adobe behind Atmosphere AW will actually get some worthy competition...but we'll see...
7/10: AWCI (Activeworlds.com, Inc.) has changed its name to "Activeworlds Corp." (AWC).
For some reason, AWC's newsgroups don't allow "SEC" and "Securities Exchange Commission" ("Federal Securities Commission" and "Securities" too thanks to Agent1) in subject lines (Netscape Messenger gives me a "Feedrule: Last matched rule was a reject." error), which means they must still be paranoid about people talking about their fraudulent claims (see above, specifically the user count issue).
Oh and Neil Colvin (currently developing Modeler) threatened a lawsuit after I posted a non-expiring cracked version of Modeler on my RW site. However, an email to the original Modeler developer, Tony Polichroniadis, asking if Neil even owned Modeler, and Tony confirming he did not, shut Neil up real quick. Neil even managed to actually update Modeler after all this time (1.5+ years)! That's all I want: development or a final non-expiring version; otherwise one has to take matters into one's own hands...
9/28: Well, I've been banned from AW's newsgroups for a few days now with no clear reason. Calpantera (Bill) says "Tom" (whoever he is) did it but I never got any word from him why. I noticed I couldn't post to the newsgroups after getting the "Feedrule: Last matched rule was a reject." error (yet again) when trying to post about Vanguard (AWC's "parent company"). I figured it was AWC's paranoid filter again but then I couldn't post anything at all. Typical...
AW 3.2 is proving to be more hassle than it's worth. With all of its lighting problems (now Roland claims Direct3D mode can't even reliably do light radii) it's becoming clear RenderWare (or at least Roland's understanding and implementation of it) is getting worse and worse. If AWC expects AW to ever be taken seriously as a 3D development platform (i.e. on par with even 3D game level editors of 5 years ago) it needs to focus more on AW's development and design!
AWC's latest doomed-to-fail marketing attempt, "3D homepages" (of which they are not "homepages"--"webpages" is the correct term, by the way), is their latest gimmick to sucker people into buying worlds. Don't be fooled...they're so small (10 coords square) that they're not even worth it; plus they only last 30 days--gee, just like trial worlds...only smaller.
AWLD stock price (currently $.52) continues to reflect AWC's incompetence. Lucky it's a small-cap stock or it would have been delisted from NASDAQ for being under $1 for over a month long ago!
10/1: AWC's citizen feature voting is finally available but the universe stats page is gone.
10/3: Some general stats can be found here. Check out the "directors" to see who the braindead idiots in charge of AW are...
11/5: Banned yet again from the newsgroups...a few days ago I tried posting about Vanguard Enterprises (the braindead company that bought then-COF, now-AWC) and got that "feedrule" error again. Then I tried posting a "test" message and got the same error, so it looks like AWC has an automatic ban on anyone (or at least me anyway) posting about Vanguard. Pathetic...
11/7: Yet another lie from JP in a TWST interview where he claims "We have a community of about 1.5 million users" which couldn't be further from the truth. While there may have been 1.5 million downloads of AW, there have only ever been around 343,000 users (and of that perhaps only around 40,000 are currently registered).
12/20: Oh, in case you're wondering why I haven't been in AW or posting in the newsgroups lately, it's because I'm tired of dealing with AW's bugs: AW 3.2 lights are inconsistent, primitive light shading is screwy, and I just discovered today that hemisphere primitive complexity has been screwed up too--why should I put so much time and effort into creating something when it will just get fucked up in the next release? I'm no longer a beta tester so my opinion doesn't mean shit to AWC (it hasn't for a while now but that's their loss) even though I found more bugs than all the other beta testers (if they can be called that) combined and even found many bugs Roland and HamFon didn't have a clue existed (or knew how to fix--and many are still present). It appears I'm moving on since AWC is basically kicking me out with their buggy piece of shit software and shitty public relations. I'm also still banned from the newsgroups (but apparently not for the Vanguard thing but "swearing" and "being mean to people" or something according to Flagg anyway). Boo fucking hoo. Get some balls, AWC, and stop restricting free speech. Fuck you...and your little dog of a program AW too.
7/9: Well, after about 6 months of staying away, with Roland and HamFon's departure, and the AW 3.3's release, I've decided to give AW another chance to see if it actually goes anywhere now that Grimm and Shamus are developing it and I'm once again on the beta program. Unfortunately, AWC seems to be in the process of selling out to X3D, even going so far as to remove 2 opposing independent directors in a vote called for by X3D (which now owns 10% of AWLD stock) after Rick and JP sold ~1.2 million shares to them for a mere ~$500,000 (more information). This may be a good thing if X3D doesn't just kill AW if (once?) it takes it over ("buys it out"). We'll see...the "vote" was supposed to be on 7/8 but no word yet as to the result...
7/25: To restate the obvious (in case no one knows yet), and for historical purposes, Rick and JP have bought AW from AWC and are now AWI (Activeworlds, Inc.), a private company once again (like Circle of Fire was). Rick and JP's attempt at real-world buisness has clearly failed--no surprise there. Perhaps now they'll get a clue and realize they need to learn a thing or two about their users/customers and start interacting with them more. Public relations, Rick and JP...learn it.
7/17: After about 2 years to the day (7/6), I decided to give AW another chance. Out of boredom, I asked Rick if I could get access to the newsgroups again and, after a few days of failed attempts, I was finally unbanned. I'm going to take a low-key approach to things and, most importantly, not get so worked up over AW (hopes/dreams and annoyances/frustrations at its failures/shortcomings). I'm still pissed at the lack of object password protection (which is the main reason I stopped going to AW pretty much altogether--except for, perhaps, short bi-weekly/-monthly visits to see who was on) but what can I do? The creativistic urge/impulse inside me needs to breathe...
7/18: OTC Bulletin Board AWLD profile gives a nice synposis of AW's failed attempt to go public.
2/22: No, I'm not dead...but AW is, essentially. Since 12/05 I've been in Second Life (SL) and rarely (perhaps once a month) login to AW. I hear AW4 will feature particle effects, but I seriously doubt they'll even come close to what SL's particle effects (wish I had a wiki for my RW site!) can do. AW has a lot of catching up to do before it can compete with SL. However, to give AW some credit, it's worlds are cheaper than SL's sims, its lighting is more advanced, and it allows vertex-polygon modelling (outside of the client though). However, SL is so much better than AW in many other respects these concerns are mostly minor.
3/17: I added AW's release notes to its Wiki (see Links). Thanks to packrat Mauz for keeping them (and NetGuy who compiled most of the build notes)!
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