Blog commenter Nicolas Barrial reminded me of yet another older virtual world that is still hanging on, and that is There.com. It’s yet another contender for the most unfortunate virtual world name—ever try to Google “There”?
Their website has an up-to-date blog with reports on in-world events, so there still must enough people who are playing There to keep it a viable virtual world. I used to have an account, but I’ve forgotten the details; I haven’t been to There in a very, very long time! Their avatars give me serious flashbacks to Second Life circa 2003 (see this picture from 2017 from their blog):
According to its Wikipedia page, There.com is unique among virtual worlds in that it actually shut down operations in 2010, and then reopened in 2012 with a monthly subscription fee (US$10 per month per avatar). I can’t think of another virtual world that was able to resume operations after closing their doors. There is definitely a survivor!
Started at roughly the same time as Second Life, There.com never reached the levels of popularity that SL did. Another virtual world for the curious to explore…
