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View Full Version : Anybody remember The Palace?


boatofcar
03-10-2007, 06:51 PM
Over in the Modern Gaming PS3 Home discussion, it came up that the idea of virtual worlds was nothing new.

My favorite "old" virtual world was called The Palace. I started hanging out there in 1996-97. Basically it was this big mansion-typle place, with a bunch of different rooms. After you logged in, you became a smile face avatar, which you could dress up with all kinds of different headgear, facial hair, etc. When you talked to people, it was in a text bubble like a comic book. When you double clicked on somebody, you could talk to them in private, and your words became italicized.

I don't know what happened to the original Palace. I think they sold the company and the people who bought it thought it would be better to have tons of little palaces than one big one, or something. Anyway, in 2001 or so I went back and it was all different, and not nearly as cool. All the avatars were these sk8er-type things and everybody's name was in l33t and it just sucked.


Anyway, anybody else remember the "good" Palace?
exit
03-10-2007, 07:03 PM
Aha holy shit, I used to be on that all the time, in fact I still have it installed on my computer. I remember when the main servers were shut down, which was something very sudden and everyone was forced to use private servers. Long story short, everyone ended up just going to the Wonderland server and then we all started to find better things to do.

Those were the days.
boatofcar
03-10-2007, 07:10 PM
Update! I just redownloaded The Palace! I was able to log on to the original Palace mansion, but there were all of 27 people on there...its cool to go through all the old rooms though, brings back memories :)
exit
03-10-2007, 08:37 PM
Looks like we may be the only ones that used the damn thing, DP PALACE CLAN FTW!

edit: Just ran the program again out of curiosity and it looks like someone out there is (or was) trying to resurrect it, since the website is back up and all.
CartCollector
03-10-2007, 11:12 PM
Actually, one of the first MMOs was Habitat (http://www.mobygames.com/game/habitat) for the Commodore 64 all the way back in 1987. Social aspects were important to the game, as there was a feature where you could message someone through "ESP". Anyone remember playing this game?
roushimsx
03-10-2007, 11:38 PM
Jesus, I remember that. I'd been using IRC for a while by that point, so it never quite felt "right", but I still recall sitting around in it with some friends and shooting the shit.

Didn't you have to pay to use an avatar other than a smiley face?
exit
03-11-2007, 12:35 AM
Nah, you could either edit the avatars available with the shitty editor they had, or create your own with a paint program. I mainly used Paint Shop Pro and had tons of photos of whatever I was into at the time. I also had a pretty mean ninja smiley that I randomly made one night.

Man this really is bringing back a lot of memories, memories of online drama caused by live journal. You'd swear you were watching an on-line soap opera.
boatofcar
03-11-2007, 07:48 AM
Nah, you could either edit the avatars available with the shitty editor they had, or create your own with a paint program. I mainly used Paint Shop Pro and had tons of photos of whatever I was into at the time. I also had a pretty mean ninja smiley that I randomly made one night.

Man this really is bringing back a lot of memories, memories of online drama caused by live journal. You'd swear you were watching an on-line soap opera.

Actually, I remember having to pay $20 to register to use something other than a smiley face too...
exit
03-11-2007, 01:30 PM
Well when it first started and up to right before I used it, you would have to pay for a registration code in order to use avatars.