SW City
History
The First Virtual Metropolis
Before Minecraft and Roblox, there was SW City, built in Activeworlds by a bunch of teenagers. Activeworlds, a massively multiplayer game-like software, had some of the 3D game elements you’d expect—player avatars, movement, and a few charmingly basic animations and interactivity.
But where AW was different from games of that era was that you could build anything you wanted out of a set of pre-defined objects. This untapped canvas of creativity unleashed SW City and its unique brand of quirky vibes upon the world.
The timeline on this page charts the real world journey, from SW City’s humble beginnings to what it eventually became. To see the complete Real or Lore histories, click on the buttons below.
SW Comit forms the clan that would become known as the Scarab Warriors on the online game matchmaking service MPlayer. The SWs play the PC shooter game SCARAB (1997). Up to 50 other players join the clan over its lifetime.
SW City is founded by SW Comit, Sojiurn, SW Nitro Excell, SW Magnum, and SW Kappa in Activeworlds.
Syntax builds and launches SWCity.Net.
Syntax proposes to turn SW City into an island. Construction begins and two weeks later on this day, the Irenic Ocean is completed.
SW Chris builds the first Nimbusian NPC in Nimbus Land, named Meanmallow. He’s still relaxing in the cloud spa to this very day. Today, Nimbusians are one of the most common types of characters that players will encounter.
During the third birthday bash, SW Comit resigns and promotes Syntax to mayor.
SW City wins its first “best city” award under the category of Community Initiative for a Community or Town. The CY Awards were a yearly event that recognized outstanding contributors to the Activeworlds CommunitY (not a typo).
The first interactive NPCs developed with PHP are built in SW City at East Ending. It’s a simple mission between two Nougats where one gives you a package to deliver to the other.
SW City’s own wiki is launched which contains information on geography, wildlife, corporations and much more around SW City.
The Town Square Park Clock Tower is built just north of SW Ground Zero (where new users spawn in) and sparks a large-scale overhaul of many parts of Town Square Park.
SW City Interactive v1.1 is released to the public. It contains features such as member profiles, memberlist, navigation bar, and quest progress tracking.
The total area of SW City reaches 296.57 square kilometers (114.5 square miles) in the latest map update, making SW City one of the largest hand-crafted video game worlds ever made.
About 90 square kilometers of that area are well developed, making it larger than Red Dead Redemption 2 (2018), Horizon Forbidden West (2022), and The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).
SW City Celebrates its 20th birthday with a small gathering and tour around the city hosted by Syntax and SW Chris. The Alphaworld landing point is changed to SW City for the duration of the weekend.
SW City officially opens to the public in both Virtual Paradise and DeltaWorlds alongside the launch of a modernized website redesign.
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