Dreamscape (chat)
From Free net encyclopedia
Dreamscape is a 2-D+, graphical chat environment owned by Stratagem. Once you become a member and download the software, you enter the world and choose an avatar, which is a physical representation of yourself. Your avatar can talk (text-chat), move, gesture, use facial expressions, and is customizable in a virtually unlimited number of ways. Avatars earn money called tokens; own possessions; rent apartments called turfs; and, most importantly, make friends. The environment itself is composed of hundreds of "locales", or screens, in which you move about. It is a virtual city called Phantasus on a virtual island called Kymer that is rich in history and mysticism.
The Dreamscape was originally created in 1994 by a team of world designers for Fujitsu America, headed by the virtual communities gurus Randy Farmer and Chip Morningstar, who created the first graphical virtual world for George Lucas in 1987 called Club Caribe. The world's history and mythology were created by dark fantasy writer Maria Alexander (then Maria Douglas), and the world was run by "Oracles" -- that is, keepers of the world under the guidance of Morpheus, the God of Dreams. The first two Oracles were named Vaserius and Terisias. Contrary to some reports, the world history was developed without knowledge of Neil Gaiman and his Sandman comic series, but rather in response to business requirements from Fujitsu management for a world based on a well-known Western mythology with some variation. (For example, "Kymer" was a corruption of the word "chimera.") Today, little remains of the vast mythology that once informed world development.
The world celebrates its 10th anniversary on November 15, 2005.