Hyper Anthony Asks: Why are Townbuilders a Dying Breed?
Written by Awportals.com
Hyper Anthony asks 'Why are Townbuilders a Dying Breed?' and discusses the problems of public building.

As far as I can remember in my experience in Active Worlds, I've always been intruiged by townbuilding projects in public building worlds. The sheer talent that can be found by people being constantly challenged to overcome restricted access to objects, land, world rights, and numerous other disabilities through townbuilding has blown my mind ever since the first time I came upon one. That combined with the task of organizing and laying the foundation for an area of builders and even a community, if the town develops that far, gives me a bit of respect for other townbuilders. Not everybody can pull something like that together; its quite a bit of work. But at the same time its also very fun.

My AW experience is so intertwined with townbuilding that I identify myself as a townbuilder. And others like me seem scarce, and have been for many years now. This can partially be attributed to the massive dropoff in 02, but I think there's more going on than that. During my year as a caretaker in AWTeen I witnessed all kinds of builders; infact, I saw quite a few lil' towns develop. As with many other things in the world that interested me I kept a watchful eye on them as they've come and gone, and not one of them lasted for over a month.

To my knowledge there are only a light handful of towns left active in the universe. SW City is the most prominent example, and in my opinion has been for several years now. Other towns that come to mind are Horizon City now that sirqus has returned, Oakdale and Moonlight Heights in AWTeen, and I've not heard anything from Offworld in a while but I'll assume they're still going because I see their folks online a lot.

Now that doesn't make any sense to me and not only because I enjoy townbuilding, but rather because of the sheer amount of people I see that also enjoy it. For example, I just released a neighborhood in SW City this week that I've been building over the past few months. I meticuously planned a grand opening event that'd accomodate people that'd want to come to chat, play games, or build. It was a lot of planning and hard work, but the end result was an extremely successful event and a really fun day. Adding to that, almost all of the building lots in my neighborhood have been taken and are being built on. Some people like the area so much that they've completed a home on more than one!

I understand that the level of detail I put into building and events is sometimes a tad over the top, but you don't need to be near that serious with it to have fun making towns. Even just a gathering with friends and working together to build an area can be an absolute blast.

For something so fun and so accessable (considering its free to do) I don't understand why its so unpopular. It leaves me with a lot of questions. Why was my event so successful if building in towns isn't? Do people who build in public building worlds prefer building alone or in communities, and if so, why?

Source: Hyper Anthony, (official forums)

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