Written by Awportals.com

The cracked software consisted of the standard Active Worlds Universe software release that would be supplied to universe owners on purchase, except with the 'universe.exe' executable replaced with one that had been disassembled to remove license checks and any communications with AWI servers. This meant that despite placing code into the software to prevent illegitimate servers from being run (even with the ability for AWI to shut down universes remotely), the cracked software could be run without any reprocussions.

The software was traded between users in Active Worlds for some time before it fell into the posession of users such as 'THE JOKER SS' aka Stefan, 'GAMER' aka Robbie Lewis and 'GAVROCHE' aka Luke Twydell. For some time random illegitimate universes were ran and experimented with but ultimately were shut down due to paranoia and/or lack of hosting.

In late 2003 users 'GAMER' and 'GAVROCHE' decided to run an illegitimate universe with the intent of building an elitist community of Active Worlds users in an enviroment with no rules and free worlds for each user.

The first version of X-Worlds was created using the 3.2 verion of the Universe software and ran for approximately two weeks. Users were invited to the universe personally and there was no publicly accessable installer for download. There was only one world (XWGate) and whilst other features were promised, this version of the universe was soon abandoned as AWI officials became aware of its existance.