AviWorlds is back, and the company has its original domain back as well.
This is the ninth time that the grid has come back up after it had closed.
“Since I’m back in New York now I’ve had time to start a smaller project,” grid owner Alexandro Pomposelli — also known as Alex Ferraris in-world — told Hypergrid Business.
Pomposelli had lost the aviworlds.com domain a year and a half ago after an ownership dispute with former business partner Mike Hart. Instead, he was forced to use aviworlds.us.
The loginURI of the revived grid is now login.aviworlds.com:8002, as is its hypergrid address. However, a new web page isn’t up yet. Instead, the grid’s info settings indicate that the grid’s home page is a Facebook page.
There is also no way to Web-based way to create new accounts on the grid.
“I am not offering a registration page at this time because the current one have security issues,” said Pomposelli. “Anyone interested can send me an email to arpholdings@gmail.com along with an avatar name and password and a valid email account.”
No joy for previous residents
There’s no sign that residents of the previous incarnation of the grid will be able to get to any of their content, such as their avatar inventories, builds, or money they had invested in in-world currency.
“It is starting from scratch,” Pomposelli said.
Previously, he had pointed out that his terms of service did not require him to provide backups or refunds to his users.
The grid currently has just a few regions up, he said, but that includes a 100-region flying zone.
New business model
There is currently no commercial activity on the grid, he said.
“It is strictly leisure and free,” he said.
“Most of all the region content are copy so the entire grid is really a freebie zone that people can visit and collect all content if they need,” he said.
In the future, the grid will also offer free land in its mainland areas.
“That will come later because I have to network more servers,” he said.
Disclaimer
AviWorlds has previously shut down eight times, with no warning, with both financial and content losses for residents. I personally recommend that users keep their primary avatars on other grids. Kitely, for example, has not had any unplanned outages since it launched in 2011.
In addition, do not do any building on AviWorlds unless you can be assured of having a backup. One option is to build elsewhere — a sandbox region on Kitely or another grid or a free home installation of OpenSim — then upload the finished works to the AviWorlds grid.
Finally, do not invest more money than you can afford to lose.
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