A while ago, I was searching through chat for this site, it is not really an email site, more of a chat arena (my personal favorite), and I never expected to find it here. I was searching here to find a email system for my site like BigMailBox, how surprised I was when I scrolled down, and there it was!

Anyway, I'm getting off track. If you read the Epinions statement above where you can view the reviews written, it says that you get your own 3D personal chat. Lemme just make sure you are clear on some stuff:

Cybertown has Chat Arenas, where there are always people to chat with (ALWAYS). The Cybertown Plaza is the main chat arena, since that is the chat you go to when you enter the site. There are usually 50 or more people here to chat with, and boring, annoying chats like:

Sexy_boy: Any girls have pics?
Sexy_boy: Any girls have pics?
Sexy_boy: Any girls have pics?
*User Sexy_boy has been kicked by MegaBot
Jamie544: Anyone want to chat? P2P me...

The chat here is not like normal chat arenas, and it is not monitored by Computer Bots (although it does have one bot that responds to it's own name, Mina, who can provide special messages to you for help if you mention her name in one of your messages, this bot cannot kick anyone and is only made to respond to messages, not to take action). Don't worry parents, in my opinion this is one of the safest chat sites on the net. There is a job called security (more on jobs later), and all those people that have that job are required to assist people who are having trouble with someone, or other problems that include vulgar language, racism, you know, the bad stuff. They can personally take action like kick users from chats and delete accounts that cause too much trouble. They do give warnings though, so a slip of the enter key won't get you into too much trouble if you, ahem, entered in some not-so-appropriate language. Another good chat place to go if Le Cafe (it's in Cybertown). There are usually 5 or more people hanging out here.

Oh boy, there's a lot to go through before you'd seriously understand Cybertown, I suggest you go, sign up, check it out, and see if you still want to check out stuff here, because it's neat to find out all the surprises on your own, but if you want to know a little bit about it before you enter (it can be a little overwhelming at the beginning), then keep reading, cause it can take weeks, even months, to fully understand how to use this site. Ok, now for the meat of this site:

Jobs
In Cybertown, there is a currency that goes around, called CC (City Cash, I think, there are way too many combinations). You can use this money to buy a home, and all kinds of furniture to buy for your home, or resell elsewhere. Jobs vary in all sorts of different areas, there were over 101 jobs when I counted a couple months ago, and I've even seen some new ones added in by looking at people's Job Titles. It goes like this:

There is a heirarchy in Cybertown, Founder's and the Mayor being at the top, Club Assistants being at the bottom. The people above you are the ones that can hire you, and you can hire anyone below you.

Now there is not just one heirarchy, as in there are 101 steps to get to the top, there are many different types of jobs. Let's start with Club Assistants and Block Deputies, the two most common jobs in Cybertown.

Club Assistants (CAs):
They are hired by Club Owners. Their job is to help Club Owners through parties at the club, decorate it with 3D VRML objects, and publicize the club throughout Cybertown. They have limited rights to what they can do in the club, but more than what visitors or members of the club have. No one hires Club Owners, they can get a club when they reach 500 experience (more on experience later)

Block Deputies (BDs):
Oh boy, how am I gonna explain this? Ok, I'll start with a tiny tiny bit of how the homes are laid out in Cybertown. The homes are in groups, called blocks. There are usually around 10 - 40 homes on each block, and they often exceed or don't quite reach those numbers. Some blocks have 52 houses, while others have 3. Block Deputy's jobs are to welcome new residents, delete old houses, check images to see if they are appropriate, check house bots (more on that later, I'm saying a lot of this aren't I? Cybertown is a big place), and socialize, making sure no one is unhappy or uncomfortable with Cybertown. They are hired by Block Leaders, and have lot's of rights to the block, the only right they do not have is to give those rights to others (Like hiring new Block Deputies). Block Deputies are hired by Block Leaders, who are hired by Neighborhood Deputies, from Neighborhood Leaders, from Colony Deputies, to Colony Leaders, to the Council or even the Mayor. That is the prime heirarchy in Cybertown, and it will be very important to know if you ever get into Cybertown. For this group of jobs, you will be required to live wherever you are working. Also some colonies and neighborhoods have special jobs, such as "Trainers". This is not an official job, but they will assign you a different job to earn more pay, but you don't have to do the same things for that job. These special jobs vary from place to place. Choose wisely where you want to work, because after you become a Block Leader, you pretty much have to work inside one colony for the rest of your Cybertown life to succeed and get better jobs such as Neighborhood Deputy and beyond. Good Luck!

Job Titles:
When you get a job (you can have many) you get paid, and earn experience, from your highest paying job. The higher the job, the more you get paid, there is a website the you can find at the Employment Office, which tells the pay rates for about 1/4 of the jobs in Cybertown. These are the jobs that you are most likely to get, so it is a good idea to read these. It is very very hard to get really high on the heirarchy, some people are really into it. You can also choose what job title you want. You go to "My Info", and next to job title, there is a list of all the jobs you hold eg. Club Assistant, Block Deputy, Club Owner, etc. You can choose which one you want (any of them, it does not alter your pay), and that is displayed in front of your name in 3D chat. You only get paid for your highest job, so many times people such as security will switch their job title to catch people that are out of control.

Experience
Whew, still with me? Thought not. If you are, we're not even close to done. Experience is one of the most important stats in Cybertown, and I think it is more important than CC (City Cash, or Cyber Credits, I have no idea). Experience is always displayed to the right of your nickname in 3D chat. You earn it by logging on every day, and participating in special events in Cybertown. You can increase your daily experience earnings, and CC earnings by getting a job, which increases your pay. Experience helps employers tell how long you have been in Cybertown, and you earn more rights the more experience you accumulate.

Homes and VRML
Homes in Cybertown are one of the main reasons I called it the Community King. First of all, let me tell you about how the homes are grouped, I started with that up above. Homes are grouped into blocks, these blocks are in neighborhoods, these neighborhoods are in colonies, these colonies are in Cybertown. They match their respective jobs.

In the homes, you get an inbox, a message board, a pet bot, and you can add in a collection of links and an image, oh and, hehe, you get your own Virtual Home. The inbox and message board are probably what Epinions mistook for free email. You have to be a member to write stuff on the inbox and message boards. This is not trying to force people to join to use these features, joining is essential to do pretty much, well, anything. You can't even chat without joining. Also there is no-where where you can send messages to all the inboxes of message boards (although there are buttons in the blocks to send messages to all of the residents living there, but no spam is included in these). They are 100% spam free, and if for some reason you do recieve spam, you can report it to security and they will get it cleared up. Pet-bots are chat characters that hang around your home. They can be programmed to respond to chat messages, and are very handy in talking to guests if you are not around. They are very neat to play around with. Your own collection of links and an image is pretty straightforward, you can list a couple of your favorite links, your website, and an image of you, or whatever you want, as long as it is within the rules of Cybertown.

Here we go, time for the meat of Cybertown:

VRML:
Virtual Reality Modeling Language, hold up, we will get to 3D homes in just a second. This requires a plugin, but you can get it at "http://www.blaxxun.com" for free. If it doesn't work the first time you use it, restart your computer (it says to do that, but since when do we listen?). With this you can use a tiny control panel with a window above it, and navigate through 3-Dimensional worlds. It is really a good plugin to have, there are other sites where you can use this plugin, and there are sites where you can download programs to make your own Virtual Worlds. I made a big circle with triangles for arms, shows what I can do (pretty much nothing), it takes time to learn. Pretty much every place in Cybertown has a 3D mode, which is the VRML mode to view it in. You can navigate through it, and experience the sounds in it too (stereo sound on headphones is great for this, since the sound is 3D as well, and if you get close to some things, it will make sounds that you can hear, depending on what side of you the object is, very neat).

Avatars:
What fun is it to chat with people, but not see them in the 3D world? No fun at all! That's what. You can make an avatar, or choose a pre-made avatar to use to represent your 3D self, when you move, it moves. There are also default avatars for those boring, or new people who haven't gotten one yet.

Back to Homes:
All the homes have a 3D mode, unless you chose not to buy the 3D portion of the house (But what fun is that, hmm?). They are fairly cheap, ranging from 160 CC - 2000 CC. I'll admit, I haven't cruised it in a while, so they may have added more on. In this 3D portion of the house you can put down furniture and items you buy at the mall (just a sec, I'm trying to get it all in). Your house is your territory, you can decide what items you put in

Cyber Cash and VRML objects
When you start out, you get 1000 CC to use. You earn 50 CC a day if you don't have a job, and more if you do. You can use this Cyber Cash to buy a house, or VRML objects to place in your house. You should start by buying VRML objects in the mall, if you go to the Flea Market, you will likely be majorly scammed, trust me, a good deal in the Flea Market (unless it is under 25 CC, which people sell stuff for if they want others to have it), usually means that they bought a bunch at the mall, and are trying to make a little dough here. The Flea Market is a fun place to go later on though (all these places are accessible via the jump gate, which is on the Nav Bar, which is on the left/right hand side of the screen, depending on where you are in Cybertown, the Mothership colony changed lot's of the format around). There are all kinds of VRML objects to buy, ranging from castles, to interactive boxes that blow up, to snakes that bite you if you get too close, to alien UFOs, to pets that walk, to all kinds of stuff. It's a chat freak's dream.

Voice Chat
This is a neat little thing that you can download for the 3D chats. It is a voice synthesizer, and when someone types something in, this pronounces it so you can hear it. It sounds like a normal synthesizer, but you can choose between an assortment of voices, ranging from Small Child to Aged Female. It's very neat, although for some people's long messages, it can get behind and lagging is common.

Special Events, Features, Activities in Cybertown
As well as all the stuff up above, there are tons of other things to do. You can private chat with people, throwing parties at people's houses are common, and often blocks or neighborhoods have contests or parties, and sometimes all of Cybertown has a contest or party. You often see people in the plaza asking if anyone would like to join them, and I usually go, it's sometimes pretty fun. Also there are celebrity chats that can happen in certain, very popular, clubs in Cybertown. These always have moderators, and that can get annoying sometimes, but there is one more thing that's even cooler. There is a series called "Morph", where there are two, expanding to six or whatever sides you can join. You can buy a gun, and your avatar can use it to shoot other avatars on other sides. It's usually buggy, but I see a future for these games on Cybertown, they are fun nevertheless, since you can chat at the same time you defend your base. There are other things to do of course, but right now, I've spent over an hour on this review, and I just want to end it off with another hour of closing comments (just joking, I'll keep it short).

Why I like Cybertown the best:
Cybertown is not nearly as boring as I made it sound, and since you probably just skimmed through that review, I'll tell you the people that chat there are very supportive, and the entire site has a real sense of community. You will often see people that you've met before in all kinds of places in Cybertown.

A couple of Cons:
Unfortunately, sometimes the 3D voice chat does lag behind, and the VRML can be a little bit buggy, more than a little bit. Usually this does not ruin the experience horribly, and often people will turn on the "Fly" ability and do fun stuff, often trying to see if they can avoid crashing into walls, since that gets buggy and you get stuck there, with a blinking panel in front of you. Also you need to be pretty active there, I haven't gone through nearly enough to give you all the advice you need to succeed there, but you can ask and there are lots of people to answer you.

Cybertown Lingo:
CoCi: Colony City, this was the previous name of the VRML version of Cybertown
CC: City Cash, Cyber Credits, something like that. This is the currency you use in Cybertown
BD, CA, BL, ND, CO, etc: These are short for job titles. Block Deputy, Club Assistant, Block Leader, Neighborhood Deputy, Club Owner (CO can stand for other stuff too), respectively. There is no way I'd be able to list them all here, you'll just have to get familiar with the lingo to understand on that one, but I don't want you to look like an idiot when a Block Leader asks you if you want a BD job = ).

My nickname in Cybertown is "runwild58" and my house is at "http://www.cybertown.com/home/runwild58". PLEASE DO NOT use me as your referral, this is against Epinions policy and I do not want to break it, even though you earn no real money. I don't even really need the CC bonus you get from it, so you should just probably refer a friend or something. Come to me if you need any help with it, or you just want someplace to live with a familiar face.

Well, that concludes my mega-long review, *phew*, I need to walk around for a bit. I really hope I included everything I wanted to. Go check it out, and come back here and write about how you liked it. I've been using it for half a year now, and my best job I ever got was Block Leader, so it takes a while to get up there, so you have to try hard to do it, if you really want to. It's a neat place to check out though.



Recommended: Yes