Quakeweek
April 30, 1997


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AOLWorld Beta Released


SOMEWHERE ON THE INFORMATION SUPERHIGHWAY - In light of the recent release of the AOL Quake TC, Steve Case has announced a beta-testing program for AOLWorld, an America Online-exclusive version of QuakeWorld. id Software has licensed its QuakeWorld source code to AOL for the project, which according to John Carmack, lead programmer for id, will "keep AOLamers from worming their way into the Quake community, in the event that they ever figure out what the Internet is."

AOLWorld mirrors the chat-room environment of America Online. The more popular chat-rooms of AOL, such as Pedophile Park and Lonely Geeks, have been reconstructed into deathmatch levels.

Gotta Love Me!I tried out the latest beta of AOLWorld, which can be accessed through the regular AOL software. After waiting about five minutes for the ArtworkTM to download and after bypassing about twenty "We Lost Your Password" messages, I did a search for available servers. It turned out that the fastest server available had a ping of 1000, which was surprising considering I had a T1 connection. I decided to try it anyway.

Upon entering the game, I was greeted with familiar AOL catch phrases such as "studly 12/m looking for hot babes" and "my balls itch." The scene was one you'd expect of AOL members, namely players gibbing themselves with grenades and taking nosedives into lava ('what's this red stuff?').

An AOL Guide was also present in the level to 'help' players learn the game and to 'monitor' for violations of AOL's Terms of Service. However, the Guide I encountered was perfectly content to camp in a corner and frag newbies who happened by. When I checked the game stats it turned out he had a ping of 0. Guess he was playing straight off the server. I fired a rocket at him and immediately got kicked from the game for violating the TOS. Apparently you aren't allowed to frag a Guide.

I was unable to make a detailed analysis of other AOLWorld games because players kept jumping into the exits.

(Due to popular demand from AOLamers everywhere, future versions of AOLWorld will enable God Mode.)