"In the summer of 1994, Ron Britvich created WebWorld, the first 2.5D world where tens of thousands could chat, build and travel. WebWorld operated on the Pereg

"In the summer of 1994, Ron Britvich created WebWorld, the first 2.5D world where tens of thousands could chat, build and travel. WebWorld operated on the Peregrine Systems Inc. servers as an after hours project until Britvich left the company to join Knowledge Adventure Worlds (KAW) in the fall of that year. In February 1995, KAW spun off their 3D Web division to form the company Worlds Inc." It's really odd to think that NCSA Mosaic had just been released a year earlier - and if you go back to 2D, rather than 2.5D, the first persistent multiplayer virtual world launched in 1986, several years before even non-graphical web browsing was a thing: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Habitat_(video_game)