MUVE (plural MUVEs) refers to online, multi-user virtual environments, sometimes called virtual worlds. While this term has been used previously to refer to a generational change in MUDs, MOOs, and MMORPGs, it is most widely used to describe MMOGs that are not necessarily game-specific. The term was first used in Chip Morningstar's 1990 paper The Lessons of Lucasfilm's Habitat. A number of the most popular and well-known MUVEs are listed below, although there are a number of others. Modern MUVEs have 3D third-person graphics, are accessed over the Internet, allow for some dozens of simultaneous users to interact, and represent a persistent virtual world.
Habitat (1987) and Club Caribe (1988) could be considered the first graphical MUVEs.
A multi user virtual environment is created in three steps. The first is a server or a farm of servers, which are used as the host of the virtual world. Second, a program or an interface is needed that allows people to create a user name and some sort of identity that they can use when they log into the server. The third is there has to be some reason for the person to want to be in the Virtual Environment.
When many users log into the environment at once the ability to communicate, interact and exchange information is what usually goes on. In Dieterle Clarke's research at Harvard University, he says that they enable users to 'access virtual contexts, interact with digital artifacts' use 'avatars' to represent themselves, communicate with other avatars, and to participate in situations that replicate the situations one experiences in the real world.
Virtual worlds can be made of text, 2D, and 3D bit maps that replicates a desired environment. MUD (multi-user-domains) are widely used as dominantly textual virtual environments. 2D and 3D virtual domains usually require an avatar that the user 'guides' in order to explore the environment.
First a computer and a plan are needed. There are designers that create an interface to make a virtual world without the knowledge of programing. Some include Autodesk's Maya, Virtual Home Space Builder and Internet3D Space Builder, Silicon Graphics Cosmo VRML 2.0, Truespace, and many others people will recommend.[1] These interfaces use VRML(Virtual Reality Modeling Languages) to create both the avatars for the world as well as the artifacts and environment.
There has been bad connotations of online virtual games, that are not favorable. Some have been known to play for too long and become consumed in the game with no return. Others have been known as moderate hobbyists that spend a good portion of their free time in a virtual environment. In the modern changing world, the use of virtual worlds becomes more frequent. In 2009, there was an estimated 1.8 billion Internet users in the world potentially in a virtual environment.[2][3]