SW City

SW City

Hosts: DeltaWorlds, Virtual Paradise, and Activeworlds

Leader: Syntax

Created: March 24th, 1999

Number of Contributors: ~260

Size: 296.57 km² (114.5 mi²)

Download Now

SW City is an open world walking simulator game with point and click adventure elements. It includes quests that players can embark upon while exploring a massive variety of environments, putting their own stamp on the city's detailed history and lore.

SW City is a game-within-a-game and is hosted on three different apps, DeltaWorlds, Virtual Paradise, and Activeworlds.

SW City was founded in March 1999 as a virtual player “town” by members of the Scarab Warriors gaming clan on Activeworlds. It grew to be the largest and most active city in the Activeworlds universe and morphed into a game of its own.

Using Activeworlds as a construction tool, our core group of about 15 people (along with hundreds of contributors) built nearly 300 square kilometers of virtual terrain, infrastructure, and quests—all without algorithms and automation tools.

In 2026, SW City was released on both DeltaWorlds and Virtual Paradise, furthering our goal of preserving the city for future guests.

History

A comprehensive historical timeline can be viewed in the SW City History article.

Origin

Modern day SW City is the 8th in a series of player towns all named SW City. The previous towns were built in Activeworlds with free accounts, which meant they could be deleted by other players. Each one was carefully hidden and only intended for members of the gaming clan named SW, the Scarab Warriors, a team of about 50 people whom played an old 1997 game called Scarab. The tourist cities were built in a variety of worlds, but only lasted a few weeks before being discovered and deleted.

The last town was founded as a floating tourist town in Alphaworld on March 24, 1999. Four days later, SW City's tourist residents registered as paid accounts and the first permanent builds were made down on the Alphaworld's surface. Even though it was now a citizen city, the rule remained that only members from the Scarab Warriors could join. This rule was soon dropped June 9, 1999 when SW City's first non-gaming-clan member and female resident, Pern, moved in.

On August 12, the Scarab Warriors leader, SW Comit, resigned after one and a half years of leadership and moved to Activeworlds "full time" to continue on with the city. By November, the Scarab Warriors clan was virtually dead, and no other SW members were left in AW except for SW Kila, who changed his name to Sojiurn. Soon after even he left.

Things were looking grim for SW City, but a steady flow of important new residents that played a major role in its development began in mid-November. From the end of 1999 through 2011 the city steadily developed, expanded, and became its own game.

As the 2010's dawned, activity declined. Community members aged out of the software, developed other interests, and began careers. Today, most of the core community members still keep in touch with each other, with several members like SW Chris, Syntax, and Ferruccio maintaining it for preservation and nostalgia.

2000 through 2005: The Expansion Period

SW City saw continued expansion through 2000 and swcity.net was launched by Syntax in 2000. The website quickly became and continues to be a useful resource for players of SW City, and in 2001 it won a CY Award in a yearly awards ceremony voted on by fellow players of Activeworlds.

In 2002, SW Comit stepped down as the city's mayor during the 3rd SW City Birthday Bash. Syntax became mayor and SW Comit continued to play a large role in the city's development. During this period, many of the game's infamous and unique innovations were developed—most notably the Nimbusians of Nimbus Land and the genesis of what would eventually become known as SW City Interactive, SW City's quest and events engine.

Late 2004 through 2011: The Interactive Period

SW City's creators shifted away from town building and toward game design, beginning with simplifying the SW City governing structure in 2004 and continuing through the release of SW City Interactive in 2006. Developers SW Comit and Syntax led the effort to introduce minigames, quests, and interactive activities to existing areas of the game.

Hyper Anthony joined SW City on January 4, 2007 and built the popular Rising Glen Retreat community. Baro also joined and introduced a completely new style of city building to Alphaworld in the form of Zelena, using textures of real-world buildings to simulate a level of realism not yet seen at that time.

2011 through 2023: The Dormant Period

SW City's core members began drifting away from active development as career and life concerns became more important. Activeworlds' popularity also saw rapid decline more broadly, leading some members of SW City to step away simply because their creations were not being seen or appreciated by others.

Members of SW City stayed in touch through Skype and later Discord. They occasionally gathered in-world for special events, including two tours that were recorded and released on SW Chris's YouTube channel and a small gathering to celebrate the 20th anniversary of the game.

Relations with the staff of Activeworlds steadily deteriorated, culminating in February 2023 when Activeworlds removed the ability to host assets remotely, visually breaking most of SW City. While these images and music were migrated to Activeworlds' own servers so that the game would be playable again, the damage was done and attention turned more urgently toward preserving the game for the future.

2023 through the Present: The Legacy Period

At the end of the month-long loss of SW City in 2023, SW Chris sent a courtesy notice to Activeworlds of our desire to host copies of SW City in other software, as well as a desire to explore a mutually beneficial path forward that could bring some benefit to Activeworlds.

This idea was rejected and the entire SW City staff were banned from Activeworlds sometime during the next year. We're unsure when it happened since no one had been in Activeworlds since March of 2023.

During this crisis, preservation efforts were begun to bring SW City into Virtual Paradise, an indie clone of Activeworlds. In 2025, work on a version of SW City for DeltaWorlds—a licensed Activeworlds server—began. Both versions of SW City opened on February 20, 2026.

SW City Productions continues to explore new venues and opportunities to expand the world of SW City to new players in the future.

Government and Reformations

The "government" of SW City provided members with a hierarchical structure so that they could work together as a team, coordinating and delegating projects. Since the city was founded as a player town by teenagers, this involved some elements of role play where real life and the game's lore would intermix. That's why some of the language in this section is centered around civic government rather than being more straightforward. This is just what we called things at the time.

The municipal government and administration was officially founded on August 8, 2001. Prior to this, a basic real estate system was in place. All political meetings and discussion took place on the SW City Forum.

On August 8, five new districts were formed.

• Central District included all of SW Comit’s property in a newly formed subcommunity named Central SW City and the public sectors Wooden Valley and Paradise Ridge.
• Estate District included Syntax Estates and the public sector Saddle Creek.
• Palm District included Palm Grove.
• River District included James River and the public sector Silver Valley.
• Ridge District included Stoneridge.

On November 28, 2004, SW City's government was reformed to a simpler format during a meeting at SW City Hall. The SW City core staff became the Administration which oversaw the districts and regular staff became Management which oversaw their own areas.

Subcommunities, suburbs, and viceroys were all grouped into one category, "Precincts", with a manager for each. This made the total number of precincts seven, including Castle Pines, Esperion Isles, Saddle Creek, James River, Palm Grove, Syntax Estates, and Central SW City. Cypris Creek, Silver Valley, Stone Ridge, and Oceanside were annexed into other areas of the city as they became inactive. For a detailed explanation of this government structure, see the charter.

On January 1, 2010, adapting to the new realities that had emerged over the last several years in the way the game was structured and governed, SW City was reformed again. A new organization known as SW City Productions emerged which consisted of the users who make up the staff of SW City Interactive and who are responsible for keeping the lore, quests, and builds of the game in order.

Story Canon

The story canon includes all of the lore you will encounter in-world as well as within this encyclopedia. The canon continues to see periodic updates. Sometimes lore is retconned. Other times it is replaced.

For example, prior to 2010, the government entity known as the Scarabian Republic centrally controlled the entire region around the Irenic Ocean and its capital was SW City. With the creation of SW City Productions, the lore was rewritten so that SW City is just one city in a larger voluntary corporate trade association of settlements called the Scarabian Confederation. This allowed us to separate our in-world lore from the dev team that produced content for the SW City game.

Awards

SW City and its staff have received a number of community awards over the years. These include CY Awards, SAW Awards, and Mariane's Community Awards, listed below.

Geography

Geography in SW City includes nearly any type of environment you can imagine. You can find a large list of geographical areas in the Geography directory.

Geographical Records

• Highest Point: 431 meters above sea level - Morax Summit, Avatar Mountains
• Lowest Point: 207.2 meters below sea level - Morgulzth-Bethamz, Ilexus Caves
• Lowest Point Underwater: 621.1 meters below sea level - Elliony Trench
• Longest River: 68 miles - Besburn River
• Largest Water Body: Irenic Ocean
• Largest Waterfall: 113.5 meters - James River Falls, Citrus Mountains

Ground Zero

Ground Zero is the landing point in SW City where new players spawn in. SW City has had a few different ground zero designs over the years. The major ones are shown below. Ground Zero is located in Town Square Park which is located in the mid-region of SW Island.

Ground Zero, 1999 - 2002

Ground Zero, 2002 - 2005

Ground Zero, 2005 - 2009

Ground Zero, 2009-2019

Origin of Name

The "SW" in SW City is commonly misidentified to mean "Southwest". But its real meaning is actually "Scarab Warriors", a now-defunct gaming clan that played the game SCARAB in the late 90's and early 2000's. (see the history page for details).