Worlds Away gives you the best opportunity to get up to speed, with its practice area to get familiar with the environment before you are exposed to real people. I also liked V-ChatÆs little help screen on the way in - again a reassurance. Text chat generally dumps you into the middle of whatÆs going on - but most chat inhabitants are happy to let you ride with nothing much more than a welcome while you get used to the controls. The biggest irritation to me is coming in half way through a conversation - IÆd love to be able to download the last few minutes of the chat, so I could scroll back up and see where it has come from - mostly to avoid be rude and either repeating whatÆs already been said or changing the subject without realising what was going on.

If you thought online chat was mostly a small, cliquey crowd, exchanging meaningless banter ... youÆd be right. Much of it is. Maybe thatÆs what you want - though I find I can get all the meaningless chat I like down at the pub at a fraction of the cost (the beerÆs better too). If you want more, Worlds Away is interesting because thereÆs the exploratory nature of an adventure game, while the conventional topic oriented chats at least focus the conversation on something that might be of interest to you.

I donÆt think this excursion is going to convert me to chat - but equally I wonÆt treat it with quite the same fear and loathing any more. Communicating, any sort of communicating, tends to give you a warm glow. I found myself enjoying some of the conversations, particularly when there was a specific topic.