The software concept was originally created by Jim Bumgardner and produced by Time Warner in 1994, and was first opened to the public in November 1995.

While there is no longer any official support for the original program, a new client has been developed and is actively maintained by Jameson Heesen.

By default, users are represented by spherical smiley face emoticons, but can also wear up to nine separate bitmap images known as "props.

[3][4] Other sources claimed that Melicia Greenwood created the first Dollz, basing her avatar on Barbie while catering to counter-culture audiences of preps, goths, and skaters.

[3] The Palace was originally created by Jim Bumgardner and produced by Time Warner Interactive in 1994, with its official website launching to the public in November 1995.

[1] Bumgardner incorporated many features of Idaho, an in-house authoring tool he had previously developed for making multimedia CD-ROMs.

One of the unique features of the Palace for its time was that the server software was given away for free and ran on consumer PCs, rather than being housed in a central location.

In 1997 they presented "waitingforgodot.com" at the Third Annual Digital Storytelling Festival, which took an interesting turn when another Palatian changed their name to Godot and arrived in the performance.

[9] The software is currently unsupported by Open Text or any of its previous owners, and many members of the community now provide unofficial support for existing versions.

David worked for many years reverse engineering the majority of the protocol for proper communications between the client and server.