skribe

One potential issue that LL and SL may have is that in restructuring the world to move it away from the 'Wild West' - brothel and casino on every corner - to a 'Your mother would approve' business environment they may have created a solution to a problem that only a few have and thereby potentially killed the golden goose. Too early to tell however.

Even in the virtual world first impressions count.

That's because there were no viable alternative worlds for the addicts to get their hit. Very few addicts have the fortitude to go cold turkey. However, once serious competitors come online those that have been screwed by LL at least have the option of moving to them. Then you'll see substantial shifts in the market if LL continue to upset their customers. And wasn't the OpenSpaces debacle the kickstart for OpenSim?

In a month you're probably correct. In 12 months however there will likely be a number of viable alternatives available. LL need to sort themselves out before their userbase abandons them.

Nobody else is ever going to do it the SL way because the problems that are at issue in this article and with the class action are symptomatic of the laissez faire system. A company may be able to ignore them when most people are dealing with pennies on the dollar. However, with real incomes comes real laws and real politics. Solutions need to be found and implemented simply as a measure of self-protection.

I suspect that Blue Mars have taken the steps they have because ultimately they'll be expected to act as a defacto adjudicator for any disputes and at least they'll know who uploaded the content and when. It won't solve the problem but it will at least ensure they can provide some level of due diligence should their adjudication be questioned by a real world legal authority. That may be the price that content creators must pay for having an IP dispute quickly resolved.

Being a neutral adjudicator is something that LL has been very reluctant to do. They prefer to have the legal fraternity deal with any issues. However, should LL lose this class action you may find they resort to similar measures as Blue Mars simply because it may mean they have little other choice but to deal with these issues themselves.

Those stats sound strangely like an epitaph.

You also need to learn how to use the SL content creation tools. It's only those that have taken the extensive time to master the SL tools that are going feel shortchanged. Many of their skills are not transferrable because SL has its own custom way of doing things. At least if you're starting from scratch and you learn from the set available to use with BM you can transfer those skills to many real world industries or to other virtual worlds.

DilSpi said: The content creation is much harder to learn and would therefor not be reachable for the masses of users

Please tell me you're joking. SL uses non-standard tools that are difficult to master and reliant on a stable connection. Workflow is heavily influenced by server lag. Worse, there are no backup facilities so an inventory glitch can wipe out your entire project. BM at least gives you the option of choosing your own tools, from Maya and 3ds Max to Blender and Sketchup - all of which have interchangeable formats and are heavily used in an assortment of industries. It also means existing models can be imported with few alterations. Having to build everything from scratch has kept many from utilising SL.

Gwyneth, it's an issue with the CryEngine2. Crytek are only supporting windows at the moment although the next release also supports XBox and Playstation IIRC. Blue Mars works fine under bootcamp I've been told.

If LL want the users to work with them they could at least use lube.