HiroPendragon

I disagree with your assessment that the SL economy isn't doing well. To me, I don't care about the amount of L$ traded, since that is gamed easily. There are three metrics I care about:
1. L$ sold for US$
2. Land owned.
3. Active residents.

1 and 2 show real money investment in Second Life, and 3 shows real time investment. Both Lindex and land owned numbers are up. The only downside I see is that Linden Lab is selling less L$ on the Lindex, meaning that there is a risk of the L$ value compared to US$ going down. However, as of yet, that hasn't happened.

Sounds like most of the interesting things didn't get covered. Nothing about IBM's work in SL, Nebraska -> SL Enterprise, the first ever SL Developer conference, SLCC 2009, Obama's livecast, Stroker and Munchflower's lawsuit against Linden Lab, or one of countless things universities are doing in SL. Still, Massively's covered Second Life more than any other blog or media outlet. *shrugs*

It's not "official". Linden Lab said that they would support it, not that they were declaring it. You have your facts very wrong.

Duck is such a bad liar. "Oh, I was just part of the group ... it's performance art." -- Crashing the grid, extorting land from noobs, and so on - these aren't "performance art". I can't believe how you folks let Duck get away with such obvious lies.

Isn't this what Wednesdays are supposed to be for?

Is this the first gray goo attack to target a private continent, rather than the main ones?

Yo,

>> "Second Life only has a little over 45000 paid subscribers and everybody else plays the game for "free"."

Not really, when you consider people don't really pay to get on the Internet either, or to use Skype, or AOL instant messenger, use webcam software, Google Earth, Sketchup, etc etc. Basically, SL != game, which is probably what I should have said in the first place.

Eric, as a veteran to SL, I'm really surprised by your comments.

>> "
I wish Linden Lab would get into the content business, since the onus of the new user experience is on the *user* to figure it out. No one guides you, *officially*.

I think you're saying two completely different things here. One is that LL should be a content developer, the other than the new user experience needs revamping. These two are mutually exclusive. LL doesn't need to go into the content business to improve the new user experience. In fact, it's taking steps to help establish it:
- They recently changed the new user experience with a new Beta welcome area.
- They allow registered companies to sign up new users and log them directly into any area of their choosing, and allow other people to train new users.
- They have open sourced the client, which will lead to customization and optimization of the client itself, which means easier and better use.

>> "The new spaces in WoW are refreshing and exciting. It's consistent and themed and the music is wonderful. You don't have that type of cohesiveness with a wide-open world. I can make a space station and have a neighbor who has a castle. buh?"

Well, the WoW people also have a large staff of professional artists who know things like "how to optimize textures". They also have a huge QA team that makes sure everything runs correctly and quickly. If we heed your will on this, we'd have to remove the ability for users to create their own content. You'd also have probably 0.0001% of the existing content. (not exaggerating) Yes, WoW's new areas are nice. But, as any veteran WoW player will tell you, they will have seen it all in the matter of months. It is literally impossible for any person to see all of SL, ever. In fact, it's been that way for about two years now. Yes, there's a lot of crap out there, but it's creative and expansive in a way that WoW falls on its face.

"For The Burning Crusade to pass us so quickly, I think can only be good for Second Life."

Considering nearly all of the 8 million WoW players have been waiting at level 60 for this to come out, I'm surprised this number isn't higher. Probably doesn't count the weekend players who haven't logged in yet. :)

I don't see anything special with BC "passing" Second Life so quickly... it's not really a new game, it's just new content. That'd be like claiming Dreamland in SL is not a part of SL.

Hahahah! I bet Ginzu was much happier to spend his time dealing with this rather than the Bragg trashsuit, erm, I mean lawsuit.

Akela, to answer your questions -- linky:
http://www.knowprose.com/node/17431

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