People Slowly Notice Second Life Hype And Actual Users Aren't To Scale
from the foamy-mouthed-adoration dept
The on-line virtual world of Second Life has long been a mainstream technology media darling, thanks in large part to their public relations team, who masterfully convince reporters to gush in foamy-mouthed adoration every time a fairly banal virtual event occurs. While there was some interesting discussion to be had at first concerning things like virtual economies and on-line sociology, it quickly became clear that the concept was more PR vessel than sociological revolution. While news outlets were pre-occupied with the project's supposed contribution to mainstreaming virtual reality, the real breakthroughs being made by Second Life were in self-promotion. The more Second Life is talked about, the more people seem to notice that the number of people playing the game really isn't all that impressive. As this is written, the virtual world's website notes there's a fairly paltry (if we hold them to self-proclaimed slack-jawed phenomenon standards) 17,266 users currently on-line. While it's hard to accurately determine churn, it appears the vast majority of the virtual world's lauded 1.8 million "residents," really just stopped by briefly to see what all the noise was about before returning to World of Warcraft. While there's obviously nothing wrong with ten thousand users having a good time and establishing community, the amount of lofty cultural pontification simply isn't to scale.
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Traditional Methods
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Re: Traditional Methods
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Re: Traditional Methods
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100% accurate. I actually spent more time downloading, installing, and uninstalling that I spent checking the vsecond life world out. The entire interface just felt clunky to me, and there was no immediate goal or objective after the orientation program to keep me moving along.
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Gotta be kidding me
It's just like AOL for joining up for the big bad internet for the very first time ever.. I bet if you take a poll, most of the people would be AOLer's, the same ones that are click happy with spam mail and are to scared to leave so they pay out the arse for some crap service.
/ventoff
Good morning
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I still get emails from SL telling me I need to activate my free account as the prize for taking part in the beta.
Blah
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WOW and SL
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You know you can buy land for $1000 USD? Yeah, virtual land for 1000 dollars. How exciting. And then once you buy it, its just a square of ocean. You have to put in more hours building the land you bought than I work in a week.
This wouldn't be so bad if the interface wasn't clunky and the game itself wasn't laggy as hell. How come I can play EQ2 and WoW without lag, but Second Life, the game with the crappiest graphics of the three, lags like a sonofabitch?
The only good thing I found in my entire 3 days of trying out second life was that the Uninstaller had a very nice interface, and completed its task very quickly.
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Craptastic UI and Lack of People
But the entire freaking time I was in there I was frustrated by the 1980's control scheme (no joystick support?!??!) and lack of people. At the times I was logging in I frequently saw the same group of maybe 50 people everywhere I went. I attribute this to there being nothing to do, so people gravitated to the one or two events going on that evening.
In short, while I heard some good tunes and met a couple of nice people, I was bored out of my noggin. At of this writing I still have the software, and might drop in very occasionlly for a live concert, I doubt I'll continue to be active.
Oh, they seem to be having a lot of crashes and that's a major buzzkill.
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I personally would much rather hang out with some real-life friends or family and build relationships that actually mean something. I learned a long time ago that the sense of accomplishment when you win a video game is so shallow that it's simply not worth my time anymore. I still fire up my PS2 once in a while when a friend is over, but then I'm playing for fun, not for just trying to win some stupid game. I have a few online friends, but I will never get into online gaming. I think if people focused more on "offline" gaming with real people, we'd all be better off.
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How do you win?
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Re: How do you win?
The only winning move is not to play.
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Snow Crash it ain't
It was interesting for a while. I put up with the lag, poor frame rate, crashes, furries, and the lol cocks dicks lol attitude for about as long as I could while trying to manipulate prims and models with their horrible, horrible creation system. I quit after about a month or so.
The game is plagued by its users and its shockingly inferior hardware. Hopefully, someone else will be able to do the concept more justice and Linden Labs has.
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Snow Crash
I remember a similar program about 5 years ago (maybe it was on of SL's earlier incarnations?) that was promoted as a 3D avatar chat. I used it once. This seems just as lame.
When was the last time people went into a 'chat room' just for the sake of interacting? How is a clunky 3D, soon-to-be ad-saturated interface going to change that?
Maybe I didn't spend enough time with it to get the point, but I deleted it in less than an hour and don't miss it.
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Re: Snow Crash
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Why would you all dump on a new and emerging platform in such a petty way? No technology is ever perfect in the beginning. I could imagine Radio or TV being blasted in the same manner if blogs existed back when.
The point is that there are people who are finding SL an extraordinary experience, although not perfect. Granted, there is a lot of junk there, but there are also artists with imagination and skill creating beautiful worlds and narratives.
SL is an expansive communal experiment in imagination . . . something the real world sorely needs and has been without for a long, long time.
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Re: Second Life
New? Innovative? Not really. Alpha World was around back in the 90s and was a very similar environment. The novelty wears off.
Lastly, I would say that Second Life is lacking a purpose. World of Warcraft, while often a "leveling grind," does provide a reason to log on and play for a couple hours (quests, auction house, etc). Whereas Second Life doesn't. It is really just a 3-D Instant Messanger.
The bottom line: Second Life is a novelty - amusing and mildly entertaining, but I too think that if it is to survive, more strict account creation rules and a more stable codebase would be necessary in the least.
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Re: Second Life
The interesting thing about Second Life is that it is created entirely by its residents. If you all would stick around longer than a half hour, you might discover some of the more amazing sims, such as The Gardens of Apollo" or "Nakima". For those who have actual talent, there is real world money to be made!
For me, I enjoy dropping in for random entertainment and conversation. It's not my life - but it does provide fantastic entertainment! I'll put up with the lag and updates as long as necessary.
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I'm surprised...
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Need high end video
Got a message that said "Your video card sucks. Buy a new one." Well, it was slightly more polite than that, but not much.
Uninstalled the software.
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You get out what you put in
It does not work well for those who are simply looking to be entertained and having to put forth minimal effort in the process. It wasn't designed for that purpose and it's senseless to compare it to games.
The entire world of Second Life is designed by its userbase and is completely dynamic. The 3D world including the models and textures as well as sounds, music and video are streamed to the end user in real time.
This is completely different than having about 4 gigs of professionally designed artwork sitting on your hard drive to be loaded in by the game like MMORPGs do (eg WoW, Everquest).
Of course you're going to think it "lags" and the interface is "clunky". Given the complexity of what this program is doing I'm amazed that it works as well as it does.
I can understand if you give it an honest try and later decide its not your thing at this point. That's pretty much what I did. I still have a high degree of respect for the project though, and will continue to follow it because it has an enourmous amount of potential.
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Same
But look at it today. Here are their subscriber numbers:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=pJirslkunZ1OHX5EEd0uLZA
http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g79/gorndog/SkypeGrowthSinceLaunch-20061108.png
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5 minutes of Second Life
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Clue?
Stop trying to make it something it isnt. then whining like girls when its not.
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another happy SL user.
"I played 10 minutes and it doesn't work" or
"I did not even play with it but it sucks".
However YES, mainstream media is making lots of hype about it.
Now the hype-against-it phase is coming.
Going back to Second Life now. It's definitevely interesting for me.
-sorry for bad english
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The only time when a proper 3D environment will ma
And no, I haven't tried playing SL yet, for exactly the above reason.
/c
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first impression
I logged in to SL just to see how building and scripting works. I was planning to do serious scripting based on translation of some code I already own.
I realized that lagging, and server crashes and/or client crashes make the whole experience unpleasant and I can program and earn money in other way.
Sorry folks, improve your design and scripting language support and get rid of lags then maybe I will come back.
bye, bye for a moment,
disapointed user.
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Works for My Promotion and Marketing
Works for me. If you want to experience "gaming" Second Life is not that. Don't compare it to WOW, they are two entirely different vehicles to drive.
Does it lack purpose? Depends on what your perspective of its use might be, I suppose. It has plenty of "effective and efficient" purpose for my use.
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It's not a game
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SL is trash (for some people like me)
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But in order to build stuff you need a little land so you can build and then leave the thing there without thinking about it for days weeks or months, but to do that youre gonna have to pay real money for fake land that sucks,
so i sell the buildings i make which are kinda nice, and i keep to myself, and stay low key.
the amount of freaks in there is annoying, im a chick, and one reason why i was gonna leave was because i got sick of the holier than the penis, lezbo chicks who think that NO is some sort of invitation to be "friends" i dont dislike gay chicks, i just dont want to be one EVER im a girl and i get on my own dang nerves so why the heck would i want some broad around who dresses and tries to act like a guy with NONE of the perks guys come with
and i dont want to be a dang furry, not every furry gets it on with their furry head on, but seriously bestiality is not cute and not normal i got myself some wings and kitty ears cause they were cute,in the beginning but stopped wearing the kitty ears because it freaked me out to see the kind of disgusting stuff people were doing to all animals in there, its like a dog cant just be a dang dog!
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Has Potential
I have a fairly decent machine, i play Team Fortress 2 and Quake 4 etc.. with no problems, also There runs pretty well.
Second Life on the other hand:
I really like the user based worlds, and some of the people are really interesting. Right now I spend 90% of my time at Mouse World, its a Disneyland in SL that is really amazing.
The Interface is pretty simple to get used too, but the lag, i just cant take it! I cant figure out why it lags, ive set everything to minimum, and i think it made it lag more, lol.
Im sure its lagging because of the constant upgrades, updates, and modifications being done in-game, but jeez, I havent seen SL run smooth on anyones computers.
Ive even watched a tv show were full time SL players are running with lag, lol.
All in all, its a neat game, not original, ive played alot of Social game long before this was out.
I may keep it for a few more weeks. I been playing for a week.
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