Stagnating but by no means dead

I was ready to move on from Facebook, with Inara Pey frowning at me on her blog, and Hamlet Au covering different angles over at New World notes, I was all Facebooked out, but, in a turn of events not related to privacy and more in line with some of the points Hamlet made in his New World Notes post, there’s a very interesting post over at Gamasutra about virtual worlds, social media and why the easiest pathway often wins.

What’s interesting about both the Gamastura post, and Hamlet’s post, is the numbers, the number of people using Facebook compared to Second Life is quite staggering, this is largely down to Facebook being both cheaper and easier to use than Second Life, but that only tells part of the story, World of Warcraft has something like thirteen million registered accounts, so people will engage with a client based system when the appeal is there.

Both posts point out that at one stage Second Life was considered best placed to capture the largest share of the market, with 3D worlds set to replace 2D webpages, and that will happen eventually, whether Second Life is that 3D platform is a different matter because they were ahead of their time with their ambitions and now have issues with trying to scale. However this will happen one day, and it will be easy to participate and will be the path of least resistance. There was a time when people poured scorn on Amazon for having a website and felt that angle had no legs. Continue reading “Stagnating but by no means dead”

The Second Life Cataclysm

World of Warcraft is largely expected to experience The Shattering next week, a time when Deathwing wreaks havoc and brings chaos to Azeroth by changing the landscape, another step in the direction of their Cataclysm expansion pack. There have already been a number of pre Cataclysm events in World of Warcraft, including this week’s chaos when Elementals tried to invade the major cities.

Linden Lab are also unleashing events to mark their Cataclysm, when the teens are welcomed with open arms to the grid, this has a scheduled release date of the end of this year, but that may change, although it’s highly unlikely to happen on December 7th. We’ve already experienced a number of pre events too, the search game when you had to figure out why your parcel didn’t show in search when multiple maturity ratings were selected was one event quest, another was when those humourous Lindens decided that a parcel that had PG content but sat on mature/moderate land should be filtered out of PG search, because hey it’s mature land you silly people and even though the content may be completely PG, we don’t want the teens knowing it exists. Continue reading “The Second Life Cataclysm”

Micah Whipple – A Name To Remember In The Privacy Stakes

Micah Whipple, remember the name because it’s an important one in the privacy stakes. Blizzard it seems, have bought lock, stock and extremely smoking barrel into the whole concept of sharing the love of real life details, many of their users however are not at all impressed about the Zuckerberging of their names, the problem it seems stems from forum changes that will mean anyone posting on the forums at some point in the future (the exact date is vague) will post using Real ID, which will mean posting with their real first and last name, they can helpfully post with their character name alongside it.

The problems for Blizzard started when they posted this information on their forums, the US forums here and the European forums, here. Some forum goers feel this is a wonderful move and will cut down on trolling, which is one of the reasons Blizzard cite: “The official forums have always been a great place to discuss the latest info on our games, offer ideas and suggestions, and share experiences with other players — however, the forums have also earned a reputation as a place where flame wars, trolling, and other unpleasantness run wild. Removing the veil of anonymity typical to online dialogue will contribute to a more positive forum environment, promote constructive conversations, and connect the Blizzard community in ways they haven’t been connected before. With this change, you’ll see blue posters (i.e. Blizzard employees) posting by their real first and last names on our forums as well. ” Continue reading “Micah Whipple – A Name To Remember In The Privacy Stakes”

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