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It's a really odd language, but has its niche uses.

There uses it.

The VRML people made a terrible mistake. They 1) went XML, and 2) got taken over by advertising people. The VRML effort was shut down in favor of something called "X3D", which is, exactly, VRML syntax with XML delimiters. "Now you can have spinning 3D logos with 60 characters of X3D!". This positioned X3D as an ad-delivery system, for which it's terrible.

If you bring up an old VRML viewer on a modern machine with a good broadband connection, it works great. It's still not very useful, but it does work. Most computers of 1997 didn't have enough graphics power to run VRML properly, so it was hopeless back then. (I had a machine that did, because I was using a high-end animation system. But it cost $6000 and sat in a 19 inch rack.)

You can be too early. I was interviewed by "There" when they were starting up. They were determined to make a 3D shared virtual world that would work over a dial-up modem. I told them this was going to produce a terrible user experience, drive them nuts trying to cram that data through a tiny pipe, and that by the time they got the thing going, enough users would have broadband to make a broadband-only product feasible. They stayed with dial-up, launched There just as broadband was starting to get serious market share, never really made it, and downsized when the funding ran out. There is now owned by something called "Makena Technologies", still running, and still designed for dial-up modems.

The VRML people made a terrible mistake. They 1) went XML, and 2) got taken over by advertising people. The VRML effort was shut down in favor of something called "X3D", which is, exactly, VRML syntax with XML delimiters. "Now you can have spinning 3D logos with 60 characters of X3D!". This positioned X3D as an ad-delivery system, for which it's terrible.

If you bring up an old VRML viewer on a modern machine with a good broadband connection, it works great. It's still not very useful, but it does work. Most computers of 1997 didn't have enough graphics power to run VRML properly, so it was hopeless back then. (I had a machine that did, because I was using a high-end animation system. But it cost $6000 and sat in a 19 inch rack.)

You can be too early. I was interviewed by "There" when they were starting up. They were determined to make a 3D shared virtual world that would work over a dial-up modem. I told them this was going to produce a terrible user experience, drive them nuts trying to cram that data through a tiny pipe, and that by the time they got the thing going, enough users would have broadband to make a broadband-only product feasible. They stayed with dial-up, launched There just as broadband was starting to get serious market share, never really made it, and downsized when the funding ran out. There is now owned by something called "Makena Technologies", still running, and still designed for dial-up modems.

Well more of a social game http://www.there.com/ with Laugana(sp?)Beach. which inturn i heard is a success.

I play http://there.com/ and we wanted casino items in game to play with, however since you can purchase addition Tbucks (currency) they said it would be illegal and encourage underage gambling.

What's the feeling out there about There? I've been in on it since it was in beta in 2003 and I've had a lot of fun with it. Some things work better than others as far as what the designers intended.

In all of this talk about Second Life, nobody has mentioned http://there.com/. Its a little more structured than Second Life. They have a PG-13 restriction on content. The only thing stopping you from cursing someone out or other griefing is the threat of being banned by their abuse team.

I think there are some good lessons to learn from TCL/Tk, that can be applied to Lua gui api design! (But not to the Lua language design! ;-)

TCL was popular because of Tk, which was the best X11 user interface toolkit of its time. One reason Tk was so successul, was that the Tk toolkit was tightly integrated with the TCL scripting language, and they nicely complemented each other. Tk called out to the TCL scripting language to do most of the work, instead of trying to do all that string bashing, table lookup, configuration, plugging together and scripting stuff in C, like "Xt" (the Ech-StoolKit) and Slowtif make so awkward. So it was quite easy for Tk programmers to configure guis and script callbacks with TCL, without having to modify and recompile any C code. TCL worked well with C because it nailed something that C sucks at: string processing.

In the same way, JavaScript is popular because of Dynamic HTML, not because it's a good language. The killer app is really DHTML, and JavaScript is just along for the ride. Outside of the realm of Microsoft's ActiveX/OLE/IScriptingEngine, it's difficult to integrate JavaScript with C. But languages like TCL and Lua, and tools like SWIG make that easy.

I'm optimistic that some form of Lua will eventually find its way into common use for scripting web browsers, and even more interestinig stuff like 3D virtual worlds ala WOW and There. It will spread through the same as the Flash virus used to infect 98% of all desktops (ActiveX, Netscape plug-in API), and other even more infectious vectors: computer games. The WOW and There clients are basically just smart 3D VR AJAX engines, scripted in Lua. WOW, Lua's already There!

-Don

Very well stated.

There knows its clientelle well and devised the perfect way to ensure people are nice to noobs - they created a "Noob Helper" skill that you can level up in! It simply checks the seniority of the person you're talking to and looks for keywords, and if you talk to new people long enough you gain experience in the skill. Gaining a level earns you free stuff like clothing and hair styles. Positive reciprocity is the way to go, not cutting costs on a percieved lost cause.

I love the idea of Second Life but I hate the implementation. I have a fairly beefy PC but the game runs like ass unless I kill the draw distance. There are menus upon menus upon menus that I just can't find my way around. The lag is so bad sometimes that I don't move for seconds after I press a key.

I much prefer There, not that I play these pseudogames any more. SL is the winner in content but There is superior in accessibility.

Next bad advertising idea: discount widescreen TV displays which, when running 4:3 format content, fill the blank screen area with ads.

(On an unrelated note, there's supposed to be a blank line between the paragraphs above, but the new, extra-complicated CSS based Web 2.0 Slashdot implementation is broken. Bulleted lists are even more broken.)

There is here.

1. Tax income
   
2. Check if I am an equal-opportunity lender
   
3. Review my bank for proper loan reserves
   
4. Bring in the SEC to investigate trades
   
5. Ensure that I treat customer information according to the Graham-Leach-Blyley Act (GLBA)
   
6. Probably something to do with Sarbanes-Oxley, too
   
7. Ask to see my records.
   

"There" had business model problems. At one point, the big thing was buying real-world designer brand clothing for your avatar. With real money. That wasn't a big success. The company has been resold twice. For a while, it was owned by Foreterra Systems, which used the technology to build military training sims.

I was briefly involved with There in its early days. I tried to convince them that it should be broadband only, but they were hypnotized by dreams of being "the next AOL", back when AOL was a leading dialup provider, and insisted that There work over dialup. As a result, it's a rather low-rez environment.

Some people point out that in MMORPGs the women are really men. Generally, this is as we all know true.

But one thing I've noticed about "games" like There is that the more active female players generally really are female.

Well, at least they SOUND like women on the microphone anyway. Still, my point is generally that there seems to be a major difference in games like WoW and CoH from games like There and Second Life.

On the other hand, the pretty, skinny, barbi-like avatars of There.Com probably don't resemble the players controlling them.

So be careful if you fall in love with that Beauty Queen in There.Com. At least in WoW if you are in love with a cow they probably really are a cow. :)

I tried to start one once in another virtual game that nobody plays, it didn't pan out very well. I really had no way to accumulate any form of interest on the money like real world insurance agencies do (keep it in banks).

Until taking money out of SL (to place in an interest earning account) and putting it back in doesn't result in a loss (you have to sell it cheaper than you buy it for, so 1,000,000 to cash then back results in 1,000,000), or at least a loss that's small enough that the bank interest will absorb it, then it's just not feasable.

I would like to see a big open ended Virtual world where killing each other off wasn't the goal.

http://secondlife.com/

http://www.there.com/

http://www.activeworlds.com/

That would be there the hot old stupidity with the ungooglable name http://www.there.com/index.html Some slashdot articles on it too, very scary

Callum Linden and I are the two developers at Linden Lab working on Mozilla embedding. Some details:

Why bother? We want to allow people running Second Life full-screen to access our web site. Right now, if you want to bid on a piece of virtual land, or read the scripting language wiki, you have to either run in a window or switch out to your browser. That sucks, so we're fixing it.

The second goal is to get to third-party web sites. I want to trade SL currency on Gaming Open Market while staying in-world. Our internal scripting language supports e-mail into and out of the world, as well as XML-RPC. Lots of people have used this to build cool web sites that tie into the virtual world. See the postcards on Snapzilla postcards and the Second Life del.icio.us tag for examples. Getting these connected into the world would be a big win.

Why Mozilla? Could there be any other choice? :-) Our competitor There.com uses Internet Explorer to do their internal web browsing, but they only support PCs. We love open source tools and use LGPL stuff extensively in both server and client. Plus, we need support for Win32, Mac and Linux.

Working with the Mozilla codebase has been interesting. It's huge, and very complex. But I'm proud to say we've found and fixed a couple bugs in Mozilla, and contributed the changes back to the Mozilla folks. I'm looking forward to Firefox 1.1 and the potential for the new Cairo/OpenGL rendering subsystem -- that may really help with embedding for 3D worlds.

So despite the linked description, Callum and I are working on getting an interactive 2D browser working first. Web pages on the surfaces of 3D objects may not ship in the next version (1.7). It'll ship as soon as it's done.

As an aside, if any of the Mozilla developers are reading this, we could use some help with embedding, specifically how to post mouse-click events into an embedded instance, please send me mail.

Cheers,

James

i made some 3d content just for fun for mmog http://www.there.com/, one item was so popular i made about $3000 AUD off it... and through 3rd party web sites was able to turn in-world currency back to real dough :)

... has been an anathema to them and remains so to just about every other MMORPG company in the industry.

Umm, I can, think of several that are quite happy to associate in-game goods/wealth with real world money. I'm too lazy to post all the links - google it up Mr Jacobs - you're missing some important market research. ;-)

- URU: Myst's online game (fan site) was very different for example a game, which focused on group interaction and problem solving. Saddly, it didn't make it past Beta but many new cutting edge models don't. Its user group was very different from 'typical' MMORPGs... Overall older and very loyal to the game. It's focus wasn't on killing anything at all actually it was more of a history lesson approach (about a fantasy group of people though).

- There.com is also a different type of MMORPG, which has no fighting system at all. It's described as, "There is an online getaway where you can hang out with your friends and meet new ones--all in a lush 3D environment that's yours to explore!" This description is only about the social aspect, however there are other aspects such as users making game objects and clothes for other players to buy so the game economy (although hard like in RL). It can even allow great modelers to make some RL cash (I wouldn't go into it for that since there are honestly only a few who have pulled it off, and the risks are with RL money but it is an interesting concept to explore).

"It's realistic" is not a defense for a poor game mechanic

I didn't say it was. Simulation breeds familiarity. Not all pastimes involve adventuring. If you want adventuring, find a world with more existing chaos that demands more adventuring.

unless the intent of your game is a simulation of an actual real life situation.

The cornerstone of entertainment in many MMORPGs is simulation of a fictional world, such as one said to have existed a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. To many non-munchkins, MMORPGs aren't "games" in the classic sense as much as they are glorified chat rooms. People can go there and have a second life.

You don't wanna save up 100k to buy a Porsche and find out it runs like a Gremlin.

There are bad buys in the real world too. That's why you check with your guild and on web boards to see if someone else made a bad buy before you go and buy the same stuff, just like people who hang out on real-life epinions.com.

not many entertainers can go /AFK and macro their way to stardom.

Recorded music is a macro. A movie is a macro.

This is why I would call SWG more of an online social experiment than a game.

So there.

In There, you could buy Nike products for your online avatar. With real money. Apply that thinking to a NBA/Nike/EA deal, and you really have something. "Buy Nike Air Jordans and your players can jump higher!"

(Whatever happened to Michael Jordan, anyway?)

only MMOPG (But is it a game?) that has virtual money

Not sure if you can also buy ThereBucks from another similar game There. Not much info on their website.

(But is it a game?)

I think that's an interesting question. These are truly virtual worlds and gaming is only one of the possible activities.

I had high hopes for There. But so far, such virtual worlds are a niche market.

Good question.

If I may point out, this isnt anything new. Blaxxun, Activeworlds, Secondlife are all similar 3D platforms, but have a great deal more experience & interactivity (having all existed for some years now). I posted some info on my favourite 3D platform at the moment (Secondlife) here

(Also check out Activeworlds & There (nb: there is more a social use, like the topic, rather than a 3D platform on it's own.))

"Argh.. people who tries to come up with a new 'independent monetary system' seems to not understand two things. 1) Time is money 2) The existing banking system."

There are many cases where you want to run an independent "monetary" system. For example, if you want to use "points" within a community to reward particular behaviors in terms that make sense for the community. So, for example, in one MMORPG called There that gives pointed to builders, awarded by other players based on how much they like what you've created. The points then let you create more in that world, or gain access to more cool stuff. So the points exist only within the virtual world, and are rewarded within that world. And, more traditionally, food manufactureres have printed "points" on their box tops so that buyers who collect enough points (and thus buy that company's food) are rewarded. So you could probably work out a real-world dollar value to these points, but there's no way that that these companies would accept it, because that would (1) devalue the points as a reward for creativity/buying the companies products since anyone could buy them with "mere money", and (2) would subject the company to all sorts of banking-related requirements that are a PITA.

Your last paragraph reminds me of something one of my friends told me about a while back. In one of these new-fangled "virtual world" things -- I think it was There -- they encourage players to purchase different textures/models for their avatars, of course calling them "clothes". At the time I was told, they had recently added a special new "shoe" product which was named after a major brand of training shoes. Which one I forget.

The point is, though, that like you said players "wearing" these trainers can run slightly faster than other players. The thing that amused me most was that apparently players were buying them like crazy even though running speed has no real bearing on this particular game. If they'll do it for this, then it stands to reason that players will be even more willing to go for this in a game where running faster actually provides some kind of advantage over other players.

I just have to gripe about There's website. This pisses me off greatly.

Just check it out with a non-IE browser. See how it automatically takes you to this "Unsupported browser!!" screen after a second, so that you can't rightly use the website with say, Firefox, even though the page is fine?

Why!? Why!?

Presuming you run Windows and a brand new video card - I *think*. It knocks me to an "unsupported browser" page (mozilla). Gee, and here I thought the web was about following HTML standards, not vendors. If I wanted proprietary, I'd still have the compuserver account I used to use on occasion in 1989.

It is perfectly sunny inside with my one-way polarized glass to ensure my privacy. I can go out with friends virtually while testing the beta version of the There virtual world. Whenever I boot Windows, I see a lovely blue landscape. Meh, sex is overrated anyway. There's nothing that Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation can't fix (nice in my basement).

Evil. Evil, I say!

This claimer: Having MSIE bundled with Windows poses no problem for me, I see it as they include Notepad instead of Word and Calculator instead of Excel. So why not let them include Internet Explorer instead of a real browser? However, I dislike sites that require it. It's like mailing around text files that need Notepad to read... Rude.

In some ways success was so easy for them, they may have been overconfident too.

Robert Gehorsam works for There, not for the Army directly. I doubt that he is privy to the plans of the US Army. He's probably just a West Wing watcher, but it is an interesting thought.

It's called There.

The solution is There. Not only do you get socialization but good gaming fun. They have social interaction with highly customizable avatars and emotes for them.

You can also compete in dune buggy races, paintball matches, hoverboarding, hoverbiking, exploring, etc. It's a very rich virtual world environment. The only draw back is it's open from like 12pm eastern to about 3am eastern.

As for graphics, it reminds me of a Disney movie cartoon only with 3D model characters/avatars.

Price is like introductory of around $50/year if that offer is still going. Otherwise it's around $100 for a year's subscription. Thing is you get the first two weeks free w/out having to give any financial information so it's just register, login, and go for 2 weeks with no credit card entry or anything.

There has a planet-sized virtual world, which the staff and users are slowly filling in. The system works fine, but they need more interesting places in their world. Lots more. There is hiring.

the irony from there.com:

There uses and supports open source software for development, tools, and office systems. We attempt (whenever possible) to share our modifications with the open source community. Because we have just adopted our open source policy, we don't have much source code available yet. Anything released by There and not already covered by a license will be covered by the BSD license.

There is currently using the GNU Malloc library, which is covered by the LGPL license. Our source code for this is here: GnuMallocSystem.zip

Please check this page regularly for updates and more information about There's ongoing commitment to open source.

A bit of disparity, to be sure. I still want a gold toilet seat.

Check out the Humvees in this simulation.

There addicts have known about this for months.

What do there designers have to do with Mars?

This game seems alot like There for grown ups.

The landscape is much more interesting and varied than he makes it out to be (once you've had your fill of two-tone landscapes). See below for a link to take your own tour.

Who would want to socialize with someone so lacking in personality as starting avatars seem to be?? On one had he equates personality with the initial garb, on the other he complains about the consumer aspect of the game.

My original character sported, aside from a perfectly trapezoidal head, a red mohawk that cost most of my starting money. After that I only had enough money for some cheap black pants. Needless to say, I wouldn't make many friends in There. Notice he said "wouldn't", not "didn't". One of the most popular people I know in There dresses badly, has a freakish head with a wild white afro and sports a pot belly. Why is he popular? He's funny and a great conversationalist. No one is ignored in There because of how they look.

uessing muscular chest skins and leather-esque pants are hot commodities in There... among 40-50 year old truck drivers, anyway. This isn't any different than an 22 year old guy pretending to be a female elf from the safety of his parents' basement.

There Inc. is charging people to create content, and charging other people to use that content. Yes, and it makes sense for a couple of reasons. All uploaded content is reviewed before being allowed into the game to keep out obscene or copyrighted material. I suspect the fee (besides paying for the review) also keeps inflation in check. If creating content was free, and you could sell said content at whatever price, soon there would be a glut of money. Content would be a way to manufacture money. There's economy was designed by real economists, by the way.

Once you pay the cover charge required by many of There's events Many, but not most.

however don't even think about joining a group that already has more than eight people in it... nobody could communicate with that many people at once! How is this a problem with the game?

Many emotes cause your character to do some action, or an icon to spring from various parts of their body. They've introduced dance moves recently too :) The emotes are suprisingly effective at making the game more immersive.

Well, since the other plan doesn't come with an activation fee, I'm going to guess it's just a clever way of saying they're "activating" their need for more money. The other plan doesn't come with a monthly stipend either. The exchange rate is $1 = T$1787, so each month you get $4.95 worth of T$. The monthly charge is also $4.95, so you get the game for the price of the activation fee. That's not a bad deal since money is useful (though not necessary) in There. Every virtual world needs some form of exchange.

This is evidenced by the sheer amount of benches and loveseats scattered around the land I found them a more convenient place to chat 1 on 1. Standing is fine too but sitting prevents interruptions...one you have 2 people in a conversation no one else can join.

There, Inc. is capitalizing on our society's tendency to believe that being attractive I wish I could find the link to the article I read here on Slashdot about Everquest. It gave some stats the showed players overwhelmingly favored the more attractive races (like elves) compared to the uglier ones (such as gnomes). And in There you can be as good looking or ugly as you want to be. If you spend a little time in There you'll see it's personality that makes one popular, and generosity (you can loan anything you have, from clothes to vehicles, and recall those items whenever you want).

Take a look around there yourself at this site

It looks like There is also going to do some open source work

"For those who might actually be interested in what There is, it's a half-finished..."

Funny that they're charging $49.99 a year to play a half-finished game. Even funnier is that you (and many other people) have bought into it.

But I guess that's the state of many online games...

Don't you mean There? .

Of course the growth is still to come.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that do not involve HOURS of doing nothing. Because the devs will finally realize that doing nothing is neither intresting nor excieting.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that have fun things to do that don't get repetative after 2 days, or after 2 months or after 2 years.

The growth will come when there are MMO games that have a strong community of players supporting each other.

The growth will come when there are meaningful interactions between the players. Not "I OWNZ JOO!", not "Lets group up and XP", something deeper.

The growth will come when there are MMO with massive worlds, meaningful means of transportation and player property. The growth will come when the PVP is meaningful and fun. Not something put in just so that highlevels could do "something".

There is currently no MMO that does this.

You got that right! I got all excited about SW:G but it turned out to be overhyped and unfinished. Even without the technical problems AO proved to be really limited. You could say exactly the same for WWII Online and a stack of other big names.

But I can think of a handful of real gems right on the horizon. A Tale in the Desert is a breath of fresh air (although no PvP which kinda sucks) and RV in particular addresses every single one of the thigns you mention. And you're starting to get real diversity instead of just the goblins'n'wands or aliens'n'lasers that we've had to put up with. I mean I'm still not even sure what There is supposed to be all about.

Basically I totally agree with the article. I think MMORPG's have gone through a teething period and are just about to experience big growth. The people that start something off always suffer from the fact that other people just keep coming along and improving on it.