Second Life Welcomes Alien Abductors

Thanks to GamePro for their report discussing the post-Beta launch phase of MMO title Second Life. The piece gives a handy overview of the unique parts of this 3D subscription-based PC title: "Certain areas, called 'sandbox' sims, allow you to build and script stuff in the game world for free.. [such as] domino rallies, giant houses of cards, odd sculptures, and so on - and anyone passing by is free to interact with them as they please." But this freedom has led to strange, cosmic forces being unleashed: "..someone's going around the world and 'abducting' people with a brownish alien spacecraft, sucking them up with a blue tractor beam and letting them go after a short period." There's more coverage via this forum thread and 'enfant terrible' Wagner James Au's column on the Second Life site itself, 'Notes From A New World'.

Comments

Wanted to try it out, but...

[espee]

from the site:

Qualifications:
To join Second Life, you must:
Be age 18 or older
Be a resident of the U.S. or Canada

Darn

Re:Wanted to try it out, but...

[replicate]

As far as I know, they're allowing non-US, non-Canadian users, but Second Life has some problems with keyboards other than "standard" US 101-key ones. It's basically punctuation that's the problem, so you can still use it, but if you want to do scripting, or come across as being more literate than a WebTV user, you'll want a "standard" keyboard. As for the age restriction, they're still working on implementing parental controls. Just part of the hassle of living with the Child Online Protection Act. [copacommission.org] replicate

just a plug for the game

[Lord_Dweomer]

I swear, the Gamepro article had like, three sentences about the abduction and the rest was just hyping the game. This is just another PR move. I guess they should change the name of the site to "Slashdot: Ads for nerds. Stuff we get paid for." And I'm not trolling, but this is a pretty sad 'article'. Its a press release, call it that for gods sake.

Re:just a plug for the game

[cmacb]

Don't most game oriented e-zines plug the games they review? Just like CNet has never seen a cell phone they don't like lately.

I happen to be a Second Life user though, and I highly recommend it.

I was just surprised at how short the article was. I know there have been more informative ones pointed to by Slashdot within the last month or so. I don't think anything beats trying it though.

I've been using it for about a year (as a beta tester). Here is what I like about it:

(1) Open ended... No preconceived "objective". For this reason I hate calling it a "game", but since each user is free to script away, quite a few in-world games exist already. The alien abduction thing is a user invention in fact.

(2) Hi Rez textures... I don't know if there is an upper limit, but I've uploaded some fairly hi resolution textures and they render fully. Of course you can slow things down overdoing this, but for some objects you don't want them looking cartoonish.

(3) I should have put this first... LINUX and OS X support comming later this year. I wouldn't fault them if this slips a bit, but they have a definite commitment to other platforms. Delivery schedule for the current system ran ahead of their projections, so, I'm crossing my fingers to be able to run this without re-booting to Windows soon.

(4) Great user community. This might have to do with the screening they did for the beta, we'll see.

(5) Havoc physics engine... everything you create can (optionally) have full physics enabled, do you can make bouncing balls, wheels that spin, etc.

I may be setting up a website with a much more extensive review. For the time being my journal entry has some other info and I'll answer questions there (or here until it expires).

If you use my link to sign up I'll get $3000 in-world. All click-throughs appreciated!! If it is any indication, 5 people have clicked through to the trial via my link and so far and 4 of them signed up.

Re:just a plug for the game

[eggstasy]

I am Eggy Lippmann in the game. I am the Second Life Disco Manager, a Linden sponsored project.
I'm just a regular user who gets a bit more pocket change than others, along with tax breaks. I am building it in a themed server dedicated to america, with the washington monument, a "gangland" set in the 1930s prohibiton era with a subterranean area, Fenway park, area 51, route 66... amazing stuff really, very popular place.
If you want unbiased facts here they are:
The game, or rather virtual world, is very very cool BUT overly ambitious. It lags to hell and back on large events since the servers simply dont scale very well, and neither does the average users hardware - the graphics are beautiful, amazingly realistic, really sexy girls in there, you have a nearly unlimited ability to create all sorts of wacky avatars by attaching things to yourself, giant spiders, aliens, werewolves, robots, anime characters with 100 foot wingspans, the works.
You can customize your appearance endlessly. Sliders exist for the tiniest of details, such as amount of muscles, body fat, eyelash length and even how far apart those two little ridge things between your nose and lips are.
You have an unrestricted ability to make clothes for yourself. Any kind of design is possible, as long as you can make it in photoshop, you can upload it.
Physics lags the servers to hell and back, and so is generallly avoided. Most people want to build a silly little house and be done with it, and some prefab houses exist for sale rather cheaply.
Others rent apartments. I'm providing free space for shops and apartments at the disco actually, so if you're in SL and want a place, comfy 8 meter high ceilings are at your disposal ;)
Having said all of that, i do hope they can scale the system and fix its bugs. It's horrible to have a gigantic disco that cannot be filled due to technical limitations. 30 ppl will often crash the server. Imagine if it took 30 hits to slashdot a webpage! Thankfully its not often that 30 ppl get together in one place and usually performance is pretty damn good!
You can have a free 5 day trial. I heartily recommend that you try it, and if you do, look me up at the Disco in Blue. It's a gigantic mother of a building so you can't miss it ;)

The war of the wall

[Flunitrazepam]

the ufo thing seems pretty wussy compared to the coverage of "The War of Jessie Wall".

I just spent 15 minutes reading the story about what happened and was intrigued.

Check it out.. read from the bottom post up, like a blog if you want it in the correct order.

The War