There Inc. Stops Consumer 'Virtual World' Updates

Thanks to Terra Nova for its story discussing a major refocusing at PC 'virtual world' company There Inc., as an official statement mirrored on ThereUniverse.com explains the company is "changing its strategic direction to focus on our technology platform", and "we will no longer be making regular updates to the [There 'virtual world' consumer] software, and we will not be fixing bugs", some claim due to plateauing interest in the game. Terra Nova points out: "Presumably There will be continuing their work with organizations like the US Army. Though they make it clear that this isn't a shut-down of the consumer world, it can't be good news for the development of virtual worlds beyond the typical D&D-inspired MMOGs", a category which also includes PC 'virtual world' title Second Life.

Comments

annoying forced interaction

[Anonymous Coward]

my problem is that i enjoy anonymity. but moments after entering the game some overweighted character girl came up to me and started pressuring me to join in the conversation with her groups of friends.

if they perhaps allowed you to completely disguise yourself like a complete character redesign with your global ID number hidden from other players (or how about a nice "anonymous" generic profile? what a concept!) - now that might have made the social aspect just a bit deeper - less rigidified, less clichy (which in my opinion is something that turns off a great deal of geeks) - and thus they would have garnered a great deal more attention.

Forced social interaction is not my idea of fun: Waste my time talking to some overwieghted character. what kind of person makes thier character less attractive? whatever, unfair judgement on my part(her bio had a picture of her and she was indeed below average, though i'm sure a nice person, really really pushy). gave me "the" shirt. "you have to come on tommorow night to talk with me and my friends and pass that shirt to the next guest!"

Nice idea, I don't want to play like that. Anonymity died at that moment.

I played once and never looked back.

And the price of therebucks plummeted

[V_M_Smith]

as people madly tried to sell off their accumulated wealth.

The results are here. Keep in mind that the nominal prices of tbux are $1.12/2000 (from There.com) and $1/2000 (from tbux.com, another large reseller).