From my column, today:
Star Trek Online is far easier to learn than Eve, however. And I like that it encourages avatar-to-avatar interactions off the battlefield, much like World of Warcraft (www.worldofwarcraft.com), which STO more closely resembles, with its use of inventories and its style of play.
(I can see STO becoming a fun place to hold scholarly meetings, as is WoW.)
Not looking too good: A PS3 Home avatar takes a moment to herself. CC/Annabeth Robinson
A Washington Post columnist notes the seemingly hard times that have befallen inworld-types, in a bit about Sony’s “Home”:
Google, for example, is pulling the plug on Lively, a virtual environment it launched earlier this year. And news service Reuters is shuttering a virtual bureau it had opened in the once-buzzworthy Second Life. In a farewell note posted last month, reporter Eric Krangel confessed that he found using the service “about as fun as watching paint dry.”
via Mike Musgrove – PS3′s Virtual Home Is Inhospitable – washingtonpost.com.
But things are about to take a turn for the better in virtual worlds.
My 2009-2012 prediction (it’ll happen somewhere in there): Every internet user will acquire (or be assigned) an avatar of his own.
Image: LOTR: Mines of Moria, from Westwood, Mass.-based Turbine
In my Boston Globe column today, I embrace the latest Roomba robot vacuum cleaner, and note the growth of a Middle Earth MMO. Both products are from Massachusetts-based companies.
Please take a moment to read the column, and comment at Boston.com!
Just in time for Great Depression 2.0:
Westwood-based Turbine (it’s at www.turbine.com) last week launched a game that will keep you busy for as long as you can keep the lights on.
The Lord of the Rings Online: Mines of Moria is the first expansion pack for Turbine’s massively multiplayer online game about hobbits, wizards, and whatnot.
LOTRO: Mines of Moria shows there is even more to Middle Earth than MMO players could have imagined.
Not enough business. Photo: CC/Zoe Connolly
Reports of Lively’s death turn out not to have been exaggerated after all. After the fanfare, hoop-la, bell and whistles of the Second Life killer’s opening, Google have just announced that Lively is dead. Well, if not death, in the terminal stages and destined to limp on flaccidly until the end of the year.
Back in September, Lively’s project director, Kevin Hanna, it was at the Austin Game Developers Conference where he announced that, “Our user-base exceeded every number that we had put down. So, in that sense, our beta is more successful than most launched products.” Tragically, the “success” was simply the ability to generate enough curiosity for people to visit the world at least once. The “New Frontier” turned out to be little more than a side road with nothing at the end of it and bugger all to look at on the way.
via Second Life Herald: Google’s Lively is Dead – Requiem to be Announced Soon
Virtual land values plummet more than 40 percent, to $1,000 even.
(Would you buy land from this leprechaun? Image: Markbaard Meredith)
In Second Life, there’s a sucker born every minute (give or take). Some virtual land barons, for example, are finding out that what they’ve got ain’t worth much–since the supply of their product took another step toward “unlimited.”
To-date, some landowners have gotten rich selling parcels at similarly inflated prices.
But hoping to reboot waning interest in its virtual world, Linden Lab this month will make more islands available, at a fraction of what users have been paying lately for the make believe property.
Of course, land is limitless when it exists only on a server somewhere. And there are going to be more than one virtual world to visit and park it in the near future. But you knew that already.
Reuters/Second Life » Linden to increase land supply, drop prices
Linden Lab announced on its blog yesterday it would be increasing the land supply in Second Life for the second quarter of 2008.Linden has seen average prices for land drift from about L$6.3 per meter in Q1 to around L$11.5 per meter currently. Strong demand for virtual land — essentially dedicated CPU time on Linden Lab’s servers — is a bright spot for Second Life’s in-world economy amidst flagging overall growth.