I've covered my experiences with World of Warcraft a couple of times here, and I've now been playing for more than three years. Even if you don't play, you may have heard that Blizzard Entertainment are about to release the third expansion / fourth instalment for World of Warcraft, called Cataclysm. It's a fairly standard formula now for MMOs - release an expansion every couple … [Read more...] about World of Warcraft’s Cataclysm: lessons for virtual worlds
Op-ed
Original content versus fan content
With studios and publishers flinging infringement notices around about fan-based role-playing environments online, it’s worth looking at the situation from another perspective. After all, why not just create new, original theme properties rather than basing role-play environments on popular books, movies and television shows? Why do so when official gaming environments already … [Read more...] about Original content versus fan content
Is Linden Lab up to the job of keeping younger teens safe in Second Life?
In some ways the decisions surrounding Linden Lab’s closure of Teen Second Life, and the plans for its teen users represent an almost perfect microcosm of Linden Lab process. There’s the decision to close Teen Second Life, apparently made without consulting with … well, anybody at all. As a part of this, older teens (16-17 years old) will be migrated to the adult grid along … [Read more...] about Is Linden Lab up to the job of keeping younger teens safe in Second Life?
The ins and outs of Intel’s OpenSim scaling
By now, you’ve probably read about Intel’s experiments in boosting the performance of open-source Second Life workalike OpenSim to very large numbers of users – or at least very large numbers of users compared to a traditional Second Life simulator. You may have seen the video, if not, it’s here: All of this, ultimately, is apparently going to become an open part of the … [Read more...] about The ins and outs of Intel’s OpenSim scaling
One click can make all the difference
Linden Lab is cutting the Second Life Community Gateways programme from August 19 (giving Community Gateway operators just 18 hours notice of the pending termination). If you haven’t been through the Second Life orientation lately, you might not even be clearly aware of what the programme is. The idea was simple enough. Since the Lab didn’t care to have a full-time employee … [Read more...] about One click can make all the difference