Whatever Happened To Second Life?

Barence writes "It's desolate, dirty, and sex is outcast to a separate island. In this article, PC Pro's Barry Collins returns to Second Life to find out what went wrong, and why it's raking in more cash than ever before. It's a follow-up to a feature written three years ago, in which Collins spent a week living inside Second Life to see what the huge fuss at the time was all about. The difference three years can make is eye-opening."

Article summary

[naz404]

Article Summary:

Linden labs shut down gambling, segregated all porn to its own island, and now 2nd life's "wholesome areas" are now ghost towns because everyone's hanging out in porn island and spending their money there for virtual kinkiness. Also, writer speculates that most of 2nd life's revenue is now from porn island.

Re:Adult Content Island and verification.

[Stormwatch]

Second Life was the one MMO, however crude, that you could have sex in.

Unless you are a furry. [furcadia.com]

BBC asked the same question

[lyinhart]

BBC asked the same question a few months ago. Their investigation was a bit more comprehensive: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8367957.stm [bbc.co.uk]

Superceded

[GrubLord]

Perhaps Second Life has simply been killed off by the far superior offering that is Sony's "Home".
 
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... hahahahaha! :D

Had you going there, didn't I? Yeah, it's still awful.

Incidentally, though, it would seem that Sony's Home is also plagued by sex fiends [businessinsider.com]. Maybe it is shaping up to become a worthy successor?

Re:Adult Content Island and verification.

[Etrias]

I looked up the War of Jessie Wall and found that you mis-characterized it to justify your rant against liberals. Jessie was the zone where a bunch of players from WWII Online decided to set up shop, many of the players with a conservative bent. They weren't really interested in finding a spot and fitting in rather than carving out a section for themselves. You portray it more as "poor conservatives with pro-war views being harassed by the evil liberals". In the pieces I read, it seemed there were dicks on both sides of the fence who kept on ratcheting up the rhetoric. Jessie wasn't locked down because of views, it was locked down because LL didn't want player killing to spread beyond that zone.

Here [blogs.com], have a read. Not as one sided as you portrayed it.

Re:Adult Content Island and verification.

[jbezorg]

you can google it

And so I did
http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2003/07/war_of_the_jess.html [blogs.com]

The first culture to display their nascent fascism were the liberal peacniks, who objected to ardent patriotism of a number of players during the Iraq war. They tried to bottle up and hem in the pro-US players, who reacted violently (within the rules of the Jesse zone, where killing was possible).

I seriously doubt it was unprovoked and from what I've read, the picture isn't painted quite the same way in the article. Excerpt from: "WAR OF THE JESSIE WALL" ( the link above )

Nothing doing: WWIIOLers swooped down on the Outlands, loaded for bear, and used its longtime residents for live target practice, killing them again and again, and maybe yet again. Because most Residents, unsurprisingly, set their home point on their home property, many folks living in the Outlands were stuck in an infinite cycle of violence, to be shot on their land then resurrected and shot again, in perpetuity, until they logged off the game entirely, or their antagonist finally got bored. All of which was perfectly permissible by Linden Lab since, after all, this is precisely what the Outlands were designed for.

Permitted or not, griefing sucks and corpse camping is the pinnacle of griefing in any MMO.

"Their originally-stated goal was laudable: a lassaiz-faire (sp?) world with basic physics, to see how people would operate"

I think they came to the end of that experiment and concluded that some people are assholes.

Re:BBC asked the same question

[wjamesau]

The BBC article was even more inaccurate than the current one being discussed: http://nwn.blogs.com/nwn/2009/11/five-bbc-fact-fails.html