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PC Games (Games) Role Playing (Games) Entertainment Games

Second Life MMOG Launches 22

Posted by simoniker from the already-done-don't-have-first-life-gag dept.
Thanks to an anonymous reader for pointing out a SFGate.com article about the official launch of MMO title Second Life, a "rapidly growing and constantly changing 3D online society, shaped entirely by its residents", which has its public unveiling today. We covered this interesting user-shaped virtual world a few weeks back, and it's now open for business, with a free Windows client download and monthly subscription fees. It's also one of the few MMO titles to have a DMCA complaints page for infringing user-created content, where complainants must fill out a form "identify[ing] in detail the location of the copyrighted work that you believe has been infringed upon. For example 'The copyrighted work I am referring to is located on the map area labeled 'Freelon, 104,30,56'.'"
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Second Life MMOG Launches More

Second Life MMOG Launches

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  • Like we need more Realities. (Score:3, Funny)

    by saden1 ( 581102 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @07:43PM (#6279063)
    The real world is a bitch as it is.

  • I wonder if one these will succeed (Score:4, Interesting)

    by ScurvySeaDog ( 255442 ) on Monday June 23, 2003 @08:15PM (#6279378)
    I kinda hope one of these guys will succeed, but on the other hand, I'd like to see this sort of thing evolve on it's own.

    5 years or so I remember there were a ton of these little virtual community type ventures using VRML.. nothing much really happened with them. Lately it seems that they're starting to crop up again. There.com, this thing, and there have a been a few others I've heard about.. activeworlds or something.

    I don't think the open ended virtual community stuff (as opposed to something with a "purpose" like Everquest) is going to really take off until we can really "jack-in"

    The idea has merit, and it WILL succeed one day, but I hope this isn't wholly sponsored by some commercial entity, but ends up being more like a 3d web (like vrml was supposed to do, right?).
    • As soon as you can have *real* cybersex, these things will skyrocket in popularity.
    • On the contrary, commercial sponsorship could be a good thing regarding this type of venture. Creating and maintaining software that people don't directly interact with is an extraordinarily daunting task and is very costly. For example, incredibly complex software that controls traffic signals for a downtown area may take hundreds of people, and millions of dollars to build, maintain, and operate. A MMORPG where tens of thousands of users are interacting with the environment and other players could take hu
    • What this kind of thing needs to really kick off is kind of like exactly a next gen 3d, FPS-like frontend to IRC.

      It has to be FPS-like to satisfy the market-penetration target; it has to be easy to use. It has to have IRC as a backbone so it's usefull (for chat, file transfers etc). OS so people can tinker with it (but in the same way that linux works, with one or a couple of master architects, so all 'kernels' work).

      But to really kick in I imagine something which works with hubs (as in channels on an irc
    • Right. VRML is a markup language [web3d.org], not a pseudonym for MMORPGs... And you're right, they went away -- because in my opinion, the language was a flop.

      Like Java, VRML was an idea marketed before its time. When it first appeared, VRML browsers were bulky add-ins for your web browser, slow and prone to errors. The concept is that you define geometry objects in space using a scripting language much like HTML; just download a model and render locally instead of a big bitmap. However, this was software render
    • Development for 3D-VR are proceeding in a few parallel paths. Unfortunately, to date, watching this happen is about like watching grass grow. VRML while it has many die-hard adherents failed to find the "sweet spot" for development of these types of programs. Renderware, which came closer, has failed to become enough of a standard. So basically, rather than suffer the limitations of these "infrastructure" products, commercial companies are rolling their own interfaces more or less from scratch.

      If you l

  • Well. (Score:2, Informative)

    by Visceral Monkey ( 583103 )
    I tried out the beta, and to say it ran like ASS on a good system is a mild understatement. However, lets put even that aside for one moment: The concept sounds great but the execution didn't follow so well. You get bored. Real quick.

  • Linux Support (Score:2, Funny)

    by xyu ( 556711 )
    I went over to secondlife.com [secondlife.com] to see if it mentioned anything about linux support and the page goes into a redirection loop. I guess they only viewed their page in IE.
    • The site works fine with most browsers. At work I usually browse with mozilla [mozilla.org], and at home I use Galeon [sourceforge.net] - which both work fine. What browser are you using? I know the site does not work with links or lynx, but since the site is in support of a 3d MMOG, the priority for supporting text only browsers is low.

      A recent press release [lindenlab.com] on the site says

      Second Life will initially be available for Windows-based PCs, with Mac and Linux versions following by the end of 2003.

      • Linux and OS X support are the things that excite me most about this prog. As a beta tester for about a year I interacted a few times with the staff there and got the definite impression that they are Linux fans (the servers are Linux by the way). The other thing I can report is that they have been very much on schedule with this thing the whole time. I was very skeptical when I heard their target dates for going production, but the system just kept getting more and more feature complete with a new relea
    • ...the page goes into a redirection loop. I guess they only viewed their page in IE.
      No, it means that you've blocked cookies from their site. Did the same thing to me, but once I allowed their cookie, it loaded just fine.
      • Still, that's a very bad failure condition, and a bad first impression. Hopefully the MMOG isn't coded by their web developers.

        BTW, it is only a redirection loop if you keep Javascript enabled. Turn off Javascript and it stops, then redirects you to a 404'd noflash page [secondlife.com], which only link takes you back through another Javascripted flash check. Only if you enable Javascript and allow cookies can you get to the real no-Flash pages.
  • I tried to sign up for the 5-day free trial, but the program only works for nt, 2000, and xp. As a 98 user, its the first time I've encountered this. Also, all the legal stuff still refers to it as being in beta still.
  • I think it is fun to have a virtual asset and build it the way I like. However I don't think it is worth paying monthly fee. I am already paying monthly fee to host my blog site already. Can someone points me to a free virtual community if there is any available? I don't think it has to be in 3D.
    • Don't know of any freebies myself, I have little enough time as it is without playing MMOG. However, it is unlikey that you could establish a decent MMOG without monthly/annual/similar fees. The main problem is that Bandwidth and Servers aren't free and that alternative means of paying to run something (advertising, pop-ups etc.) are incredibly unpopular. Even good ol' slashdot has had to resort to some alt-funding from subscriptions.
  • One of the fun things for awhile in Morrowind was making my own models and seeing them in the world (until I could no longer use the expensive software required to do this).

    I would love to play an on-line game where I could import my own 3D objects...
    • You cannot import models from other programs (at least yet), but one of the unique things about this program is that a modeler is BUILT-IN to the interface. You actually assemble the primitives, add textures, tinker with UV settings right there in-world. As someone who never could decide which I hated more, Truespace or 3DSMAX, I got used to the building interface for this pretty quickly. There are also scripting and physics properties which you can enable on an object by object basis.

      One of the "object

  • Copyright & MMOs (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by prator ( 71051 )
    I know that the SWG dev team has said that one of the reasons they don't allow the Musician profession to create their own music is that people could use copyrighted music.

    -prator

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