There is feeling the heat

i just got an email from there.com telling me what a valued member of the community I am (LOL) and telling me about all the new features being incorporated next week in the all new limited release. There is going to have a few dance movements, a new bald-head look for avs and partially customizable houses (You can choose classic Polynesian or new Tiki looks, woohoo!) that you can now furnish yourself! No details on whether their customer service will be starting to respond if someone runs over you in their dune buggy six times...

Lmao. I really wonder how much money it takes to keep up the There servers compared to how much it takes to keep up the SL servers. You gotta remember that there are a whole friggen lot of suckers over at There paying real cash for Therebucks, so There can't be dieing too hard...

I talked to one guy who was trying to get me to purchase some therebucks in order to buy his goddamn beach buggy- which I kept telling him I didnt want. He told me that one of his friends had spent over $500 to buy therebucks. That is a lot of therebucks. One of the big problems they have is that a lot of the players keep defrauding the newbies, who come in groups (or classes) there.

Wait a sec, you mean that in the game, There, you spend rl cash for in-game money??? I mean, not like buying plat in EQ, but the game is BUILT that way??

That's crazy! I mean, sure, I once bought plat to get a good drum for my bard, but it's just too weird that the game itself lets you buy it. It's almost creepy.

It's evil and scary. But what MAKES it evil and scary is that it'll work.

(For the accountants over There, at least.)

when I tried it back in Jan you got like 10k free therebucks. Sounded like a good deal til I tried to buy some things. I couldnt afford new hair and a pair of pants for 10k. eek!

You start with a whole lot less cash here but it goes a heck of a lot farther!

What really bugs me is that they keep saying that they had an economist do their economy. That was their response whenever I said "There is too much inflation, this economy has so many problems!"

Well, duh, they probably told the economist "Make it so there is tons of inflation, so we make tons of money as people buy therebucks."

*grr*

There has one other big problem. They don't run 24/7. SL and TSO went 24/7 during their open beta periods. Assuming that PST works for everyone will only ensure that international customers will never find the time to play.

just a thought...

Could it be that There has too many "issues" to go 24/7?

There's not really responded to *requests* from beta testers to go 24/7 either. I have no idea why they might do this -- I'm not up on why it takes them 8 hours a day to do updates or even gaming planning for that matter -- I'm just a player, you know? But to me it's weird that they make the play time so limited -- and also weird that they *refuse* to do anything about the overinflated economy. What gets me is that they make it sooo difficult to *make* money in There that's its no even worth the time. Got a t-shirt you designed? It's going to cost you about 5 bucks in RL money to get that thing uploaded, and *then* they charge you "wholesale" costs for each item you try to sell plus a "listing fee" to auction it! Shouldn't they be rewarding people who put content into the game that they *don't* have to pay for? No paying designers and programmers to do the clothes and buggies? After playing SL, I'm beginning to think There is truly a big scam. IMHO.

Zana

LOL, James, that's exactly what I thought when I heard the "we have an economist" line from There.

Having played both, and read a fair amount about them, it's interesting that such superficially similar pitches/concepts can be so different in practice.

There is being pitched primarily as a new chat client, more than anything else. They deliberately designed it with technically unsophisticated older women (no offense intended by me; that's how they describe their target user) in mind. So everyone (and everything) is blandly attractive, everyone looks human-normal, building is only for the registered few, activities are generally well executed, but rather constrained, it's all emphatically PG rated, etc...Despite claiming NOT to be a game, it ends up feeling very game-like (IMHO, anyway).

Second Life (as I see it) is for socializers, too, but even more for builder/explorer/creative types. It's rough around the edges, features ugly av contests, is unpredictable, and not necessarily "safe." Despite having things like the leader boards, Second Life feels less like a game, more open-ended to me.

I don't think There's going to do well with its ostensible target audience at all--who want's to pay $10/mo. to chat, even in 3-D? But There may still do better than SL, through aggressive marketing/distribution deals, and judicious borrowing of good ideas from SL.

I've started talking about them in terms of Windows v. Mac. It's not totally fair, given that there's no reason any one "3-D open-ended virutal world experience" needs to dominate. And There is actually very well designed. But the analogy (and the potential threat) feels accurate.

-Jay