Horizons, those copycats!

Read for yourself. Copycats!


Thats only the first part, be sure to go to the link and read more.

Bastids!!!

Interesting link, thanks.

While I was over at http://www.mmorpg.com/ I thought I'd see what they had written about Second Life.

I stumbled across a rather interesting rating review of SL dated July 8, 2004. I'll let y'all find it yourselves, though

Aw give them a break. They already went bankrupt and are struggling just to keep alive.

Nice.

Of course, I noticed the HUGE featured box ad for Second Life directly on the homepage.

Go go ad campaign!

MMORPG.COM is one of the first places I read about Second Life. I wasn't thoroughly convinced at first so I had to go to places like Cristiano's SLUniverse.com and Hamlet's NWN and find out more for myself.

But then again, can one really be such a blatant copycat when it comes to such a brilliant, obvious idea? Shades of Amazon's 1-click system... it's more of a "DOH! WHY DIDN'T I THINK... OR *DO* THAT FIRST?!?"

When I think "Horizons", I think the James Holden track, not a MMO. =)

Horizons, when everquest meets dragons with second life land.

They deserve to go bankrupt, their 'idea' is nothing but a bunch of old, crappy ideas rehased but with DRAGONS!

Take their ad campaign for example 'Massivly Muiltplayer from a different perspective', that basically saying their only new idea is dragons, which differ from normal players...well they dont differ from normal players.

You know what I like about Second Life? Well, one of the things, anyway...

In Second Life, if you want dragons, you can have dragons. Heck, you can BE a dragon here too... if you want robots, got that too. Jedi? Check. Supermodels with junk in the trunk 10x of J. Lo? Sure. Donald Trump? Well, haven't seen him yet, but I just like how in SL, there are rules, but they don't put you in neat little boxes. First Life's not that way, and neither is Second Life.

But I'm happy that on the market, there are alternatives for people to choose from. If someone is so inclined to be a member of SL, There, TSO, and Horizons, then that is one's choice and it's cool as a block of ice at the bottom of the ocean.

BTW, in Horizons, can you be a NON-dragon if you want?

Yeh. Horizions was a nice concept, back in, oh... 2000 or so. It was going to be a racial PvP game with Dragons being a "neutral" race that everyone wanted a piece of because of dragon parts being useful construction materials. Then they were going to make dragons uber-weak when they were young, and make them age over time, and get stronger. The fact that everyone wanted their guts for parts would have quite possibly been effective population control. Throw in such races as Angels and Demons, underwater races, some strange lizards, and an elemental-based magic system that would eventually control weather (and lightning striking armor clad folk was a possibility) and you had an amazing game.

Then they ripped it to pieces and made it an EQ clone with DRAGONS! *sigh*

Torley...















... you're fired.

/rimshot

Hahaha... I stopped watching The Apprentice 2 because there wasn't enough Trump.

Let's not fool ourself into believing that the clumpsy 3D models you can create in Second Life come anywhere close to fully functional dragons or monsters or combat systems of real games.

All attempts in SL to provide elements of fantasy roleplay games that I have seen sofar are nothing more than simple prototyping.

Telling a player who is looking for a real game with story, quests and combat that Second Life is for him is like... like I tell him that one C compiler is best game of all time. Yes! With C compiler you can create all the best quests and gameplay and so on! Why bother about other games

The reality is that we as the Second Life builder community sofar have completely failed to provide appealing game content for fantasy roleplayers of the achiever and killer types, and to a certain degree even the explorers. Mmmm, yes. All I see is fashion, furniture, sex script and lots of buildings without any function other than selling stuff. Maybe there is some mini games that get boring fast. But where is the real RPG content? Any 10 year old text MUD offers more and better roleplaying game content than we have been able to provide.

Games like Horizons or Everquest etc. provide story, quests, combat, goals, animated non-player agents and excellent guided content. This is completely missing in SL and I believe some of us should get down from their high horses and admit the weaknesses of SL as it is now. Only if you realize your own shortcomings you can work on fixing them. 90% of online players still consider SL odd because the content they are looking for is missing.

If we want SL to become mainstream we will need lots of guided content for consumers.

Yes, but nobody is going to play games in a streamed context.

Unless NPCs, much smarter caching and what not occurs, I think the focus on games is a mistake. I think it should be on knowledged based services.

Well, Anshe almost said it all. Yes, there is very little content for the diehard RPG enthusiast in SecondLife.

But there is a reason for this. SecondLife IS NOT A GAME.

Everquest, Horizons, TSO and the rest are deliberately written as games. SecondLife is a 3D developement environment in which you could create games if you want, based on mythical creatures or a fashion business or anything in between.

Most of all, SecondLife could become the 3D, fully imersive version of the World Wide Web. Imagine you're "playing" SecondLife, it's late, there are no good movies on TV, so you jump into your favorite hover plane and drop in on the drive in movie theatre that some pretencious noob built last week. You look down the list of available films and spy one that you've been wanting to see for years. You drop the L$ in the pay booth and the film starts streaming. There are several other people in the drive in as well, all watching the same 'screen' but they see the film that they chose, not yours.

Yes I know this technology isn't in SecondLife yet, but how long? Here's something that could be done tomorrow... Your RL bank could open a branch in SL. No you couldn't deposit or withdraw RL cash, but you could do everthing that you would normally do using online banking AND you could speak to bank staff just as if you were stood in the branch. The bank could also provide money exchange services, using the GOM rate, so you could effectivly withdraw L$ direct from your RL bank account.
There have been lots of web sites selling books and things for years. There is no reason why any of these can't open a store in SL taking payment in L$. You give them your name and address when you buy online.. why not here?
All the major supermarkets in UK (Tesco, Asda, etc..) all have online shopping where you do your weekly shopping from a stock list. Wouldn't it be better if they build a full sized store in SL that you could walk around and pick the items from the shelf like a RL store?

But there is one thing stopping any of this from happening. Users keep refering to SecondLife as A GAME.

Hmm, Suppose you may have missed DarkLife which was on its way to becoming a great RPG in SL. RPG's and advanced games can be done in SL, just no one has taken the time to continue them.

Bah, Surina don't write posts when I am!

It would be interisting to see ecomerce in SL, but I don't think ecomerce would really work in SL right now. Mostly because SL isn't mainstream enough for it yet and there wouldn't be enough profit to take the chance to do it.

SL does have the advantage of alot of virtual worlds though for ecomerce in that people in SL are already used to the setups alot of business would go for, i.e. you could do a regular store style, or some sort of kiosk style. This kind of thing has failed in other vw's because it seems people aren't comfortable with buying things through it (exception being There). Also alot of them tried doing it before the whole ecomerce boom developed.

I have seens DarkLife. It falls into the failed prototypes category.

I did not say games can't be made in SL. But it is not enough that somebody *could* theoretically program a game in SL. If this somebody does not exist and nobody makes the game then the game does not exist. The average RPG gamer definitely can't create a game in SL, beside the fact that she would want to be consumer and not be forced to be producer.

Concerning the statement that Second Life is not a game: If that is true, then Linden Lab should stop marketing it on websites like MMORPG.COM or Gamespot. Of course Second Life is *also* supposed be a game, even a roleplaying game. It is great social virtual lovemaking and house building game. But it is completely lacking guided content, quests, combat and other highly popular type of RPG content. I am told that even There has quest engine.

Telling people that SL has dragons, pvp or anything you would like is marketing vapor. It is a half truth at most, because all I have seen in that category is useless, disconnected mockup prototype. Dragons are not animated, don't give out quests or fight such as is standard in any real RP game. They are as dead and useless as some dragon I load into Poser 3D program. The rudimentary PvP in SL is unbalanced, open to cheats and outright pointless, lacking any story or objective. I could go on like this, but I think you got my point.

What work well in SL sofar is individuals or very small groups of people doing very simple projects. Make a t-shirt, build a 3D model, script a simple vehicle or vendor, build a mall. But I have yet to see significant number of people contribute to a sustained team effort, such as the development of a real RP game would require. 90% of the work on DarkLife was done by one individual who was not able to sustain that engagement in the long run.

Mmmm, now this sound negative and it is. But not without purpose, because it should lead us all to a question: Could we change this? How could Second Life be taken to that next level where it could provide the content that 90% of RPG fans are looking for? How could we make BIG project possible, the type of project that involve 50 skilled people over 6 months, how keep people motivated and finance infrastructure for it?

Ok for explorers your way off.

As for games, Horizons, it was created by a huge company and the dev's spent long hours each day, time that SL dev's just don't have. They work in a team in the same office. But - that doesn't stop us from trying. When we do try, we realize we need more speed and more memory or a new feature. So we ask for the features, the community says "WRite better code idiot" or "That's a stupid feature loser" and when our content is stolen we're told "Too bad, so sad". I totally agree with what your saying Anshe, but the content devlopers try. We try.

To Ansche and Surina,

You miss the big picture. Think larger than games. SL will be the new Internet.

Does the Internet have a whole bunch of story-driven content? No. That's not what made the Internet big.

Does SL have the potential for this? Yes.
Would it be really cool? Yes.
Would it add to how fast it grows? Yes.
Is it the underlying reason why it does or does not grow? No way.

To Hiro
You missed my post.. that is precisely what I said...

I have to agree here, lets look at runescape. Is it the most amazing mmorpg ever? No, why? Because it is a simple web based game that streams to your computer. Sound familar?

I would like to see more games-within-a-game in SL. There are some cues pointing to that RPG set of elements, not to mention the emulative process of having avatars that resemble those from EQ, Final Fantasy, etc. The MMORPG market offers plenty of choice right now and will only continue to get more saturated. (I notice an odd dearth of cyberpunk adventures, for whatever reason. ) I'm getting a sort of Adventure Construction Set vibe, only more advanced and almost two decades on. I'm even hopeful that someday, the responsiveness situation will have improved to the point of doing a smooth driving sim.

I don't think Second Life can be everything, and while it's expandable, it is unknown if will become as ubiquitous as Kleenex is to tissue paper. And so for the consumer, we have these choices. But a main thing is to get the word out there, and to let people what SL is all about. That way, they can make an informed decision instead of looking puzzled when you say "Would you like to live a Second Life?" I was looking for a place like this for quite some time and wasn't buzzed about it sooner.

BTW, I personally use the term "game" very broadly -- there are certain gaming aspects to SL, and it goes beyond that as well. Kind of like how water is a liquid, and it's not just for drinking.

It's going to be tough to come up with more solid definitions until this is many years behind us. Only then will hindsight bless us with an ability to sort out what happened and was -- from the future perspective -- frozen in the past.

Anshe has this one right. I was looking originally to use SL as a server platform for a small graphical type mud. LSL nowhere near supports such an endeavor, there is just nothing you can really do to another avatar, and you have to be able to to support a full RPG.

SL has a lot of great qualities. True gaming experience it is not though, even though their adds make it sound so. I like SL a lot, just wish we had more power to truly be creative.

I read a few days ago that Artifact has sold the everything pertaining to Horizons, can't remember the name of the company that did. So it looks like it'll still be around.

Ha I don't know about a 10 year old text MUD offering more to gamers than SL. I'm a hardcore FPS gamer. I'll play anything (except a text based game lol). I've tried every game I can get my hands on, and nothing compares to SL. Half Life 2 has be a bit excited because of the developer support.

We could do something exactly like Horizons in SL but only if the community supported the developers and there was an easier way to organize massive 2-5 year projects. Instead, the community is focused on the rating system, dwell and socializing, drama, politics, popularity, respect.