Interesting email from There

Got this in my inbox from There today:



What happened to "no longer supporting...", etc as per their press release of not so long ago?

They were loosing WAY too much money, on the verge of bankruptcy. I doubt they will be able to come back after loosing all that. And just to pull james millers string (since he just loves telling everyone, on every There forum I have googled, how much I hate there ). I hope they go out of bussiness.

Sounds to me like its Diet-SL. Even more so.

The client was modified to weight less, it now rely more on remote object loading then it used to. Thats how it looks like, anyway.

They did release a tweaker tool that lets you choose DirectX or OpenGL and a different resolution from the default, finally, but you need to know where it is to use it (thereclient\resources\dlls\theretweaker.exe) .

They loosen up the requirements on "sexy" cloth submissions, changed prices, and... thats about it. Its pretty much the same There, just has less people.

The E-Mail is pretty much an attempt to make the old membership who left the world to return and give it another look.

But they say it it's "Ultra-Cool!" so it must be!

I was in the trial, like, three months ago. and I got that too. Poor bastards are hemmoraging. Maybe M$ will by them out.

I got the email too, and out of curiousity I decided to go back in to see what has changed. First, the email said it supports more resolutions, which is really the main reason I went back. I HATED being in 800x600. Well lo and behold, it was still at 800x600!

I looked and looked for a way to change the resolution, to no avail. I finally emailed their support, and 24 hours later I got a response...to look at the Knowledge Base. Well I did, and found the utility to change the deafults. Cool

Anyway, I was in the world for like half an hour, and it crashed on me 3 or four times while trying out a buggy. The buggy seems like a cool vehicle, but the crashing made it...not so good. Also, the fact that water is nothing more than blue land is weird. Looks ok from a distance, but once you walk on it, the illusion is broken.

All in all, I would have to say sorry, There. No dice. Thank you for trying.

There really is no comparison. SL all the way

I am ashamed, ashamed of myself for originally thinking SL was a knock-off of There. But you can see who has my money now.

Its funny how people call SL a There rip off, when SL came out about 4 months BEFORE There, and LL has been working on SL for about 4 years now.

Ummm ... would it be bad if I admitted that I actually *liked* there? I liked riding the vehicles and exploring the terrains, heck, I even liked the dogs and the cartoony avatar.

But .. the reason why I'm here and not there is mostly because of the subcription price. 9 dollars for a lifetime sub, compared to 9 bucks monthly .. just cannot be beat

Actually There is the only world I knew of when I went in search of a virtual <dory>Es-cop-AAY</dory> from RL. I went to their site, looked hella cool then when I tried to sign up I was ushered to the "Oh, you're a mac user ... er ... yeah ... you're not good enough to play in our world, k thx bye" page and was really annoyed. I searched a bit more and found Second Life and the rest is history! I've often wished I could try out There just because I like the sorta cartoony look of it all but AFAIK they never came out with the promised Mac client they said they'd make. Bummer too ... the buggies looked neato

Sooooooo, no scripting eh. Buncha posers.

Have they added got any hairstyles that are longer than neck-length?

LOL! I still remember when James tried to convert me in There, and I was already an SL member. I'm no fan either. The other day I sent an email to Will Harvey, president of IMVU (and There's former president) telling him that he remains as greedy of a fuck as ever and I can't wait to see IMVU fail as spectacularly as There has. Have you seen IMVU? They charge for freaking avatars in an IM client. Talk about a gloried chat room. At least it does show that greed alone does not always prevail. The fact that they are now charging $4.95 a year shows how desperate they are, from the company that charged you for SAVING FAVORITE PLACES. The bust of the greed market in SL was a microcosm of There's entire economy - what goes up must come down, and There went BOOM, and is now bust.

Will Harvey is a great, imaginative and positive force in Virtual Worlds .. IMVU is the stepping stone into worlds like SL.

I shake my head at the short-sightedness of such negativity.

There has some neat ideas, but yeah, basicly not much has really changed.

I found changing resolutions first a pain to have to use an outside program, then a pain because alot of the GUI things either A) didn't work and were buggy or B) did not fit with the resolution change.

The new astrology pavilion is kinda neat though. Nothing that couldn't be done in SL, but still.

The new islands are kinda... eh, basicly they're mostly blank islands, with no new content. I'm sure if possible people will set up "PortaZones", basicly like a layout of structures using premade items you buy, put them inside a "Zone" (like a play-pin), then can put them in your inventory and take them out again and it'll be the same... however it costs money per hour to have them out.

Its good to see some development... but its really not enough.

There Inc. (now Forterra) decided to continue doing There updates after the outcry from users. The team is alot smaller however.

blaze, Will Harvey has done some nice things, but honestly IMVU is a solution looking for a problem, if it was a virtual world, it'd be There, but its not a virtual world, its a add-in with virtual worldesq ideas (such as an economy).

Note: There was not created by Will Harvey all on his own, alot of things that make there great, i.e. AI, Fluidity of Avatar Movement, Look And Feel, were done by other people.

Alot of the same restrictive mistakes that were made with There, are being made with IMVU.

And plus I have no faith in a product that requires me to buy my screen-name, when theres no reason for it (technicly your screen-name from your Messenger client would be choice to have show up for your avatar name and theres no reason to even have a membership with IMVU unless to buy/submit items with other people, which you shouldn't even have to do for an add-in), and then have someone from the company laugh in my face and say "yeah isn't that annoying?" when questioned about it.

Good base ideas, bad leaders behind implementing them.

If I just had a nickel for every time I've seen this....

LOL Phillip Rosedale is a great, imaginitve and positive force in virtual worlds. Will Harvey seems to have the opposite of the Midas touch, and the career karma to go with it. Granted, he tries to extract as much money as he can before the project goes to hell, but his entire vision is based upon profit and greed, not user experience or being visionary.

Oz hit the nail on the head - IMVU charges you for your screen name. There is nothing in IMVU they do not charge money for. I am surprised the download is free. There became the same way - they invented porta-zones so that they could charge you money to take out items you already owned, because god forbid you could use them without paying for them over and over. You may think that is brilliant, I think it is the epitome of greed and stupidity. There moved on to work with the US military, since they seem to be easier to get to part with large sums of money for stuff that ultimately doesn't work or they don't need, and are quite easy to overcharge. Bravo.

Sometimes you have to build the inbetween throwaway steps. IMVU is very throwaway -- BUT, it gets people more comfortable with avatars and interacting in a virtual way.

Harvey has to make money. Harvey very well knows that IMVU is gone in five years. So he has to recoup his investment NOW. He also knows that in order to get 10 million people playing in virtual worlds, you need to get them comfortable with that. Which is what IMVU is - a baby step.

Everyone is doing their part. Without IMVU, SL doesn't stand a chance.

Ryen, I don't recall mentioning you on any There forums. However, you constantly insult There users that are now in Second Life. It's a turn off to them. They go back to There and say that all the users in SL are nasty to There users. That's all.

There is not dead. A lot of people assumed There was dead when they announced that they weren't updating their software, yada yada. Two weeks later, they retracted their statement. They've been releasing updates, fixing bugs and adding features. They're still in the running.

I may not enjoy using There, but, I'm still going to give credit where it's due.

Will Harvey was great and imaginative but I don't think he has as much to do with the bigger picture anymore. He doesn't shine nearly as bright as he did back in the 80's. He has probably let the money float him away and become somewhat tired of it all.

The remark is stated somewhat negativly, but I doubt these are his exact words to Will Harvey. As far as that comment being short-sighted I'm not real sure what you are getting at. Do you mean imprudent?

There still being in the running is dubious at best. While There is not technically dead, for all intents and purposes it is, updates or not. The majority of its users have moved on. I have long time friends who staunchly stayed in There, even post-untimely death announcment, and they have now moved on to SL because There is empty. There is a big difference between not being dead, and thriving - which it definitely is not. I think at this point it is probably limping along as TSO is. I enjoyed There at one point, and have always separated There users from There the system (though There did have a high asshole quotient, because of the under 18 crowd). There's biggest downfall was its own greed and lack of vision - it went from being a magical place to an expensive, buggy bore that languished frozen in time. It definitely did have a time and a purpose - it was the ideal transition from TSO, more so than SL, which was certainly not ready for prime time until version 1.2. I don't think There will ever regain its stride again, unless they come out with a completely new service that is somehow revolutionary.

Does anyone happen to have any figures of There's population, either back when it was "popular" or now? I'm just wondering.

The one time I tried There was when it was in a time-limited beta.... only tried it once.

LF

Cristiano, I basically agree with what you posted.

Lordfly, supposedly, at the end of beta, there were something like 22,000 active users. Once you had to pay, that number went down quite a bit. I remember, one time when I went on during a big version update (Version 2.0, which included a game table, new hats, a new area to explore and lots of bugs), they were saying that 13,000 people were online at that time, which was why the system was slow. Not sure how solid any of these numbers are, but, that's what was passed around.

A few quick notes...



There has been around as a company since 1998, in closed testing since summer of 2000 through winter of 2002, and in public beta since January of 2003 until September 2003 when they launched Version 1. Of course they didn't have an official launch event until almost 2 months later when they started charging for regular memberships rather than the special "Lifetime" deal.



According to (Former There CEO) Tom Melcher's speech given at the There Real Life Gathering last fall, over 150,000 people signed up during the course of the Public Beta, while about 25,000 to 30,000 remained active towards the end. During the launch of There Version 2 in February of this year, it had been mentioned it was the first time they had ever had 1,000 simultaneous logins and no matter where you were in world, it was extremely slow. Shortly afterwards, it was also mentioned that membership was floating somewhere around 10,000 active paid members. I'm quite sure that number has dropped significantly over the past 6 months, especially after "Black Friday" as most Thereians are calling it. What has been the busiest place in all of There, Karuna Plaza has been nearly empty during most peak hours. The world itself appears to be a ghost town for most players.

According to rumors in the There community there has been a "Growth Trend" of old beta testers returning to game, of course most are just dropping in from other games seeing what’s new, saying hi to old friends, selling rare items from the beta days to cash out some RL$, then leaving.

Moving on...

This talk about "New Stuff" is of course a bunch of marketing mumbo jumbo since its just old content that has been sitting around for ages they finally decided to release. As a matter of fact, they've been dragging out some older closed beta era models for buggies for people to drive around and since most people have never seen them they think "WOW! NEW CONTENT!" In reality, There is sitting on a ton of content which they have yet to release, and will continue to trickle it into the world over a very long period of time so they can stretch it for the simpleton members who become overjoyed at the simplest new feature. "OMG! BUNNY SLIPPER TEMPLATES FOR WOMEN!"

One thing which was added in the update before last which it seems silly for them to be boasting in said email is "Higher resolutions" considering a post which was made by a There employee stating it was considered an "Unsupported Hack" and that if you change the default resolution its at your own risk. While its about damn time they started letting people do so, they really aren't pushing it. As noted by Driftwood Nomad its not something they actively are encouraging users to go look for.

What kills me is the "New Member Created Content." They give users a few tools to preview items in game which may seem a lot more polished than what SL gives us, it’s a horrific headache for anybody to pick up due to very poor engineering and quality checks. Recently they've started allowing users to submit objects with animated textures. In addition to the existing fees for uploading an item, you have to pay an extra 20k, plus an extra 2k per copy than what the item usually goes for.

Just thought I'd share some insight