Blue Mars beta

I got acceptance email today after a 4 day turn-around. I'm running XP and it works but my graphics card isn't up to the task so I'll have to wait 'til the recession is over to check it out I guess.

To Avatar Reality, the company that runs Blue Mars, the developers are their customers. But everyone else is the customer of the developer. This doesn't say to me that the developers have all the power - quite the contrary - it says that if the Developers don't please their customers they will soon be out of business because they are the ones that have to pay Avatar Reality whether they make any money from customers or not.

This is not unlike SL. Linden Labs doesn't get into disputes between business owners and their customers either.

I don't see this clothing thing being a problem. So you're a typical virtual tourist/consumer in Blue Mars. Where are you gonna go - museums, parks, all that fancy stuff in the videos, maybe check out some clubs, residential neighborhoods, do some shopping ... It would make no sense whatsoever to force people to buy your clothes to enter regions like that.

Outside of roleplaying and games I don't see why anyone would force anything other than perhaps no nudity.

And this kind of stuff :



comes across more like ranting than discussing. In my humble opinion only, of course

Nobody can force anyone to buy anything. I know that sounds cliche, but then again it's completely up to the individual. Personally, I feel it is unthinkable to disallow anyone to a proclaimed "public" area by requiring they purchase clothing sets (or other objects) solely for the purpose of attendance. Then it's not really public and you probably would not want to attend anyway. LL basically nerfed exploration when the telehubs disappeared and the banlines went up. It was a half-measure at the expense of something else. It didn't stop griefing insomuch as reduced it, somewhat. I dunno about you, but I cannot stand bumping into those things and I really miss happening upon unexpected cool things.

BM will not be a free-for-all metaverse like the SL mainland (which is a dogs breakfast in some areas), although there will likely be communities which will compile into their own metaverses. It's more like SL without the mainland, except with better self-created tools for management.

I'm quite certain, most city owners would prefer to develop their own management tools, as opposed to having the universal and often half-assed tools, such as the ones LL imposes on sim owners. For those estate owners who are inept developers, there is nothing stopping them from buying the tools they need to manage a business. Like Photoshop or any other application, it's a mere expense of doing business, except with greater flexibility and necessity for the purposes intended.

Exactly.

Hardly, just expressing my thoughts. Taking issue with my posting style is not having a discussion either and does not need to be explored here, please keep such observations to yourself.
Perhaps I am just a bit more wordy than a lot but then your view and Dave's come across as naive, just my humble opinion of course.

Perhaps some will, but I do not think that any who do will be successful in the long run. I can't imagine that's a sustainable business model.

[ETA] I had to try no less than 20 times, and switch browsers, to post this reply... Looking forward to working with a company that actually cares about making support forums work.

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Well I honestly do hope that you and Imagin are right, because I would like BM to succeed. I would like there to be good competition to SL and it follows that I would like then to be part of that. I don't think there is anything wrong to asking questions and exploring the answers is all.

There are a lots of examples of self-defeating tactics in SL that seemed great ideas for the short term to boost revenue. Don't forget that not everyone is very smart. Some less smart people are however quiet tenacious and skip from one bad practice to another in order to survive. There is nothing to stop those from coming to BM and doing the same.

Without knowing your history, let's say you were in TSO or AW or There.

Then someone comes along and tells you SL v1.0 is in development. You hear that in SL v1.0 you will have to tolerate your neighbor's ugly builds, can't import animations, can't listen to streaming audio, adcutters will butcher the land to make it unsaleable, other avatars will push, orbit and spam your land with self-replicating objects and particles, others will copy your products for resale, the events will be spammed by non-events and so on.... how impressed would you be?

Things change.

Naive?, my ass.

Your analogy fails, nobody knew those things would happen. If you could go forward to the future and see all of BMs actual failings (and every system have them) and then put them to a prospective user like that, I bet you would find that user would be less than interested too.
Of course you are deliberately missing out all the good stuff too to offset it. Don't tell me there isn't any good stuff because why would you have stayed in SL so long, or anyone for that matter?

Yes naive, certainly naive enough to put all your faith in BM like this without question despite the virtual world you currently inhabit having given you such a raw deal (my impression from your own words).
I would be and am far more wary and cautious.
Ever heard of "Fool me once, ..." ?

In beta SL, you could not upload animations, listen to streaming audio, could not stop pushes etc. These were apparent REALITIES at the time, not after-thoughts. SL had and still has MAJOR deficiencies and to even begin to suggest that BM is doomed to the same fate is "naive", especially when I have seen "proof" of the opposite from the BM team.

Don't even begin to assume you know who I am and what I do. It's impossible to debate your flawed fallacy, because you seem to have made up your own mind about who "I" am and what "my" motivations are.

There have been many accusations of "fanboi" on this post and now even "naive" but honestly I think that the strongest opinions have come from the naysayers. I thought all the negativity was people just not wanting to learn something new or start over but apparently some people also find it helpful to protect themselves against disappointment by significantly lowering their expectations. Interesting. And sad.

It was beta, it could have changed, nobody could see if it would be or not - that is what I was referring to when I say nobody could foresee what would happen.

I am not assuming anything about you nor claiming I know anything about you except what impression of you, I get from your words here and the fact you are still around (ergo there must be some merit left in this for you - it does not take needing to assume anything to figure that). What flawed fallacy? You present a flawed analogy, most analogies are flawed - yours is not any exception.

BTW Nobody is assuming BM is doomed, I certainly don't think so.
I think you and a few others are taking all this too much to heart as if it is some kind of personal thing against you. Why are you and a few others so defensive against any discussion of perceived things that are concerns?

Once again I will say this, I am not a naysayer nor am I negative. If I were I would not have signed up, however I am discussing things that are of concern, good and bad.
Why are you so defensive about it?
What is sad is that you cannot discuss concerns like this without calling names.

When did I say that?.... I didn't. Hence the flawed fallacy.

I didn't say you did, I was saying don't go on to tell me... as in please don't use that as part of your next argument in case you were going to. Hence no fallacy.

F.Y.I. If a statement is false then it can be considered to be flawed inherently (ie. it is false). Calling it a flawed fallacy is redundant.

If you're going to count that, then I can say that Blue Mars will generate Langford Fractal Basilisks and destroy your brain four years from now. You can't prove it won't happen.

You do not have to be naive, nor do you have to "put all your faith" in something, to be enthusiastic about it. Not even to be wildly enthusiastic.

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So does Blue Mars. You happen to consider some of them advantages, but then I consider some of what you're calling deficiencies of SL to be advantages.

Ethusiasm is fine, even if it is unwise and naive (imo) not to temper that with caution (especially after maybe being burned before). However jumping over all concerns being discussed is quite another and crosses the line into blindness. Going blind into something new is not wise at all.

You might be right, but I think nowadays it's much harder to get away with crap like that. It's easier than ever for people to 'get the word out' about something they feel is unfair, which could make it difficult for such seedy developers to sustain their business.

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I have been involved in virtual worlds almost as long as there's been any kind of online environment that could be called a virtual world. The ones that have been most like a "world" and least like a game platform or chat system have been the ones that allow the most flexibility ... even at the risk of griefing (or especially at the risk of griefing) and have the least distinction between the capabilities of players. Boosters of Blue Mars have actively pushed the kinds of features that break down this flexibility and democracy as *advantages* of Blue Mars.

I have started over dozens of times, from Plato and MUDs through Fuzzball and Mucks to Second Life. I will start over again, when I find something genuinely better... but "genuinely better" doesn't mean "better graphics around an authoritarian code base". Something with simpler graphics, even something like Lively, could be better if the code allowed the kinds of constructs routine in MUDs and Mucks... even for people without the "Wizard Bit".

Perhaps you are right also, I hope you are. I am not a fan of locking things down this much though and it concerns me about the future viability of BM. Unlike some, I happen to think that as well as being one of its greatest weaknesses, the free-form abilities we have in SL have also been its greatest strengths and probably contributed more to its success than anything else. Without it SL may have just stagnated before it really got started. Raising concerns and discussing them is a good thing. If something is really not a problem then discussing the concerns does nothing to harm it, if it is a problem then it raises a chance to fix it.

Well, I guess I see it somewhat differently. I am wildly enthusiastic, but although I temper that enthusiasm with caution in RL, I'm not here to write about my caution. I'm here to share my enthusiasm and whatever information I can discover as I work with the BM SDK, and that's likely all you'll see. I tend to assume others are doing the same.

To be naive and not 'temper that with caution' would be to announce I'm quitting Second Life altogether 'cause I'm going to be HUGE in Blue Mars or whatever VW.Next comes along

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Which brings us to an important point you made earlier in this thread.

If in 2003, SL was supposed to be a death-star to other virtual world, then why are they still live?

One man's trash is another man's treasure. I would never demean anyone who chose to remain. Some people have set their marks and are content with them. Having the freedom of choice is a good thing.

In all honesty, it's my hope that some of the scoundrels and self-proclaimed whatevers don't emmigrate to BM.

BM will be better off without them.