I just realized!

Second Life isn't a truly new concept. There was a online chat program several years ago that was a 2d/3d hybred (think duke nukem 3d or Doom) that allowed for building and combat. Couldn't create clothes, furniture, ect. but you could build a small house and there was areas for fighting other people. and building was more like playing with legos, take a flat, tall square and place it down, repeat till you have a basic house.
Why am I bringing this up?
Well look at what you can do in SL. Way more than this early graphic chat program could do! Also it show the evolution of games, how just a few years ago such things like SL were near impossible.

Ya this concept has been playing around in all of the game developers minds, just that no-one wanted to spend that much time working on a project as big as that, and their really was not the technology to handel such a massive world like that, until now. It just took the Linden folk to break the borders and acutually do it. Still get great props for the choice too.

Anyone remember Graal Online or still play it??

You could be able to do a lot scirpting and building level wise to host ur own servers with that. Just the only bad thing about it was that it was 2D. But you could upload any avantar images you wanted to. Man thoses were and still are good days.

Or if u really want to go old school, the days where it took the long amounts of time to make a MUD story world...

Graal would've been so much cooler if the PKers didn't waait within the gates...

i would've continued playing graal, but it regularly glitched on me, making intermittent high-pitched painful screeches and squeals...

i've also been a GM (lesser god of evil, actually ) in a MUD, unfortunately we never got more than 10-12 users, and there were seldom more than 2 or 3 logged on at the same time

LegendMUD forever man! The concept behind SL is no new item (see There) but the way SL has been brought to life truly has no equal, at least until SL SR 1.

Activeworlds is something VERY similar to this that has been out since I think 1995 although Second Life is far superior to it. There are also some other not very well known kinds of programs that have been out years ago that are probably dead now. It isn't a new concept but they have improved on it so much that there isn't really anything that can compare.

Activeworlds... that sounds familiar. That may have been the one I was thinking about.

The idea of a massive world online world is definitly not new. I've also played MUD's and Active World, but nothing compares to Second Life

Yeah, Active Worlds was the first thing I was reminded of when I first saw Second Life. I'm still very new to it, but I think I definitely like SL more. The interactivity / scripting / physics aspect seems so much more powerful, and the avatar system is much more elaborate. I also like how it is all in one world... instead of needing to hop around to different worlds / servers.

The only thing I miss about Active Worlds is the ability to make models using dedicated 3d programs.

No, the concept of SL isn't new.

It's just an example of getting the concept right for a change