I am truly impressed with SL.. you got yourself another customer

I guess you could lump me into the Slashdot Programmer crowd (I write code for a living and read /. daily), so maybe your ga.... err world has some sort of crack-like appeal to programmers, but in any case I have a tremendous amount of respect for what has been accomplished here in SL.

It started with a conversation with a friend about the failure of the current crop of MMOGs to entertain without forceing me as a player to endure countless hours of "adventure" *rolls eyes* that is rought with legendary amounts of tedium. Who in thier right mind (ok actually left mind since thats the logic center) would want to kill the same exact stat-wise orc 1000 times over for the privlage of gaining 1 of 5 bubbles towards the next level, which would entitle you to begin the whole process over agian but this time the orc has 20 more hit points and is wearing red instead of blue warpaint. No Thanks mister wizard, I see you feet poking out from underneither the curtain, you can stop pulling the levers, I will keep my 13 bucks a month.

I blaim Brad McQuaid and his "LACK" of "VISION". UO turned on the water but EQ bent the pipes in its direction. No one takes chances with millions of dollars and the EQ game style was/is the surest bet going.

CONTENT IS KING; MMORPGS make money because they make a weeks worth of RPG content last 52 weeks. Its simple economics from this standpoint. People crave group interaction, a feeling of belonging within thier social organization and an audience for thier own accomplishments. The week of unique content hooks them and the social ties turn up the competitive juices to keep them. Personally I think *sensored* measuring contests that compare who can kill the 1000 orcs the fastest are about as competitive as who can hold their hand on the hot stove the longest. Its a measure of endurance, endurance of pain or endurance of tedium.

As my friend and I argued these points, I came the realization that MMORPGs for me are dead as a method of entertainment. I am sure I will buy a few of the big ones that hit the shelves to experience that week of content that they actually have but I doubt any one in particular will keep my interest beyond a month or two.

I feel asleep that night wishing that EQ had fallen flat on its face so we as gamers wouldn't have to endure so many more years of what I think is the wrong direction for the genre (but hey what do I know).

I swear if the guys on the Manhatten project would have just sleept every six hours I am convinced we could have come up with the bomb (or maybe an even better solution) in half the time. The wonders of the raw computational power of the unhindered subconcious. An idea poped into my head while in the shower still half-asleep.

What if the players made the content?

WHoopeee... yeah Matt your brilliance doth shine through.. they have only been doing that in MUDS since about 10 years before EQ even came out... some evil genius you turned out to be.

Ok true, but why cant we do that in our graphical MMORPGs?

Well because moron normal people don't have the talent or incentive to create real games.

Really.. hmm I don't think I have ever meet a good programmer that wouldn't rather be writing code for games. Nor have a ever met a good graphic artist that wouldn't rather be building artwork for a gaming company.

Its too complicated for the normal game player, it requires too much effort and time?

If the creation interface is made easy enough, people with the natural inclination to build will gladly spend countless hours developing content for the rest of us... FOR FREE!!! FPSs taught us that.

Hmmm I could be on to something here, but how would you control the code. Ameteaur programmers break servers... for fun!!

Bottle them up into a VM and give them a subset of commands. As the hosting company you could provide a constantly updating list of useful commands. Constantly cycle through optomization of the engine and depend on Moores Law to expand your game capacity.

Sounds like the perfect recipe for success, perhaps a little too visionary and ambitious for todays hardware. If I win the lottery tommorrow I will start collecting my team to develop this MMOG of the future.

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Those were the thoughts that ran through my head. And then I stumble upon a gamespot articile about the future of MMORPGSs. YADA YADA... Oh look Brad McQuaid expressing his desire to keep the MMORPG industry exactly the way it is... how wonderfully unambitious of him. But you know that Second Life developer, he really "Gets It". Wow his ideas are almost completely in line with what I was thinking about. I just read an article on Second Life allowing its citizens to actually own things on slashdot and I am pretty sure that means its some sort of Sims Online clone (blah great I get to do stuff that I HATE doing in everyday life... ONLINE.. how wonderful). Well lets check the site anyway maybe its different.

Flash forward to now. WOW... I really mean WOW. You do truly get it.

Yes I am truely dissappointed in that the vision I had of players creating thier own mini-MMORPGs within the confines of a larger world is not what you created. Your world is much more.. hmm how do I put this.. lower rez than I was expecting. Thats really my fault though, I had insanly high expectations. I even thought my ideas (ok so they are also your ideas and you actually implemented something) were too ambitious for todays hardware and bandwidth speed.

But if I draw a line from that perfect vision of mine all the way back to an initial implementation, well then SL is about as close as I think one can come. Bravo, guys Bravo. Taxes do limit our freedom but I really get the indication that if they weren't absolutly necessary they wouldn't be there.

I have never felt so free within a game and still have that game be insanly addictive. You did a great job, you get my 14+ a month (I will be signing up tonight).

Your path from here is long and difficult. Your not done. We will cover your content for the time being, YOU need to continue developing better tools and expanding your hardware so that we can provide even more content for the users that will come here specifically FOR the content and not for the freedom to develop it.

Matt

Welcome Matt! If you think SL is great now, trust me dude, you ain't seen nothing yet. I wouldn't doubt that Linden Lab is the company to bring to us that version of SL you had thought up in your head, so it's a good thing you're sticking around, I'm sure you'll grow to love it even more

I had the same impression of SL as you did. I had known about it since beta, but never gave it a try, as I figured it was just another mediocre attempt to cash in on the current MMO buzz.

It wasn't until I read the article on slashdot that I realized that they were worth considering, as they had made a very smart move (with the copyright ownership issue). That prompted me to read up a bit more on SL by doing a google search, but there was very little information about it other than press releases.

It really wasn't until I installed and ran SL until I could see how amazing it is... SL deserves a lot more recognition than it's getting, as I would have certianly tried it a lot sooner if I had known what it was all about from the start.

Well Kex, what other game out there gives you the opportunity to experience sliding down a 300m ramp on a giant toilet?

Siggy.

I also was drawn to this through that same /. article. Normally I wouldn't have even given this, or any other MMOG a single look. I just couldn't imagine spending my time and money on pointless slaying of *insert genre character*. In RL I enjoy scripting things. I run *nix OS's and I script everything. . So naturaly the creation of your own scripts and objects really appealed to me. I couldn't resist any longer. I broke out the old dusty Win2k disks, fought through the virii that immidiatly attacked my computer, and downloaded the numorous security updates required to save me from a few of the threats. On the second day of my 7 day trial, I was hooked. Third day, I had already created the textures for my entire RL wardrobe and moved them into my SL. Fourth day, I subscribed. Now all I need is my new Power Suply so my Radeon 9700 mass driver...i mean... video card will stop crashing. Needed one anyway I suppose. .