Did you participate in online communities before SL?

Did you participate in online games or communities before you came to SL? If so, what games/communities, and for how long?

If you did, do you think they helped you to better learn and understand SL?

If you didn't, how steep did you find SL's learning curve to be?

usenet (from 198, yahoo groups (when they opened), mucks/muds/moos (from 1989), brettspielwelt (2000), livejournal (2001), orkut/friendster/yahoo360 (when they opened), probably forgetting somethingyes, but having a programming, web, and graphic design background also helps.

of course, the usual yahoo and *cough* the Sims online*cough*.

As for forum culture, I stumbled across a forum for power gamers over a year ago. I stuck it out because I liked their humor there. Its not a nice, fluffy forum. If you reply with LOL to a post, be prepared to be flamed. Lots of debate and sarcasm. Its kinda like boot camp for the forum world.

It is so hard for me to not incorporate that in any other forum. I find myself editing posts a lot.


oh and LOL.

If EQ & DAOC count, then yes.

Otherwise, no.

I had to think for a minute before I realized that I've been up to my eyeballs in online communities for about 10 years. Usenet to a small degree, but really got my start in the old Compuserve forums (DOS text days) as an admin/sysop on a couple of forums. Those communities were much smaller and more intimate than my next step -- the world of MMRPGs. We don't often think of online roleplaying games as communities but they really do fit the criteria. That took me through Ultima Online, Everquest, Dark Age, Anarchy Online, Star Wars Galaxies, World of Warcraft and some others I've forgotten.

I wasn't in TSO for long (too many kids), and I beta'd There but I could tell from the structure of those worlds that if certain things were different I'd find a home. I found that home in Second Life, I believe. Great people, great concept, a vent for my creative streak and lots of parties. What more could I want?

Long live GNE.

I played Horizons for over a year, parallel with being in There.

Activeworlds for 5 years or so before that, really got into build mode as well as landscaping there and started making my own 3D objects in rwx, had to make my own textures too to get what i wanted as well.

So after the basic introduction to the SL tools it was pretty easy to get going, with building anyways.
It was quite hard to get started on texturing clothing as that was a first for me, but since i had years of knowledge of photoshop and help/advice from friends that helped me alot.

Ive been here for nearly 10 months now, and there is still tons of things to learn and keep me busy

Letsee....as far as games go, there was Ragnarok Online, Gunbound, Diablo 2, Neverwinter Nights, Final Fantasy XI, and currently Guild Wars. Communities, there was Palace Chat (Balamb Gardens), Livejournal (TMI community), and currently Guild Wars forums. That's all I can think of at the moment.



I think it did, it didn't take long for me at all to learn the basics, and after that, it didn't take long to learn how to make clothes (even though they were very crappy, hehe). Still learning to build though And, socially, basically don't be an ass, others will be one for you, heh.

In chronological order (listing MMOs only) -

- UO (Trial Period)
- DAoC (2.5 years)
- Planetside (three months)
- SWG (three-to-five months)
- Horizons (six months)

I would say much is done similar, if only because people tend to emulate these experiences. The holdovers from MMORPGs work sometimes, but all things considered, other MMOs and SL are in many ways apples and oranges.

One other problem is in their scope. The titles listed are all what I call singular-vision MMO environments, because everything you're able to do must be themed accordingly. By contrast, Second Life is a multi-vision MMO environment, meaning we can conform with two or more "themes" at the cost of consistency.

Interestingly, the far latter on the list, Horizons, has entered a phase where they're relying on users to contribute their work to the actual game (so I am told; I no longer maintain an account there). This was brought on in reaction to their current financial troubles. It's not a publicized fact, but I feel it's a step in the right direction for the genre.

Edit: One other thing this gives insight into is how certain companies get stuff done. Of those listed, I still fondly remember Sanya Thomas' Grab Bags. I wish the Lindens would do that and/or hire her.

Gyeh.

A fair, listed in no particular order:

ENWorld Forums (A very nice community, one I need to spend more time with)
FurryMUCK
A few assorted muds
Everquest (And varients)
Dark Age of Camelot
Horizons Beta
AlphaWorld
Ultima Online
QuakeWorld TF (Which was a community, actually, for the most part... Something you cant say so much about most online FPS games anymore)
Prodigy (Way back in the day), particularly the Star Trek and Star Wars forums
Anarchy Online

Probably some others I've forgot.

Some helped. Quakeworld TF, the forums, FurryMUCK, AlphaWorld... those all helped, thats for sure, to one level or another. AnarchyOnline and the like, not so much.

Hmm...

BBS's (damn those parties were fun)
Q-Link
MUDs
AOL
Air Warriors (I, II & III)
Aces High
Meridian 59
Everquest
Star Wars Galaxies
Second Life

and of course the usuals like IRC, ICQ, Yahoo, MSN, Paltalk, AIM

Also when I first started playing around with IBM-Compatable PC's there was a great online multi-user program by Sierra, that had several areas, an Adult Las Vegas style area, Kids Area, Medieval Roleplaying Game area. I can't remember what it was called though. Maybe Larry World, or something...

I remember that! I think it was just called SierraWorld or something. I only played it for about a month, and was pissed I couldn't play the card games, but I remember it!

On the subject of subcultures, two of the most interesting (and nuanced) that I've ever seen:


The Tribes Enthusiasts (Tribes and Tribes 2):

Set the groundwork for a community that's still active today. Much of this community has moved on to GarageGames to develop real games with the Torque engine (the Tribes 2 platform).

The Tribes community is an interesting footnote in gaming history, because it was one of the first FPS games to include built-in connectivity features like email and limited "web pages" supported entirely within the client. This lead to an amazing amount of connectivity for such a lightweight (and simple) game, and the community lives on.


The Jedi Academy (Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast):

Never in my entire time with this "hobby" have I since met such an interesting group of people. Half roleplay, half Lightsabers For Dummies, I joined their ranks as a "teacher" when they were still starting out.

This community later moved on to Jedi Knight 3, which pretty much pulled stuff from mods already in existence. Up to that point, the roster peaked at a couple hundred students, twentyish teachers, and a handful of admins.

If you've ever heard the word "bow" prior to a duel in any game, you'll know where this is from. "Bowing" was a ritualistic practice that was kept 95% of the time, and noted an underlying respect players had for one another. Extremely rare, especially for an FPS.

Here's an interesting read on this nuance. Note it uses the "N-word" as a central issue, in case anyone is still offended by that.


-----

The bottom line? It doesn't take a lot to make a cohesive community, but it does take the right stuff.

Palace was the closest but was more into gaming

EQ
EQ2 (current)
Guild Wars (current)
SWG
COH
KOL

I used to do BBS forum roleplay campaigns in the early 80's, but I would have to say the first real-time online community I participated in was the free-form role playing chat channels (like Red Dragon Inn) on Q-Link in the mid 80's. Back around '87 or so, Q-Link (along with LucasFilm Games) developed the the first online community based on graphical avatars called Club Caribe. Due to the technological limitations of 1200 baud modems and 64k of RAM found in computers 18 years ago, Club Caribe was slow, buggy, and never really took off.

Anyways, back then, online chatting was a pay-per-minute type of service (I'm sure David Valentino remember what '+ Time' was), and unfortunately I became addicted to online FFRPing. Since I was barely a teenager at the time and had no source of income, it wasn't long until my parents cancelled my Q-Link account.

Over the years as technology progressed, I was a member of small, flat-rate, privately owned online communities of DDial, STS, MajorBBS/WorldGroup, etc. networks until one day I discovered how to use Telnet. Once I found MUDs/MUCKs/etc., it was all over for me.

Yes..that was it!! You could even have naked avatars while playing cards, but they just showed them from the mid-breast up!

Maybe I was thinking Larry World, because I think the adult area of SierraWorld was called something to do with Larry (from the Liesure Suit Larry games, the art/avs were the same).

Aside from a mailing list of friends who'd spread across the country and a small mud, I think my online community involvement could be considered zilch.

I had a break coming and out of boredom decided to try an online game to while away the time. After doing a little digging, I found SL's website. I read everything they had (but the forums) and decided to give it a whirl after I cleaned the house up. It's a good thing I made that decision too, because it didn't get cleaned again for a long time after that.

With SL being the first online community I've been involved with, I find it terribly difficult to play at any others now. Anarchy Online went free, and had pretty good reviews so I decided to try it. I didn't make it past the walkthroughs. Everything else I look at seems so limiting compared to what SL has to offer.

Furthermore, the nature of SL just about forces you to be at least a little social. It encourages designers & scripters & artists & entrepreneurs to work together, and that's great for us geeky types who tend to pull away from society.

The biggest learning curve I had/have is the interacting with others. Pulling meaning from text is tricky without all the other cues you get from talking in person. Still, it's been great because it's given me more confidence in RL in how to interact to people.

As for the mechanics of SL (Interface/building/scripting) I picked up the tools pretty quickly, but I still lack the talent and finesse of someone who understands art, or who's experienced at building. Scripting has probably come the easiest to me, but I do that a good bit for work, so it was just learning a new language.

The biggest help I had to learning the finer points of the above were the newbie classes that used to be everywhere. Once someone shows you what the tools can do, it's not so bad to start applying your imagination to those skills.

Sorry I rambled a bit in the middle there, but I hope I answered your question.

I found this blurb about it in a "History of online games" article, and thats about the only remaining testament to its existance that I can find:



*edit*

A fascinating read, by the way.

communities:

various BBS's (in the dark ages before the WWW)
UseNet
CompuServe (mostly the 3d Studio boards)
AOL (back when it only had 25k members it was a great place)
3ds Max Forums
GodFreeDC (DC area atheist discussion group)

games/worlds:

Asheron's Call (9 months)
Anarchy Online (6 months)
Asheron's Call 2 (6 months)
SL (2 years and counting)

Ive been a member of VZones for 7 years now. I adored it and swore i would never leave my happy little 2d world. Then i came here and now I find that i am not in VZones much anymore.

It is much different, and the learning curve has been steep for me, because things are so different.

But I love it .. and Im not leaving here anytime soon.

I guess my biggest online community before Second Life was GameRangerGameRanger. I was an administrator there, watching it grow from 10,000 users to 35,000 over some three years.

I'd say it didn't help me prepare for Second Life that much.

I started in AOL way back when it was $3.95 an hour, did the Guide thing for a bit.. Not sure how long ago that was. Went from there to IRC and various nets there, did the IRCop for a while.. I've been involved with various long running online IRC gaming channels as both ChanOp/ST/GM/whatever and player.. (10+ years) I've been a regular on quite a few forums, mostly political/current events in nature..

The only other computer "game" I was involved in was EQ, and only for a couple months cuz it didn't interest me much.

If an MMORPG counts, my first one was Asherons Call. I only tried Everquest for a couple of hours so that doesn't really count. lol

No! This is my first!