SL for Chat Others for gaming?

I like SL more for chatting but I feel that SL is not much of a game and unless my friends are there I get board easily. Some times I go try and make new friends but still. I find games like GW missing the social parts that SL has. Any one else like to use SL more of a Chatter and then Play other games for gaming?

Absolutley Lupo. SL is a very good chat room, but there is little entertainment value beyond the people (who are wonderful). If you are a casual player, you should look at SL as bit of an advance chatroom, with some elements of playing barbie mixed in. If you want a "game" then by all means play guildwars. If would would like something that strinkes a balance between Gameplay and socializing, then i reccomend the Social servers on the never winter nights game. They tend to have adventuring areas where you kill stuff and other areas to hang out. Grnated your avi-sex option are more limited, but you can always create for free. I don't think it will be too too long before real games catch on to the SL tools for avi creation and scripting and intergrate them with a a more choherent environment. But untill then, SL is a chat room, unless you are hugely inot creating.

I've found a number of games I find fun in SL. Cubey's combat planes are great, and Frag-Foo I think is amazing. While there are better platforms for FPS, no other games have a landscapes that are as diverse and incredible as SL.

I guess it depends what kind of games you think are fun, and what game elements you find critical to your gaming experience.

SL game developers certainly are trying. What kinds of things would you like to see/is SL currently lacking?

I use SL more of a sandlot to play with 3D modeling and texturing. No other virtual world on the market gives you as much flexibility to modify yourself and your environment.

But the same technology that gives you such wonderful abilities to customize is also very clunky for RPGing. Most RPGs use a limited pallette of textures (with or without color overlays), pre-built models, and lots of nifty graphic shortcuts to enhance performance and save pipe. The same optimizations that give you fantastic framerates and non-stop action limit your ability to customize.

I know some SLers are exploring creative ways to make RPGs and even first-person shooters work within the architecture, but it may take some time before SL can support a game environment as smooth as WoW or EQII.

In the meantime, we split our time

Ditto - when I need to be creative SL is where I came. I've left it for now and fully immersed in EQII just for content and attention span. Maybe some day when SL is less haunted I'll be back to build my Celestial Palace once more.

White Wolf's World of Darkness any one?? LOL! How to put that RPG in to here. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I know what your saying, but in SL I can script a little prim that just shouts "Quest, Kill, Level, Quest, Kill, Level"... and it feels just like WoW.

As a true RPGer I go back to table top. As a RPGer I started with AD&D and then moved on to many games. The problem with AD&D was two folds. #1 game was only build for KILL type games. #2 to many rules and charts. Well I left it for White Wolf’s World of Darkness because it was easier rules and it was set up more for playing a Role then Rolling a die. The problem right now is that most RPGs are more about Rolling the die. ES3:Marowind was the first I seen that didn’t have that feel to me. The Online games has the same problem. I would like a game less go kill and more play a role play a life, with out a structure thing of do this then this then this then this.

There seems to be a movement in the industry to simplify mechanics in an attempt to appeal to a wider audience. That makes games like WoW easier to pick up for casual players, but it doesn't provide enough depth to keep folks around for months or years.

That's one of the reasons I occasionally retire from all the RPGs and go into SL and just go into a building frenzy. Wrestling with prims gives me a creative challenge that recharges my batteries.

Or I veg out and go shopping for shoes(but don't tell anyone).

I agree with both of you. I had my most fun playing WoW when I was doing true role-playing. I'd spend a night building a fire and telling stories about Warcraft history. I also greatly reduce my SL every time a hot new MMOG comes out. Get totally addicted for a few months, raise to some great level, and then get really dissapointed that at level 50 I'm doing the same things I was doing at level 10, only now I get to travel on a horse.

A bunch of groups run table tops inside of SL. Have you checked them out? I wonder how they compare to the face to face experience.

Really? I have looked and have not seen more then a light mention of RPGs in SL. So no I have not and I would love to find one and join. My wife and I meet RPGing and we both miss it allot, Story Teller (White Wolf form of DM/GM) moved away and we never really played any more. :`(

Here's a good thread discussing Role Playing Games in Second Life ... I havn't participated yet, but it seems to be picking up steam. I've met a number of people who were playing already. Some good experiences, some bad, all depends on the GM... you know how that is.

Who says you need a script? One texture is all you need.

From here:
http://www.thenoobcomic.com/

lol... Eggy would be proud.

Seriously though. Second Life is many things, but speaking as someone that virtually bends over backwards to make certain things work, it's very limited technology. The greatest limitations right now being rendering technology and customizability.

I've posted to several threads about rendering. One such example:
/13/c6/45235/1.html

Fortunately, the Lindens have said they wish to address this with a materials system.

As for customizability, I feel private sim owners should have far greater control than they have presently. Because we residents are unable to define what scripts can and can't be run on our land (short of no script bounds up to 15m), things become unmanagable in a hurry.

The other problem is a lack of client-side processing. While it might be possible to design a complex system to use this with XML-RPC, it still pales versus classic client-server behavior in most online "games."

And one other thing. Second Life isn't a "game" in the traditional sense. I grit my teeth every time I read that. MMO, yes. Platform, yes. Has games, yes. Is a game, no.

Jeffrey, while I agree SL is still in it's infancy... can you think of a better MMOG game engine for independent or hobbyist game developers? I mean UT/Torque is fun to play with when you want to play with 32 people or less but... What game engine do you recommend for making games that are designed to involve hundreds or thousands of people?

Ultimately, Second Life's concept (or similar) is the way to go, yes. Otherwise, why would I be here?

On the other hand, it's worth noting that the current sims still cannot realistically support a hundred residents in one place, even where four sims converge. This sort of centralized "bottleneck" is one of those little nagging things.

By contrast, that's really not a large leap from what products like Guild Wars and Tribes 2 (the precursor to Torque) happen to do... the only difference is the connection between each of these worlds is less tangible.

Fortunately, it's getting there. Technology is, indeed, catching up. But we still have a long way to go.

And on a related note, I'm very much a Torque enthusiast. I've been using it since it was called Tribes 2 and managed by Dynamix, so naturally I know what you're talking about. Did you know a couple MMOGs have been created with the technology?

... of course, that's not really fair. They threw out the netcode entirely.

I had read this in people's .plan's and on forum posts, but I never saw any of them. I havn't logged into Torque land since Feb, so I'm sure I missed much. I like your insights, we should move this over to the games forum, as to not hijack this thread.

I find myself using SL for chat A LOT these days. Not in place of doing fun things inside of SL, but in place of AIM. I resize my SL window to something small, let History and IM take up most of the SL screen, and use it to chat with my friends and associates during the day. Of course this is hard, as I have yet to convince all of my friends and co-workers to get an SL account, but I like the thought of SL one day totally replacing AIM.

SL will get to the point when SL game developers can compete with WoW. I can't wait either, because my biggest beef with Wow (other than the wash, rinse, repeat game design) were the other people who played. Outside of guilds it was near impossible to get an adhoc group of players who knew what the hell was going on. I'm fairly certain that if someone did an SL version of WoW, the people would be infinately times more fun to play with.

I find SL wonderful for chatting and interacting with other people, events, building, shopping, just general messing around really, it's just like an 'alt-Life'. I have never thought of it as a 'game'. I also love wandering the world just to see what creations have popped out of peoples imagination, which reminds me I really must go 'walkabout' again soon. Sometimes in SL though I kind of stall and lose momentum...

If I'm in a less mentally expansive but focussed-go-do-something gaming mood, I drop into WoW just lately, on my Druid or Warlock which are two of the more complex and interesting classes. I enjoy the exploration, questing and solo strategy elements there although I couldn't care less about the player-versus-player aspect. Social interaction there is poor to non-existent though, or at least so I've found so far, though the kiddie's childish squabbling on the general chat channel does make me laugh sometimes Also WoW runs very well for me with non-existent lag and no real technical issues, so if I'm not in the mood for that sort of frustration it's a much simpler life there....but ....*it does absolutely nothing to broaden my mind in any way*.

So yes, I get different things from different places, but if I want any sort of social interaction or to use my imagination it's SL every time !

I got a mind broadening tip There are a number of back novels for WoW and they are suprisingly well written. Hack & Slash & Read