I've been surprised at the number of people I hear about who essentially leave SL for WoW. For me, SL would be a much more congenial environment; but then, I really just don't game.
Anyway, some of what you say makes me wonder: Is WoW perhaps really a more useful experience for some people? Left to my own devices and assuming I had to choose a virtual world, I'd pick SL just because it meant I would never have to deal with anyone else if I didn't want to; but WoW (at least this is how I understand it) is really not something you can do very well without working in a guild. So you have to learn to work with other people. It reminds me of an article I read some time back about the differences in gaming culture in Korea. They would play these MMPORGs where you'd become part of a group that was building a ship. You'd be one of the guys working on building the ship. Period. That the western MMPORG vendors had been really frustrated in their efforts to crack the Korean game market. WoW makes me think of that. On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 6:03 PM, David Henn <[email protected]> wrote: > One's decreased involvement in something after heavy experimentation with > that something does not diminish the validity of that individual's opinions. > In fact, such experience would lend credence to such opinions inasmuch as > other activities proved to have higher priority for such individuals than > continued heavy involvement in SL. Further, an expression of an opinion as > to why some might not take SL as seriously as facebook/Zynga/FarmVille does > not necessarily equate to "pooh pooh"ing SL or reflect any belief on the > individual's part that SL is not worthwhile. Neither does that individual's > decreased involvement constitute a denouncement of the value of SL > generally, perhaps not even personally. > > In point of fact, I maintain my paid member status in Second Life and enjoy > occasional dabbling back in-world. I applaud SL's existence and admire those > who have created rich content and/or use SL to supplement and enrich their > real world existence, having myself owned land, experimented with > construction, object creation, and scripting, and experienced environments > and events at the NASA CoLab and a host of other virtual locations. I even > created my own local sims using open-source server software compatible with > SL viewers so that I could experiment on larger scales without having to pay > enormous sums of money to acquire the same space in SL proper. But I shifted > my virtual world time to World of Warcraft, which, while it does not provide > even a fraction of the creative power that SL provides since almost all > content is provided by Blizzard, does provide ample opportunity to interact > with a wide variety of individuals as they present themselves through their > characters, often supplemented with voice chat. Plus, when I let loose with > my Boomkin's Hurricane, Starfall, and Nature's Grace to lay waste to hordes > of enemies, the fireworks and empowerment are awesome! > > Eric's points about the barriers to rich SL experience are fully applicable > to my shift. To do what I wanted to do in SL required a huge amount of > learning - new programming languages, three or four entire modeling > platforms for making and animating avatars and other objects in SL, etc. - > that was daunting, and even the results of people far more experienced than > me were not really up to what I hoped to create. Maybe part of that was my > graphics card, but the real limits of SL, plus the steep learning curve, > were discouraging to my pursuit of creation of ... well, lots of types of > things in SL. > > There are, as you say, other VRs, and some actually offer much that SL > offers. BlueMars is one that I can think of off the top of my head, but I > know there are others. And then there are the gaming VRs, like Lord of the > Rings Online, D&D Online, the Star Trek games, Starcraft, World of Warcraft, > XBox Live game VRs, PlayStation game VRs, and more. > > WoW's learning curves are vastly different and far less daunting than SL's > - create characters, learn how to nurture, train, and equip them to become > powerful forces in-world, explore the world, learn how to work in groups of > 5, 10, 25, 40, and more, and defeat the enemies. There really is a lot of > learning, but if you develop your character yourself, much of the learning > is simply through experience. For hard-core WoW enthusiasts, there are > formulae and spreadsheets ad nauseum to help calculate the best possible > gear and talents, plus videos of all the boss fights that one can study to > have an edge during raids. There is also a macro language (mostly a > convenience feature) and a programming language that allows users to add > functionality to the game. > > Kudos to those who have learned what they needed to learn to be truly > creative and/or productive and/or interactive in SL. I'm still intimidated > by it, but I enjoy exploring and experiencing what others have done there > from time to time. > > David > > > On Fri, 2010-10-29 at 16:52 -0400, Sal Armoniac wrote: > > I notice that the pooh poohers are two people who got in for a while and > lost interest. ;) And the two avid residents are spending money to create > their 3 dimensional art. More in response to Dana...but this is it in > essence: LL is going to sell to a web developer. Where it goes from there I > don't know. There are alternate VRs springing up, but none with the huge > capacities of SL which admittedly engages or repels those who try it out. > Maybe Dana and I find in it a canvas for expressing something we couldn't do > in any other set of media. > > > > Sarah > > > On Fri, Oct 29, 2010 at 10:00 AM, Dana Paxson <[email protected]> wrote: > > Hey, Eric, great cross-post! Wanna dance? > > > > On 10/29/2010 9:52 AM, Eric Scoles wrote: > > I'm increasingly thinking that SL-style virtual worlds may never be > mainstream in the way that web-based social networking is. I'm thinking most > people will bypass that adoption phase and go straight to augmented > reality. > > > > I also think the successful future path for Second Life / Linden Labs > is in interfacing somehow with Augmented Reality. (And the real path to > absolute dominance for Facebook is to project into Augmented Reality, not > retail. But that's another thought for another time.) > > > > I realize both of these ideas arguably miss at least part of the point > of Second Life in that the SL avatar is an avatar -- you can hide behind it, > and certainly some (prob. a lot of) people do that with their SL (or WoW) > avatars. But what Facebook has taught me is the degree to which people are > willing to *expose* themselves. Too, Augmented Reality is sort of > dimensionally contextual (tessar-contextual?) in that people and places may > look different depending on the network-identity of the person looking at > them. So you can be different things to different people, depending on how > they're connected to you. And if there's a gateway to VR from AR, you can be > in virtual places that are connected to or overlayed onto LR [Literal > Reality]. (I was going to call it 'RR' for 'Real Reality', but I don't want > to pick a fight.) > > > > Up until recently I would have thought this level of augmented reality > was years away, but I gather it's pretty much just not very well distributed > yet, to paraphrase the Chairman. You can already be AugReal with an iPhone > or Android phone; the Apps For That are as far away as people's > imaginations, at this point. > > -- > > > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<r-spec%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. > > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<r-spec%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]<r-spec%[email protected]> > . > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en. > -- -- eric scoles | [email protected] -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. 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