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"...Second Life has a history of being difficult to use for many people..."

It certainly does if we're expecting everyone who walks thru the gate to buy their first land and start building within minutes of arrival. Isn't this all, at least to some extent, a case of early-adopter blindness? We're all so close we don't see wood for trees. Building a huge shared 3D space might be the main thing we, the early-adopters, come for but i doubt it's what (most of) a mainstream audience will want to do. They'll come for the fun of socialising in a 3D virtual space, for the virtual shopping and for the virtual sex (like it or not). They will be the AUDIENCE, not the producers, of virtual worlds.

Seems to me we need to make THAT audience experience work first and foremost and stop trying to convince ourselves what we need are better 3D construction tools and everything will be ok. The truth is we'll build in virtual worlds pretty much whatever the tools are like, that's what we like to do.

The mainstream audience we all seem to want will arrive when we hide the hammer and chisels and bring out the toys!