virtual world

Via email:

Dear Xstreet SL user:

On January 20, Linden Lab, creators of the Second Life virtual world, announced that it acquired the Xstreet SL marketplace. We wanted to write to you today to address any concerns you may have and to discuss the benefits this move will offer to all Second Life users, existing Xstreet SL customers or otherwise.

Fairly early on, Linden Lab saw the inherent value that a web marketplace offers to buyers, sellers and content creators. After watching this industry grow, we recognized that the reach of these services would be greatly improved if they were integrated directly into the Second Life experience. Xstreet SL offers an incredibly advanced, flexible and functional e-commerce platform, and Linden Lab will be leveraging that technology to build out its own marketplace moving forward. This will create one centralized marketplace for all Second Life goods, which will greatly improve search, help drive traffic to inworld stores and enable merchants to market their products to a global audience.

Okay, so now you’re thinking, “sounds nice and all, but what does this mean for me?”

Since we’ll be using the Xstreet SL platform moving forward, very little will change for you in the near future. You can continue to purchase items just as you have and your current listings will be there today just like yesterday. For information on what minor changes we’ve had to make immediately, please see our Acquisition FAQ.

In the longer term, we have plans on how we can better integrate Xstreet SL directly into the Second Life experience. As we move forward with the integration, we’d love to hear your thoughts in the forum on how the Xstreet experience can be improved and what features you could use that currently don’t exist. Your commitment and ingenuity have enabled Xstreet SL and the industry as a whole to grow to this point, we sincerely hope you’ll continue to play an integral role in this next stage. { Read more }

I've spent over 100 hours playing PlaneShift, and now I'm ready to write a little something about it.

First of all, I like it - obviously. Spending 100 hours doing something one doesn't like is a fairly insane thing to do.

While the game is in alpha (or beta, depending on which spirits you channel), it is playable and fun and interesting. It's free to download. It's free to play. It can be annoying/frustrating at times because it is a work in progress - but the ingame advisors and game masters can help smooth over the rough spots if you actually find a rough spot. Having recently started being an advisor in game, I've gotten a feel for what a lot of people have problems with added to my own experiences.

What You Need To Know

It's a MMORPG. A massive multiplayer online roleplaying game - the stress, in PlaneShift, being placed on roleplaying. What does that mean? It means you're supposed to know your character and play it at all times - out of character (OOC) comments and conversations are supposed to be done in square brackets ([this is an example]).

Thus, after you download your PlaneShift client you should think about what your character will do and how it will interact with others. And to do that, you really need to get an idea of the world itself - a read of the setting, races, history, government and economy are worthwhile for this. { Read more }

We've seen the bans and the policies changes from Linden Lab, the
widespread financial scandals and all the many issues every stock
market has faced.

Right now, the financial sector is in a situation where every stock
exchange will stand up once every while presenting its achievements and
successes to the general public, a situation where we can still find
businesses willing to go public and launch their IPO, a situation where
some people will give a try at reviving public shells, or giving a
continuity to endangered companies.

We could go on like this for an undefined amount of time; months,
years. By operating in Second Life we're bound to Linden Labs and their
policies changes. At this point one could bring up other synthetic
worlds, but this won't be the main topic of this open letter.

Following up with the many issues we've had to deal with and using
our foresight, the VSTEX has been growing strong as a SRO
(Self-Regulatory Organization), with an extensive set of rules and
policies modeled after "real life" stock market rules, policies and
laws. That was a due answer to issues, but far away from being a
complete solution for the whole SL financial sector. { Read more }

This was just a little too easy to have fun with:

Umm - seriously? A bot that tells people to log out and hang out with real friends and family?

I like Second Life just about as much as anyone who's spent a significant amount of time inworld, but the truth of the matter is that using Second Life really doesn't help real world social skills... or does it?

I'd love to see who makes the $10K. Maybe it will be LukeConnell Vandeverre.