In 2004, I--as an avatar named Bhodi Silverman--joined with several other Second Life "residents" to create a proof-of-concept nonprofit organization known as VERTU (Virtual Economies Realizing True Usefulness).  We had fabulous success organizing a series of campaigns to raise money for real world nonprofits by raising the currency (Lindens) and selling it on Gaming Open Market--a currency market that turned Lindens into United States dollars.  It operated much in the way that IGE does, except that it had the blessing of Linden Lab, the company which owns Second Life.

We were very successful, and our largest campaign raised over five thousand dollars for people impacted by Hurricane Katrina.  (We were not raising money on behalf of the Red Cross, but raised the money and THEN offered it to the Red Cross, which is a very different thing.) For a variety of reasons, VERTU only lasted for about six months, but we were very proud of the work we did. In that time, we raised over 10,000 USD for three charities: the EFF, Heifer International, and The Red Cross.  You can read about our work in this article from The Guardian:  http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/gamesblog/2005/aug/15/gamesarethen

I'm a firm believer that the real opportunities for nonprofits in the gaming world will come from player-created initiatives and require that companies drop their ban on the conversion of game cash into real world currency.  I know it's currently an unpopular idea, but only when players are fully empowered to create and trade value in game worlds will the potential for game-based philanthropy be realized.

V

I don't hate SOE.  But I have a funny Sony story.

I used to have a job that required me to meet periodically with peopel at Sony Music in New York.  They had these really tiny little cramped offices... the place was a mess.  But to get to it, you had to walk through this huge, empty, echoing first floor to a bank of elevators that all went to only one floor--the "sky lobby."

It was the most pretentious thing I had ever seen--and I was an ad wonk in New York, so I saw a lot of pretentious!

The whole way up those elevators, every time, all I could think was "pay no attention to the little man behind the curtain..."

Thanks for the list.  I'm going to check out DOMO first, I think.

Oh, I should have been more clear about the not playing WOW thing.  It's not an anti-Blizzard attitude at all.  Rather, it's my uncomfortableness with competing against children in any game.  The thing I like about games like Vanguard, and about some of the older MMORPGs, is that in general the players are mostly late teens and older.  My sense is that in WOW, there are a lof of younger folk.

Now, I have nothing AGAINST children, I just don't think it's very gracious for a forty-something woman to compete with them.  That may make sense to no one but me, of course.  But, really, it's not a WOW-hater thing at all...

I love LOTRO, but my system won't run it.  I've tried. 

It does run WOW with no problem, but I have never played WOW and that's an odd point of pride for me... <grin>  I only know it will run because I lent the computer to my stepdaughter for a while, and she ran it fine.

Hey all...

I'm looking for a good MMORPG that will run on my craptop.  (Dell Inspiron 16000, Intel Pentium 1.79 GHz, 512 RAM, , ATI Mobility Radeon X300 w/129 megs of VRam, Windows XP SP2.  Old school is fine with me... my first MMORPG was Asheron's Call, and I LOVED it.  (I miss the sandbox feel of it, and the Vassal system was brilliant.  I have never figured out why no one has ever duplicated it.)

My "real" MMORPG life, at the moment, is spent in Vanguard and I love the depth of that.  But I'm starting a new job that is going to leave me with lots of time away from home, and I'm looking for something RP-friendly, engaging, and not to taxing on my poor old system.  Any suggestions?

...which server would you start on, and what race would you pick?  I have been knocking around quite a bit without finding too many other people (what, I'm the only one who thought Goblin sounded cool?) and I'm not liking the loneliness. 

Thanks!

I, too, don't want everything mapped out in advance for me... or, at least, that wouldn't be my first choice.  But I would like to be able to find those things I have already visited and, you know, my way home. 

The idea of a minimal map is one of those design issues that I think touches on the issue of "what do female gamers want/need?"  While there are just exceptions upon exceptions to this, statistically women have a much harder time with spatial relations than men do.  (And I am SO not an exception.)  I love games that only let me see places on a map AFTER I've found them on my own.  But a game that never adds any detail will, sadly, have me hitting the same damned wall over and over again... because I just won't be able to remember where it was in relation to other points in the game landscape.

This is also why my husband has sewn "if found, please return to..." tags in all my clothes, btw.

Yeah!  After reading this, I've decided to look more closely at Shamans. I usually play healers, and after abandoning my first post-return Shaman because Halasgard itself was so bugged, I think I may look more deeply into this class.  (Also, I now know that logging out fixes most bugs... which  I didn't when I threw in the towel in Myrean.) 

Frankly, with server populations so low, and my sense that many returning folk will be gone once the free month is over, I figure I better build a character who can fit into whatever group she can find.  I think this is a very good way to create the adaptability a low-population, low-influx game needs.

Originally posted by JT

There are plenty of roads to follow to anywhere you need to go.  You can climb most mountains, definately more than any other game out there.  Not sure what the problem is.  This is a game about exploration.  Lewis and Clark didn't have a map telling them where everything was in North America.  Also, there are riftways now that help you to get around for long distances.

It's true, but Lewis and Clark did have a guide!  If the game were coded so that I had my own guide tagging along, finding and preparing food, making sure I didn't wander into danger, and all that Sacajawea did for them, hey, that would be great!  But since it's not built that way, and since I myself am lousy at spacial imagining, I"m glad to know about InfoMap.  (This isn't considered an exploit by the Vanguard team, is it?  Because I'd rather bump around blind, or give up in frustration, than cheat.)

Thanks!

Okay, I'm willing to live with the bugged quests... everyone tells me they are new (although I think it suggests some sort of awful curse that they showed up just as those of us who left because of them have returned).  The community has been great, and I love the richness of the world.

All of that said, I hate the map with a white-hot passion.  I have already spent more time than I should have running into unclimbable mountainsides because there is no way to tell how to get from where I am to where I need to be.  Who builds a map with no roads? 

Is there a fix for this?  Have I missed some subtle detail?  Or does everyone just get used to heading in one direction. almost reaching their destination, and then saying, "Oops, better go another way!"

Wow, that is really bad timing on the quest bugs!  But thanks for the tutorial in how to use the social window.  Thta's certainly a plus!~

I'm one of the many returning to VG during the free play month.  I really wanted to love the game at launch--I actually went out and bought a new computer to run it--but I just couldn't.  I could have lived with the bugs, although they were unpleasant.  But what killed the game, for me at least, was that it seemed every guild I joined quickly lost all of it's people.  Now, IMHO, it was nearly impossible to get very far in the game as it was at launch as a solo player... so I found myself mostly wandering around a nearly-empty server, doing the few solo quests I could find that weren't bugged. 

I was thrilled to see the "come back to Vanguard' campaign.  I assumed it meant major improvements had been made.  I'm now thinking maybe not.  I had to abandon my shaman in Halasgard because so many of the quests she needed--from adventuring to diplomacy to crafting--are fatally bugged.  I've been told this is just in that area, and rerolled a disciple in another.  Those quests, too, have been bugged... but at least logging out and logging back in has fixed most of them.

So, before I get too invested in my disciple... are there good, strong guilds left in VG?  Is one server better for RP than another? 

Thanks!

First, let me say I have nothing against nipples.  Or any other body part.  Really. 

But I'm both female and post-40, and the idea of finding myself in the middle of a group of teenage boys who really, really like videogame nipples is just... creepy. 

I think I feel about this the same way I feel about middle aged men in "The Sims Online."  Like I said... it's just creepy.

God, I wish MMORPGs would start creating "You Must Be This Tall" servers for us old folk.  

So, female gamers in the Open Beta, what do you think?  Reading the Conan books never made me want to rush out and be one of the women in them.  (Why oh why isn't anyone ever going to make a Sword of Truth MMORPG... now THAT had some female characters worth playing!)  So, before I preorder, I'd love to hear what some actual female gamers--or male gamers who have an opinion on the subject--think about being a woman in a game that spent a lot of time getting us excited about the fact that there would, indeed, be nipples in game?

I wanted to love this game... I bought it, I played it for two weeks, and I just kind of... gave up.  The few people I ran into on my server were clearly teenage boys who thought of the whole thing as just one giant frag fest and shouted at eachother in ancient "l33t."  It was like I'd been time-warped back to the old days of playing Quake on the LAN at work.

I think if I could have persuaded some other old folk from among my gaming friends to join me, this might have been fun.  It definately has a new "feel" to it... In the end, though, it was just too LONELY for me.

Thanks.  I am waiting for the eternal download to finish and, provided it ever does, should be back to "Fury-ous" soon. 

What are the best fan sites these days, the most active bulletin boards?  I'm going to need some coaching from others and that's always the best way.

I am planning to "resurrect" a 40-something Fury I played for the first many months of EQII but then abandoned when RL caught up with me and I just didn't have time to play.  I have several questions, hoping someone can help...

- Will I even recognize the class?  I imagine there have been many changes and rebalancings, and this is intimidating.  Picking skills, etc., is not that hard when you pick them at each appropriate level; you can see how they will be useful to you at that point.  But going back and restructuring a character mid-career seems daunting.  Anyone currently playing a Fury want to offer some advice?

- Is the game still viable to mid-level characters, or has the player base all climbed into such loftier realms that I will be running about all by my lonesome in the mid-range zones? 

- Is it still FUN?

Thanks!

Veingloria, soon to be Vyne again!

It's a RTS game that allows YOU to do a better job in the MIddle East than our beloved Prez. and his Advisors.  To make it edgy, they have co-branded it with The Daily Show, naming it Mess-o-potamia and getting John Stewart to do the narration voice-overs. 

:-)

I completely agree that Turbine is a GREAT company.  The kind of company I want to see control the MMO space in the future, in fact.  AC was my first MMO (if you're not one of those people who insists that we consider MUDS MMOs, that is) and I loved it.  It was dynamic, and brilliant, and there was always a great sense of forward motion.  I often wish I had never left it; I know a few folks who started with me on day one of retail who are still there, and what a rich and rewarding experience they have had.  Alas, I seem to always follow the shiny.  It's my downfall.  <Grin>

But, yeah, Turbine rocks.  They take risks, and those risks don't always work out.  (Poor DDO... brilliantly conceived and nearly unplayable.)  But that they take them, and that they are still so detail-oriented (I can PLAY my lute in LOTRO, how cool is that!), gives me hope for the future.  Rock on, Turbine!

kisses,

V

Hmmm... I have been playing a little LOTRO, and it didn't grab me as a casual game, but that is probably because i was trying to RP and, of course, that's hard to do when you're wafting in and out.  I may also roll up another character and see what that is like from a solo perspective.

Thanks!