Second Life Player Interviews and Reviews
Recently, I took a peek into the world of the MMORPG, Second Life and found that it was like nothing that I had ever seen before. Everywhere you looked there were strange and wonderful looking things and people. There is no grinding, no griefing, no levels. Just… life.
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Second Life is an appropriate title for a game where people log in and create just that… a second life to live, a second place to live and a second community of people to live it with. As Second Life character Alexis Ingersoll told me, “You can be absolutely anything, do absolutely anything. You have a lot of very diverse *communities* built up around all sorts of different things”.
There are some who might call Second Life an overrated chat room. After all, what could possibly be the point of playing a game where there is no leveling, no PvP, no overwhelming story arc? Another SL character, Troy McLuhan told me that “Second Life is not your typical MMORPG though. I like Castronova's term "Synthetic World".
Having downloaded a copy of the game and spending some time there, I can honestly say that it is a great place to go to get away from it all. You can be anything (and I mean anything, the character customization is impressive), create anything and do almost anything. Tired of walking? Try flying for a little while. While I was enjoying my Second Life experience, I thought that it would be a great opportunity to continue MMORPG.com’s unique in-game interview feature. I set about my task,and within an hour, I had three successful interviews with three distinct Second Life personalities, Troy McLuhan, Alexis Ingersoll and Ursula Lardner. Here are their answers to my questions:
| MMORPG.com: | How long have you been playing Second Life? |
| Troy: | Since July 17 2005. |
| Alexis: | I made the trial a while ago, but had to quit. then I returned... just yesterday. |
| Ursula: | Only SWG. That is, Star Wars Galaxies |
| MMORPG.com: | Do you play any other MMORPGs? |
| Troy: | NO, Second Life is not your typical MMORPG though. I like Castronova's term "Synthetic World". |
| Alexis: | I've played a fair amount of Phantasy Star Online, and recently a bit of FFXI. |
| Ursula: | Only SWG. That is, Star Wars Galaxies |
| MMORPG.com: | What feature / features of Second Life do you enjoy most? |
| Troy: | The ability to build anything I want and OWN it. I can sell it and the item alwyas says I was the creator. I also like scripting. Of course, meeting people with common interests is also a huge benefit. For example, I'm in a group that is planning a Spaceflight Museum. |
| Alexis: | Hands down the user creatable content aspect. It's not *totally* unique to SL, but certainly SL has taken it the farthest. Not only can you create anything, geometrically speaking, but you can script everything with a surprisingly full-featured language. |
| Ursula: | The possibility of modifying your avatar at will and the possibility of the players to build their own items to sell. |
| MMORPG.com: | What do you think that the developers could do to improve the game? |
| Troy: | Oh, more powerful servers, I suppose. |
| Alexis: | Hmm......SL is pretty complex. There are some controversies of the economics I guess. And certainly the engine can always be improved. They are including firefox support in the next rev, which will be nice. Supposedly a 2.0 engine is coming soon and will be more efficient for large numbers of objects at once. So efficiency is often a problem in SL (computationally speaking). |
| Ursula: | Can’t really tell, haven’t been here long enough, but I'd say the loading times. Also, sometimes people get tangled inside the objects because they don’t seem to be as solid as they should be |
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