I was recently at a startup/entrepreneurship conference at Stanford and the founder of a company called Lotus (big from the 80s - don't worry about it) was there, talking about how he was an investor in Second Life.  He said that he believed virtual worlds were going to become big "like computers became big in the 90s".

Whoa.  As big as computers...in general?  That's pretty big.  They're everywhere, they've changed our way of life completely.

I happen to agree with him.  I think that over the next 5-10 years we'll begin to dig a little deeper with what you can do with virtual worlds.  Research is exploding with personel training, medical and handicap uses, not to mention communications.

So, sorry to those who think that the game is one big ad/shopping mall.  Commerical ventures are always first in innovation, and no one ever does anything without a profit incentive.  But that doesn't mean it's not going to become more and more useful and ubiquitous.

Second life is the vacum tube.  and it's a peak of vitural worlds right now.

I agree.

For example, researchers are considering using virtual worlds for studying the spread of diseases. A few years back a disease spread in-game in World of Warcraft from a high-level instance to low-level areas, instantly killing low level players. Blizzard had to patch the game in order to solve the problem.

So far virtual worlds are only a mechanism for the owner & entrepeneurs to make money from the little guy. Look at the active users for SL compared to any other mmo - theyre grabbing the smallest imaginable fraction of the market because they offer nothing but a chance to give someone else profit.

I recall reading not too long ago that Google was going to be making a secondlife like virtual world.. dunno if they actually are going through with it.. but Google.. chances are they would do a decent job of it.

I'd wander around and do stuff in second life if it wasnt so clunky, prone to being really laggy and didnt look like something from the late 90's.

I wish SL would vanish from gamming sites. Its not even a freakin game! More like a....

chat/cybersex/advertiesing "world".

I know, iv watched a bunch of people mess around in it. Just a bunch of people walking around, making houses an crap, chicks cybering for money, people advertiesing stuff, half the people I see running around have on big virtual dildos and smoking virtual blunts blowing out clouds of animated smoke and pot leafs. Mostly a bunch of dumb stuff that reminds me of people in games like WoW who forget there is a game to play an just hang out at the bank and /dance naked. Only in this case there really is no GAME.. just ppl chatting an doing nothing that has to do with anything game related lol.

If SL ever has levels, bosses, skills, let me run around a gank people an take thier stuff.. then i'll concider it a game.. hehe till then its just IRC with graphics an emotes :P

Goggle did develop a 3d chat interface called Lively.  I haven't bothered trying to use it, but from what I understand you create a space, make an avatar, and then embed your room onto a blog or site.

Metaplace is working on something close to Lively, but it is being designed as an open game engine for anyone to use, free hosting, lots of scripts, and endless world possibilities.  Metaplace will also embed in pages, and has already stress tested for a short time on myspace.

I think big clunky persistent worlds are going to lose out over time to smaller personal free virtual spaces being developed to interface into blogs and social networks.  Why pay tiers for a house in big persistent world when you can have your own embedded space for free that is tired to all the other small personal spaces?

Second Life is not a game.

It's a world that give to anybody the chance to make whatever they want (digitally speaking).

It has a enormous potential that isn't use because people don't get the point.
There are millions of users (i mean players or gamers) that will never chage their role.

Just give them an hammer or a sword or a gun and tell'em when click the button.

When someone will tell them to do it in SL they will do.

I still think Second LIfe is genious. I always find it hard explaining the game to people becuase it dosen't really make sense until you try it.

My wife and her cousin are totally addicted. I rarely log on to my guy, but I've had him since early 2004.

What is the level cap in Second Life?

Originally posted by CosbySweater

What is the level cap in Second Life?

Infinity.

Land Baron, that owns a handfull of fashion shops each targeted at a specific audience, has a few skin lines, Owns an animation shop, RP SIMS that have a custom battle system with an active playerbase, people who run it all for you, and custom shops that are pumping out orginal and completely new stuff that's profitable.

Granted no one has pulled all of that off yet.

but being one of the 156 people that earn more than 5,000 a month sounds pretty max level.