New World Notes

SL Universe: The Most Popular Site for Second Life Opinion?

Since I'm researching the most influential Second Life blog sites for an upcoming project, I just hit HyperGrid's post about that topic, which in turn sent me searching on SimilarWeb, and to a corollary query: What's the most popular, third party site for Second Life opinion? There I'd say it's not a blog but a messaging board - SL Universe.

According to SimilarWeb, SL Universe gets monthly visits in the low six figures, and that's no surprise. Founded by longtime SLer Cristiano Midnight (who I met in SL way back in my Linden days), it's become so influential even ex-Linden CEO Rod Humble used to get involved there.

That's mostly why SL Universe is so popular with SLers, though according to SimilarWeb, there's another reason:

Play It This Weekend: How Do You Do It?, An Earnest Little Browser Game Evoking Gone Home... And Titanic

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Tomorrow is the first day of February, the one month of the year where you likely won't be able to go more than a day without hearing about love. There might be no better month to play How Do You Do It?, a short and painfully sincere browser-based game made for the recent Global Game Jam by a team of just four people.

When you're young, love has a lot more to do with what you see in movies and on TV than anything else. Transport yourself back to the late '90s, and imagine that you're a young girl with two dolls and a few fleeting moments to herself one afternoon. You recently saw Titanic, and it raised a few questions in your mind. Namely, how exactly do you do it? You'll use the WASD keys to position your arms, J and K to rotate each of the dolls, and eventually fumble your way to the truth. Maybe?

It'll take about five minutes of your time to play what is so far one of the most charming and earnest games of 2014. Just be sure to reach the end and check out your "score". 

Second Life Website Still Strong in Traffic, Says SimilarWeb

The official Second Life website has been gaining traffic over the last six months according to SimilarWeb, a well-designed, new-ish Internet analytics site, and is still among the most popular sites on the web, with 16.5 million visits last month. Average time on site is over 12 minutes, which I can tell you is seriously impressive. (By contrast, Battle.net, the official portal for World of Warcraft and Blizzard's other games, has a time on site average of just under 7 minutes.)

Also notable is where visitors are mainly going when they hit the Second Life site:

Elder $crolls Online: Zenimax Forces ESO Fans to Pay More to Play as Popular Race in Their Upcoming MMO

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

When does a "Collector's Edition" bonus cross the line from being a collector's perk to non-collector's punishment? That's what The Elder Scrolls Online has me wondering after pre-orders went live this week, blocking off one of the series' most prominent races for everyone without $79.99 to drop on the upcoming MMORPG.

Just imagine if World of Warcraft 2 came out and did the same thing with Night Elves.

Given the shakey nature of many contemporary big-budget MMORPGs (and the fact that ESO is already in a precarious position due to the M rating it received from the ESRB,) irritating the fanbase with something this brazen doesn't seem smart. It wasn't even remotely necessary, either. Here's why:

Relax: Rod Humble Leaves Linden Lab, But Second Life Steams On (With Surprises Still on the Way)

It only seems dark because it's evening again (for now)

It's day four since Rod Humble announced his departure as CEO from Linden Lab, and though I've asked the company three times for an official statement of some kind, I look in my inbox and see no reply. There may be good reason for that and I'd rather not jump to conclusions, but to judge by the messages I get from NWN readers and through Second Life social media channels, many are assuming this means the worst about the fate of SL. I have talked with insiders since then on background, and looking at it from my own perspective too, I will say this:

Rod Humble is gone and that is too bad for many reasons, but Second Life is doing fine (more or less). Not only that, some excellent surprises are coming soon:

China God Goes to Greece in Chinese New Years Update of a Tower Defense Game You May Enjoy (In My Biased Opinion)

OMG:TD! is a new hit tower defense game for iOS which just added a big Chinese New Years-themed update, and in my totally biased opinion, the update and the game are pretty cool. I worked with the international team of developers while living in Shanghai last year (when I wasn't gawking at the towers looming over me through the smog), so it's been exciting to help them finally launch this wacky, Monty Python-esque take on the tower defense genre. For the Chinese New Years update (now in Apple's App Store), the heroes of Olympus get a visit from Cai Shen, the Chinese Gold of Prosperity, who gives them a much-needed funding boost in their war against the incredibly silly Titans.

Iris Wants To Know: How Much Photoshop Is Too Much When it Comes to Processed Virtual World Pics?

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

It probably wouldn't be hard to place most SL photographers on a spectrum based on how heavily they rely on Photoshop for their everyday snapshots -- purists who have nothing but vanilla pieces on one end, highly embellished "Pile-up" superstars on the other. Second Life fashion pictures and Photoshop go particularly well together, almost inexorably linked, so it's no surprise that most virtual world fashionistas have become Photoshop addicts. Myself included.

But lately, something's changed.

One of the Biggest Battles in MMO History Cost Participants $300K in Real Money -- Here's How

Janine "Iris Ophelia" Hawkins' ongoing review of gaming and virtual world style

Late last night, EVE Online experienced the largest and most spectacular battle in the game's history, and certainly one of the largest conflicts in the history of virtual worlds at large. It's hard to say precisely how many players participated in the conflict in the B-R5RB system, which apparently started because of a missed space-station maintenance payment, but by the looks of images and streams it was in the thousands. By the time the servers went down this morning, approximately 90 of the game's monstrous (and valuable) Titan-class ships had been destroyed, and total losses for those involved were in the neighbourhood of $300,000.

And no, I am not talking about in-game currency.

The scale of this battle and the losses incurred by those involved are hard to fathom if you don't have considerable experience with EVE Online. Ships can take months to build, can be too big for any available hangar, and can carry stockpiles of subscription time to the game itself, among other things. Losing one such ship can equate to losing thousands of U.S. dollars, not to mention the time that went into it.

Suffice it to say this was not your mother's player-versus-player showdown. Here's what I mean:

Yahoo! Launching Virtual World With Cloud Party Tech?

Yahoo! just acqui-hired the developers of Cloud Party, the web-based virtual world NWN has blogged about a lot, given its backing by Second Life co-founder Cory Ondrejka, and its general coolness as an immersive, easy-to-use, user-generated world with its own econony. Marisa Mayer and her crew at Yahoo! apparently agrees with this assement, because not only did they buy the company and hire the staff, but when I asked Cloud Party CEO Sam Thompson for a comment, a Yahoo! spokesperson replied for him, sending along this boilerplate reply:

Yahoo has acquired Cloud Party, a company that has created a virtual 3D experience, directly in users’ browser. With Cloud Party, users can build and create a world, customize an avatar, and share easily on the web without any downloads or plug-ins. The Cloud Party team is extremely committed to user experience and to the creativity that their product released in people. We’re excited to merge their unique perspective and experience with a team that is just as passionate about gaming.

Reading between the lines, I think this means it's very likely Yahoo! is getting into the user-generated virtual world business. Here's what I mean:

As We Wait for Linden Lab to Speak About Rod Humble, Let Us Speak About What Rod Humble Did for Linden Lab

I haven't received any official word from Linden Lab about the departure of their CEO Rod Humble (who announced his departure on his Facebook page last Friday afternoon), but my guess is we're about to get such a word (along with even larger news, perhaps), very soon. Until then, here's just a few of the news items for features Rod Humble added to Second Life and Linden Lab in the last couple years. First, from 2012:

• Coming Soon: Linden Realms Tools for SL Game Developers, Like Auto-Teleporting & Auto-Equipping Players
• Lindens Buy Adventure Game Studio, Aq-Hires A.I. Innovator
• Linden Launches New SL Game Area to Boost Subscribers
• Why SL's Coming to Steam: To Draw Gamers Who Enjoy "Things Like Garry's Mod", Says Linden CEO Rod Humble (Note: This has not happened yet.)
• The Second Life of Linden Lab: Re-branded Company No Longer World Builder, But "Maker of Shared Creative Spaces"
• Patterns, Linden Lab's Minecraft-Style Game, Now Available for Minecraft-Style "Genesis" Pre-Order of $9.95

And from 2013: