Seconondlife - the pros and cons

[Wolfie!]

Hello all, although I have mainly written this for the HP community,
the thoughts here well apply to almost everyone else.

Please note that these are only my personal thoughts, and perhaps
I'm being overly critical, but then I'm also suggesting you try things
out if you haven't because this is the way technology is headed and it's
a good way to dip your toes in the water.

It's about Secondlife, and what I have found out about it in the time
I've been walking around.

Secondlife is an online "game" [using the term loosely] or a meeting 
place, similar to the old MUCKs which were like what they used to refer
to as text adventures [believe it or not, in the old 8-bit computer days
there were games which were nothing but text, telling you where you were
as you hit N S E W Forward and Backward to travel around... Never ending
story was such a game... yes the one based on the movie] except in a 
MUCK, there were online users who you could also stop and chat to if you
wished. Secondlife is exactly the same, but because we have faster 
machines now and faster modems, we can now make use of full blown 
graphics which look similar to the Harry Potter games by EA.

"The Pros and Cons of Hitch-Hiking"

While Glenny and I were in secondlife today, she was very keen to set up
a virtual hogwarts, and buy some land.

In theory this is quite an exciting idea.
Rather than having people use e-mails from yahoogroups, we could all be
meeting and having fun... but there are problems which get in the way of
this idea.

Costs... Once in secondlife, you have to pay for land...
a lot of land would be needed for Hogwarts when you think about it, the
area is quite large... in effect we'd need a large, mostly flat island.

Then we'd need to learn or build the castle, if payed for, it's cost way
more than we could afford, and it would take a lot of time to build.
I don't think many of us care to develop that sort of experience.

Then there would be avatars, which again would need to be payed for, or
made by someone among us with the expertise... the kids would need to be
composed of four house colours, be male and female, and different racial
characteristics.

The teachers would also need to be designed, plus associated characters.

(I thought character skins could possibly be ripped from the games and
re-designed a bit]

Now here's where things become worrying, should this thing work, does
Warners come along later and say "tut tut, please close this down or 
we'll send in our lawyers"? We would have to invent our own school,
in the end that would be better because we don't have to play a part,
we'd be ourselves.

Then, secondlife demands $10 a month.

Now while not horribly expensive, the problem is that secondlife, 
frankly is a very dull place. while I was in there I was happy to meet
the very sparse population, but what I noticed was that most of the 
shops, houses and things were completely empty...
although chairs were set out in various locations, designed as meeting
places, I saw almost nobody in any of them.

I get the feeling anyone trying secondlife for the first time, would
eventually think "are we having fun yet?" and leave.

It's a very dull place.

Now, if we were to crank up the numbers in our HP scenario, perhaps
it would work, but I have HUGE doubts, especially with the phenomenon
now waning as it winds down, and as many readers have noted, it has
lost it's fun as it's become darker.. I think people would gradually
leave and perhaps one person would end up left with the monthly bill.
and then the whole lot would just end up being deleted.

Furrymuck was exactly the same, there were buildings everywhere but
it was mostly the park which had anyone actually talking... so I
left.

The other thing which is a problem, is lag.
Lag occurs because your computer isn't really driving the characters 
live... you press the up button, and it may take a few seconds for
your character to react... this causes me to run into walls a lot :)
This means a virtual quiddich match would be impossible...
But we could certainly fly around [rather unsteadily] on broomsticks.

I would assume this problem doesn't exist if you have a very fast 
broadband connection... mine is 512/128.

I have nothing against secondlife, it's very interesting, but I don't
think it's as fun as it could be, and I feel that too much effort and
expenditure could end up completely wasted.

However I am keen to get friends over there, simply because in this 
case, the more the merrier, and it's a different way to use the internet.

I think the system has a lot of good intentions so please give it a
shot, even if you leave after a day or so.

Wolfie!