Recently, about a week after I got into the closed beta, Cryptic announced the pricing for City of Villains would consist of buying the box. For that, if you already have a CoH account, you get four extra slots and access to all of CoV.
But all was not well in Cryptic-land…
Then, the next day, they announced the new “Enhancement Diversity” system. The latest in a long stream of changes apparently made to weaken our supposedly superheroic characters.
That was the last straw. I've decided to leave CoH/CoV, possibly for good, possibly not. Certainly for awhile.
This was made easier by the fact that I finally got around to playing with Second Life. It's one of several early attempts at a virtual reality ala Neal Stephenson's Metaverse. It's not a game; it's a world, and most of the stuff in it is made by the users, not by some “dev team”.
Just in the last week, I've:
* Built a house and decorated it
* Bought an ornithopter and starting flying it recreationally. I use my hovercraft or teleportation grid for more mundane travel.
* shopped for clothes, furniture, and widgets, like my widescreen TV (plays streaming video). My neighbor bought a radio that plays internet radio stations
* started designing a new house of my own, a largish place (for the amount of land I have) with Mansard roofs and a tower (think Addams Family)
Being a creative/explorative type, I'm having a bunch of fun. I do wish I could use lightwave to make stuff for it, but that level of technology will come later.
If you want to join me (basic accounts are free, and the only thing you can't do with them is own your own land), feel free to use this link to sign up:
http://secondlife.com/ss/?u=6d9835e175fc2a45b06a046384c28fc0
Or use my SL name, Dyne Talamasca, when you register.
This article (PDF), written by one of the folks at Linden Labs, pretty much summarizes the philosophy that led to the development of Second Life.
I tend to agree, especially on the difference between MMO-style “crafting” and actual creation, and the fact that the latter is vitally necessary for any virtual reality system to truly succeed.
As an example, behold my first vehicle (It really flies, though I didn't write the scripting for that. I will eventually replace the existing script with my own, because a Recognizer is not really an airplane, and landing one that pretends to be an airplane is sort of painful ^_^)
Also, there was recently a spot on Fox News about SL, which you can watch online here (direct link) or here (see the thumbnail on the right sidebar).
