Second Life Herald

HiPiHi Open Beta Begins

“Heavenly Duke Creating Objects” era gives way to “Dawn of Society”

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

Can the HiPiHi liberation army be far behind?

Cindy Jiang tells us in a HiPiHi press release that HiPiHi today announced the beginning of their public beta testing phase with the release of the “Dawn of Society” version - opening the door for new users to join existing “elder” users - or “oldbies” in SL parlance.

Ms. Jiang went on to observe that “the user naming system is the bedrock of a virtual world’s social activities and the individual user’s credibility and reputation. HiPiHi believes that a robust reputation system with its accompanying asset rights system, are the fundamentals for the development and prosperity of the virtual worlds of tomorrow”.

It was unclear if HiPiHi’s security features will include avatar perma-bans 'for any reason or no reason' as is traditional in Second Life - but we expect the Chinese will be able to role play a police state in as convincing a fashion as the Lab has managed, so the dystopian future seems secure - even if is does not belong to Linden Lab.

Red Light Center Exposed -- Part 2: Vanilla

Sex with robots - while keeping your shoes on -- the discrete charm of a Red Light Center VIP account
The Herald explores worlds beyond Second Life

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

heading to the space bedroom

Eventually, I discovered what I could about Red Light Center (RLC) as a basic member and it was time to open more doors so to speak. I bought a VIP membership and started exploring the non-kink side of things.

VIP membership costs $20 US per month and it allows for age verification. Not only are you allowed into the adult areas of the RLC grid, you are allowed into the adult areas of everyone’s profiles. On the profiles, you find that people sometimes like showing off their Real Life naked bodies as well as what they’ve done as avatars.

But there was exploring to do. There were a few adult theatres where if you go in and click, you’ll find pornographic movies that will open up in your web browser. If you are concerned about cost and you pay for porn as well, this might be the economic option for you.

Red Light Center Exposed -- Part 1

Free basic account for clothed platonic friendship - VIP accounts for naked pixel-sex
The Herald explores worlds beyond Second Life

by Jessica Holyoke, virtual world explorer

Red Light Center (RLC) is a virtual world that touts itself as a socialized meeting place where you can make friends and even have sex with them. Because some residents would like to see the lascivious go there, because they are not welcome here or There, I decided to check it out.

Accounts come in Basic or VIP. Basic accounts are free to play but you cannot have sex, and therefore, you don’t know what you look like naked. VIP accounts cost $20 US per month and allows for fuller access. I started with a basic account as Jessi_angel.

In opening an account, you have two things to create. One is your avatar. The customization is limited to either what RLC gives you or what you can download onto your PC. Downloaded textures can change your avatar's clothing or tattoos. No one else can see these textures unless they also download those textures into their PC.

One way to get those custom avatar textures is off a person’s web based profile. When you click on a RLC avatar for their profile, the program opens up your web browser and gives you a MySpace like web layout for that resident. This profile is customizable to the same extent as a MySpace page, except you can include pornographic pictures of yourself and others. The age verification comes by having certain pictures viewable only by VIPs or by your friends.

The use of the web browser is frequent as any tips or special rules are opened in an outside web browser and not in the game itself. FAQ’s, as limited as they are, open outside of the game. If more in depth help is needed, one either learns from others or goes onto the RLC forums which are linked to the profile system.

Pixel Clothes, Virtual Fashion Summit, IMVU, and HiPiHi

The Celebrity Trollop interview

by Pixeleen Mistral, fashionable reporter

IMVU fashionista

Recently, Celebrity Trollop took time from her busy schedule for an interview about the pixel clothes scene in SL, IMVU, HiPiHi and elsewhere. Celebrity also mentioned what promises to be a very interesting event - The Virtual Fashion Summit - a conference for virtual fashion designers, texture artists, prim sculptors, committed virtual fashion watchers and shoppers this coming June.

Pixeleen Mistral: Celebrity, you have been a huge figure in the SL fashion scene - where do you see that going? what is next?
Celebrity Trollop: I think Havok4 and Windlight are going to be the next major technical things coming down the pipe from Linden Lab. A lot of content creators are going to have to adjust to those differences between the SL of now and the SL of 3-4 months in the future.

Pixeleen Mistral: is this going to help the fashion scene or hurt it?
Celebrity Trollop: In general I think it'll be huge leap forward in terms of framerates, avatar appearance and general grid stability. But on the other hand, most fashionistas have a pretty huge wishlist of flaws they wish would be addressed.

Pixeleen Mistral: *nods* how are you spending your time lately? is SL your main thing?
Celebrity Trollop: Mostly I've been running around IRL looking for a new job; but when I've been in SL its been mostly on Second Style business. I do spend most of my time in SL, but I also like checking out some of the other VWs - IMVU, or the really rudimentary fashions in places like hiphiphi

Pixeleen Mistral: tell me about the fashion scene in IMVU
Celebrity Trollop: It's pretty active. One big difference between SL and IMVU is that in IMVU you can use some other's creators work as a basis for your own extension. This is called a "derivation" and when you sell a work like that both you and the original creator get some of the fake money they use.

Second Life's Slide vs. Everyone Else

9 months of losing ground against IMVU, TSO, World of Warcraft

by Pixeleen Mistral, National Affairs desk

SL web site rank falling since January - WoW, TSO & IMVU rankings rising

By at least one measure, Second Life’s growth since January has not kept pace with other 3D immersive environments - including World of Warcraft, The Sims Online, and IMVU. Comparing growth rates between virtual worlds is a notoriously difficult task. Game companies are infamous for inflating creatively defining subscriber numbers and use different methods for counting players. Even worse - independent, verifiable measures of popularity are simply not available - so PR-driven spin generally rules.

However, at the Herald we have access to an elite team of metaverse researchers who suggested that there IS a way to measure (indirectly) the relative growth rates of the media-darling 3D worlds without the game companies gaming the numbers.

How? Look at the trends in the alexa.com rankings of the various worlds' web sites. Alexa.com is an independent web site traffic measurement service that charts trends in web site traffic in terms of unique visitors, page views, and a composite “rank”. Of course traffic to web sites is not an absolute measure of 3D world popularity - but assuming a relatively constant number of players visit the web sites for each world, the web traffic trends should be indicative of population trends in-world. In light of this, Linden Lab's recent de-emphasis of population and dollars spent in-world on their web site's front page makes sense - no point in advertising trouble.

Anshe Pays US$60,000 to Open Virtual Pawn Shop in Entropia

Land baron Anshe Chung expanded her empire today by winning one of five banking licenses in the wild and wooly virtual world of Entropia Universe, according to a late-breaking report from RCE Universe. Anshe paid PED600,000 (US$60,000, or more than L$16 million) for the right to make collateralized loans in Entropia, meaning any banks that open there will be little more than virtual pawn shops -- for the moment. In announcing the auction, Entropia notes that “Should an interested party hold a real banking license in the real world, many more services and features can be added.” Will Deutsche Bank soon be getting inquiries from Anshe? And what about the cross-world arbitrage opportunities? A whole new world of virtual capitalism awaits! [More details on 3pointD.]
--Walker Spaight

Virtual Worlds 2007, Report #6: Final Score, Babbage Linden 72, Everybody Else, 0

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Planets, Worlds, Universes, Multiverses, Metaverses, and Lost Socks in the Dryer

During one of the panels at Virtual Worlds 2007, Michael Wilson, CEO of Makena Technologies, maker of There.com, made a number of astute and penetrating comments. Look up this guy to understand that he's no newb. "Let me tell you the dirty little secret of virtual worlds," he said at one point, abruptly, on a panel. "The dirty little secret of virtual worlds is that there's nothing happening in them." They're empty, nothing's happening.

What he means is the phenomenon everyone knows -- acres of empty sims, nothing visible, nothing seeming to be happening. If television's problem is that there's 57 channels and nothing's on, for the new person, SL's problem is that there are 7800 sims and nothing's on them *for him*. Anyone coming in new doesn't understand what he is supposed to do to get the action started in this self-driven play. He's confronted either with other clueles newbies, AFK "helpers," inane griefers or avaricious managers of clubs where people are mindlessly standing around. It's very hard to connect in this place which is supposedly made to enable everybody to connect.

Giuliani Campaign Dances Into Second Life (Sort of)

[Editor's Note: The following is an unpaid political announcement received this evening at the Herald offices from virtual political operative and Second Life resident GenJCChristian Homewood. Had I not been going about my usual duties of picking up Pixeleen's cigarette butts planning tomorrow's coverage, I might have missed it. Fortunately, we are able to bring you this highly important disco-political newsbreak.
--Walker Spaight]

Remember this date, March 20, 2007. It will go down in history as the day the race for the 2008 Republican presidential nomination entered the virtual world. With the opening of Disco Rudy’s: the Unofficial Virtual Campaign Headquarters for Rudy Giuliani 2008, a Republican candidate now has a presence in the virtual world, Second Life.

"We’re very excited about this opportunity to share our love for Rudy with other Second Life residents," Disco Rudy’s creator [and GenJC's typist], Joshua Christian Homewood, declared as he christened the building with a can of virtual Pabst Blue Ribbon. "But more importantly, we’re thrilled to provide potential supporters a venue where they can share their love with each other by embracing the Giuliani lifestyle," he continued, "that’s why we’re going with a disco theme."

Can U Kaneva?

At the mall in Kaneva, this is about as risque as the public content gets in the WA.

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Worlds, Planets, Universes, Metaverses, and Virtual Estate Galaxies with NPC Land Barons

So I finally get an invite to this much-anticipated Kaneva beta virtual world, even though I had only like a 32 in ratings. I spent perhaps an hour farming raves, which is something like what we used to do 2 years ago in SL, go to clubs and plus each other up to raise our stipend rating deltas and get Lindens for free. That didn't last. And you wonder what it means to lay the groundwork of a world and permeate it with rave-farming and gaming up of points -- except many of the people doing the raving are carrying on with such enthusiastic bonhomie that it doesn't seem fake -- the way people in malls down South come up to you and say "Hi, how are you, have a nice day" even if a stranger.

Firefox didn't seem to work with Kaneva, and finally on IE I waited for the game download to upload for ages -- but hey, I was in the mood after having the absolute worst week I've ever had in SL. I could literally not move, fly, teleport, see Linden dollars in my box, even click on myself for 3 days. Something in a patch or something somewhere suddenly made it not work. I tried EVERYTHING and finally hit on the combination of my secret weapon (update your mouse drivers!) plus disabling my keylog finder (after finding 2, you know who you are!). Just as I finally could see green earth and fly again WHOOPs about 100 regions or more went down and "teleport issues" were rampant with colo outages and whatnot. So here I was hoping that this flatter, leaner, web-based world would at least spare me all that crap.

Sony Clone: A Better Second Life?

Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Worlds, Planets, Universes, Metaverses, and Now Those Record People Have Copied Our Game, Geez

Sony has just gone and cloned Second Life!

OMGODZORZ even the welcome areas look like they were *lifted straight out of Ahern".

I kid you not, kids. Go check it out.

I'm still absorbing the shock of this news out of GDC, but will have more for you soon. I hear PS3s cost about $600-700? But this game/world/interconnected user-content thingie is free, so far.

Project: Buzz Kill

by Onder Skall

The BBC covered yesterday what the Herald covered last week- "Project: Top Secret" has launched in an effort to build a user-created MMO. As a trade-off for being a bit late to the party they were able to provide us with an overview of how many signups they've received.

At this point there are 20,000 signups, with an expected total of 100,000 by the time they close things off. Numbers like that are sure to attract headhunters trying to fill a quota, but it means a bit more than that. The music industry is notorious for ripping off artists simply because they can - after all, everybody wants to be a star. Now, with this many people vying for a finite number of positions, will the games industry suffer the same fate? Some feel that it has already.

In this same article David Perry is quoted as saying: "We are not doing this for fun; this is a professional game we are trying to make. It's a business." So much for doing what you love. There was a time where the difference between a good game and a great game resided solely in the passion of the people behind it. Perhaps those days have passed.

As far as the hope that this was an effort to discover some shining stars or for people to showcase their talent, two other quotes seemed to stand out:

Alternatives To Second Life

by Onder Skall, courtesy of Second Life Games

Let me start this off by stating that I have no interest in the “world vs. platform” debate. It’s boring and played out, so don’t you dare try to draw me in. What I’m trying to do here is answer the simple question:

Where are the best candidates as viable alternatives to Second Life?

In order to answer this question, I’ve come up with the three things that in my opinion make Second Life irreplaceable at the moment. Since these are entirely formed from my little brain, we’ll call them “Onder’s Big Three”. They are:

1. Cash transactions must be easy and readily accommodated flowing both into and out from the system.
2. Users must be able to create unique content and retain some form of ownership over it.
3. The fabric of the world itself must be possible to affect. IE: land ownership, room decoration, or some other content that remains viable even when the player who created it is logged off. (”Pervasive” is the word I’m groping for here…)

American Idol for MMO Developers

by Onder Skall, courtesy of Second Life Games

To all Second Life designers and developers looking for a chance at breaking into the gaming industry - this is it. David Perry (Earthworm Jim, Enter the Matrix) has teamed up with Acclaim for a one-of-a-kind project. They are building a new MMO with a full development team and are looking for contributions for design, ideas, art, animation, and audio. In return you will get a major MMO credit on your resume, experience, and a chance at the big prize.

What is the big prize, you ask? One lucky gamer will be selected to be the new Director of this major, fully-funded MMO, and David Perry will be their Executive Producer. Sign ups at the website http://topsecret.acclaim.com/index.htm will only be available for the next short while, and then the entire project will move into secrecy until completion. They call it "Project: Top Secret".

A contest like this is especially appealing to Second Life residents who have been creating content for years without major public recognition. Now the opportunity has come to show their genius, and many will leap at the chance. I have no doubt that the winner of this competition will not come from WoW or Everquest, where creativity is tightly controlled, but from the glorious wilds of SL.

Those registering today receive a message saying to expect an email within two weeks, and are then directed towards Acclaim's other games to play "for free". You have to hand it to them: if nothing else it's a pretty effective marketing ploy. Still, one has to wonder what form this "American Idol for gamers" will take.

I'll be keeping my eye out for details.

POP!!!

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Virtual Estate

The real virtual estate bubble which has prevailed in Second Life since island price hikes in November 2006 started to pop today as Linden Land whacked out some 40 new sims opening at $1000 bids, starting the list with one named "Badly Moor," which seemed to set the tone for many suddenly saddened land dealers.

Within hours, waterfront priced $25/m came down to $20/m and below, and some people who had put ugly clubs and spinning junk on their land to "help you get the idea to buy" suddenly replaced the blight with a nice house and a lower price.

The unfortunate soul who bid $4000 on Cajeiri before the newly-minted land was placed on the auction may come to regret it by tomorrow. Perhaps they'll be able to default without penalty.

The sims are off to the West of the brown-sugar-textured "down-under" sims. They look even MORE like lumpy brown sugar, though one has to admire the sculpted edges.

Korean Gold Farmers Form Trade Association

Korean gold farmers aren't taking the news of possible governmental regulation lying down. Instead, they've formed a trade union to lobby the government, according to veteran MMO designer Raph Koster -- who is also the author of the draft Declaration of the Rights of Avatars, a document we at the Herald hold dear. Rise up! gold farmers, we say. Your pixelated swords are your plowshares. All that's needed now is a virtual Eugene Debs.

--Walker Spaight

Meez Too

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Spaces, Worlds, Planets, Universes, Metaverses, and Wannabee Virtualities.

I noticed the kids are using Meez more because they're bored with MySpace, which they've pronounced contemptuously as "gay" or "retarded," while still declaring TSL as "fun" but "hippy". They claim they don't care about Meez very much (not having just scored a copy of World of Warcraft Burning Crusade), and they witheringly disparage Meez' nerdy me-too avatars that look like a botch between Bratz and the Sims.

Still, it's an indication that these social software sites are starting to avatarize and go in deeper toward worlds. 2007 is the year of the avatar as I predicted 2006 was going to be ("We're all going to be so amazingly cool, because we already have -- we already *are*? -- avatars"). I can see that free services providing accessories, backgrounds and even animations for avatars might evolve so fast within browsers going forward, that someday they may meet existing 3-D virtual worlds too laggy to log-on to and requiring downloads -- going backwards.

More Worlds!

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Planets, Worlds, Universes, Metaverses, and the Eternal One

Game-World Sun-God Ra Raph Koster has made a new game! WOOT! Those who remember the game-meister of Star Wars Galaxies and have followed his amazingly rich and insightful interactive blog adventures were thrilled to find out that this enlightened Horus of the MMORPG Horizon, who thoughtfully straddles games like SWG as well as worlds like SL, announced yesterday that he's leading a company making a....thingie called Areae.

And instead of a big-ass press release and roll-out with industry friendz blurbs, he has a modest, tiny-print statement on his website explaining the absence of the usual PR: "We wanted to talk to you first. People who might be players, virtual citizens, users, customers, some day in the future. And that’s because we want to make sure that putting you guys first is something that is in Areae’s DNA from the very beginning." Hmmm...sounds from that like it could be a game/country/platform/business application!

For gamers and worlders used to devs ranging from indifferent to hostile, this will be welcome news, even if likely something very hard to sustain.

Another World...Kinda?

A gallery opening...that isn't in Second Life.

By Prokofy Neva, Dept. of Planets, Solar Systems, Universes, Multiverses and Omniverses

Wait. I'm pinching myself. I got something in my mailbox from this company called Caligari which makes hugely expensive 3-D stuff which I never looked at too closely, until they...announced an event in a virtual world (wow...some OTHER company does that???). Another world, 3-D...ish. With spaces where you go and "collaborate with others," and even have "forums" and "an art gallery."

Not There. Not Here (and we all know where Here is!) but a place called trueSpace.

Now, I know, I know, it might be just some glorified Flash in a browser. Or it might be some cludgy thing. I have no idea. I tried to download it, and was out of luck. First, it gave me runtime and library errors and their forums sucked and I couldn't find help (why are these worlds always like that).

Then my usual technique, googling in search of some geek-to-go type of place couldn't help. CS was closed. Hmmm. Well, then they had the samples in RAR files. I should be able to open those, but got a face-full of wierd code when I did.

They're having a gallery opening tomorrow, it's free to download and see, the artist's name is Zachary Humway. You even click on a thing that is like a SLURL. I can't get the game working but maybe someone else could go -- I haven't been this intrigued since I found that the sims in ATITD could walk off their parcels and grow flax lol.

Appearance mode? Calisthenics? In a brightly-lit, comfortable-looking and possibly non-laggy place?

New Crimes, New Punishments

The New Scientist is running an article in its May 20th edition all about crime and punishment in the virtual world -- one of the Herald's favorite subjects. In fact, most of the piece could have been ripped from the Herald headlines -- and probably was. Of course, it features yet another interview with mafia don and media hound Marsellus Wallace, but don't let that stop you. Mars even outs his gf in this one!

Relevant portions excerpted below for your discussion:

Capital Punishment for RMT in RF Online

Banning, crucifixion and cornfields are too good for gold-traders in the new MMO RF Online. Though the company recently banned more than 150 accounts for botting currency, a couple of game-masters also treated the transgressors to some in-game punishment, climbing into some pimped-out mechsuits to deliver swift one-shots to the criminal characters. Not only that, but they got it all down on video, which you can watch via a link at this MMORPG.com post. RF Online is also putting the strongarm on anyone who's bought gold or other items from the botters: "In the next few days, following the 150 RMT accounts, we will be visiting YOU, atleast if You bought things from RMT traders. If You had to re-read the last sentence twice you might want to contact us via PM before we reach you. If you reveal the delivery guy, the price you paid including the RMT site and the date you recieved the money we can most likely work something out." It remains to be seen how many players will be willing to rat out their suppliers in a world where justice and revenge can be meted out so harshly.

WoW guild griefs online memorial service for player that dies in real life

This is interesting. As Shoutwire is reporting, an ingame funeral for a popular player was griefed by a guild in World of Warcraft -- griefing event consisting of the attacking guild killing most of the funeral party. Of particular interest to me is the discussion that follows in the wake of this event. A lot of players are saying this is what one gets for having a funeral in game -- "a game is no place for a funeral." On the other hand, this was a player who died in real life, and his friends only knew him through Teamspeak or some such voice server and probably were not in a position to travel across country to have a rl funeral service. The friends logged onto his account and were taking his avatar to a lake where they were going to have an in game service. My tentative conclusion is that the griefers have diseased minds. They made a video of their event, not only to document that they are clueless fucktards, but also to show that they have shitty taste in music and have no idea how to make decent machinima. Video here.

Cornfields Not Enough for Roma Victor

The devs over at Red Bedlam, makers of the new MMO Roma Victor have come up with a novel new way to punish griefers in their virtual world: Rather than suspend their accounts or banish them to a virtual cornfield for a couple of days, they simply string them up on a cross. [Pic after the jump, so as not to offend anyone's delicate religious sensibilities.]

Mafia Boss Gains Control of SL Stratics

In an ongoing investigation into the news that a Second Life portal was coming to Stratics, the Herald has learned some alarming news: the avatar chosen to manage the soon-to-be-launched Stratics site covering all things Second Life appears to be none other than renowned mob boss (and occasional Herald contributor) Marsellus Wallace.

Revisiting Stagecoach Island

paulie Femto created a forum thread yesterday discussing Wells Fargo's Stagecoach Island project that began using a version of the SecondLife viewer, and has since migrated to ActiveWorlds.  As a former ActiveWorlds user myself (I played during the beta period in mid-to-late 1996 and again from 2000 til 2005-ish), the move interested and shocked me quite a bit.  The ActiveWorlds I had known hadn't had its graphics engine upgraded since its early beta phase in the mid 1990's.  Its camera control was utterly horrid, and scripting was almost non-existant, as there was no native scripting language built into the client.  According to the forum thread, though, Stagecoach Island was running in an ActiveWorlds universe (AW uses "worlds" instead of sims, that are grouped into "universes," or clusters of servers that can teleport to one another and have unique citizen sets) that was running the ActiveWorlds 4.1 client, while the main universes were all running the ActiveWorlds 3.7 client still.  I decided to go check it out, as ActiveWorlds Incorporated had long been promising a major graphics upgrade in version 4.0.

There She Goes

It happens to the best of us: the lure of a steady paycheck overcomes the strong desire to sit at a desk in our apartments all day staring into a computer screen (not surprisingly). So it is that Terra Nova's Betsy Book has been snapped up by the virtual world of There.com, which bills itself as "the online virtual world that is your everyday hangout." Hopefully, Betsy, in her new role as Director of Product Management, can do something about that slogan. Although it may not be as hard as it might at first appear. There.com apparently has some 300,000 members, according to some reports. While that number may be just as meaningless as the 150,000 members Second Life records, it's still twice as many meaningless members. And that has to mean something.

"Ship-to-Ship" Services Now Available

The Herald staff had wanted more time to study the deep ramifications of this story, but now that Kotaku is reporting on sexual services available in EVE Online, it was clear that an editorial decision needed to be made.

Kotaku reports on a chat-based cybersex service that has made its way into EVE. But if you're not interested in having another person on the other end of your transactions, there's also a graphical ship-to-ship service available for pod pilots with money to burn. What's perhaps unique about the service is that makes real-world skin shots available within the virtual world, for a much more immersive experience (so to speak). [After the jump: Adults Only, Not Safe For Work]

Sowing the Seed

Though its beta test has only just started, the new MMO Seed is already getting the usual breathless attention from virtual world fansites and other online communities. The latest Seed news comes from online gaming and music radio station Split Infinity Radio, which is advertising an upcoming interview with Runestone CEO Lars Kroll, the man ultimately responsible for nurturing Seed into full blossom.

419 Scam Rocks EVE Online

EVE Online, the virtual world where scams and double-dealing are all part of the starscape, is now the target of the latest manifestation of the "419 scams" that originated in Nigerian some years ago. 419 scammers commonly claim they've got a whole sackload of money tied up in a Nigerian bank, but since the money belongs to a dead relative, they can't get their hands on it without paying a hefty bribe. It's up to you, the recipient of the heartfelt 419 letter, to come up with the bribe money, send it to the bereaved, and then twiddle your thumbs while you're waiting for your cut of the take. A surprisingly large number of people have been taken in by such scams in the real world. Now they've hit the metaverse.

...Let No Man Put Asunder...

by Pat the Rat

Linden watchers inform Pat the Rat that naughty Kremlinden Lab has intervened to dissolve the partnership of Torley nee Torgeson Linden and Jady Lily. As of last report, they are no longer listed as partners, victims of what has become known as "reverse minister's action" on the part of the Kremlindens. :-(

Torley went to work for LL last month, a passage that had some mixed commentary, with most people wishing her well and congratulating LL on taking a voluntary beloved mascot, but others (like the ever bilious and bellicose Prokofy Neva) claiming the Lindens were coopting her and blurring the distinction -- already the subject of controversy -- between Linden and resident.

Robin Linden announced the unilateral move in an email to Torley. The break-up had not been sought by the couple.

"I had nothing to do with Robin's decision to dissolve our partnership," Jade Lily told our sources.

Blizzard: Don't Ask, Don't Tell. But Go Ahead and Call People "Fag" All You Like.

In Newsweekly ("New England's Largest GLBT Newsletter") is running a story on an appalling new "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy on the part of Blizzard Entertainment where gay- and lesbian-friendly guilds are concerned (linked from BoingBoing the other day).

Apparently, a member of a World of Warcraft guild advertising itself on the Blizzard forums as "GLBT-friendly" (though also specifying it was not GLBT-only) received a warning notice from Blizzard recently saying company admins would have banned her from the game but were feeling magnanimous that day. When the player protested that there must be some mistake, Blizzard responded that no, the mistake was hers, for inviting discrimination from Blizzard's obviously victimized player-base:

The Demi-Pharaoh Speaks!

A Tale in the Desert is one of those games that chooses to tread the dangerous boards of player-run government, at least to a limited extent. The game's demi-pharaohs, of which there have been some 20 over the last three years, each have the power to exile up to seven of their countrymen, should they see fit. But, according to full-fledged pharaoh Andrew Tepper, that power has never been used. Until now.

Animal Auctioning

Technical issues kept me from posting this sooner, but it wouldn't be the Herald without a bulletin on the auction market that's sprung up for stuff found in the Nintendo DS massively wifi-player game Animal Crossing. Thanks to a Faithful Reader for alerting us to NookBay.com where all things Animal Crossing can be bought and sold.

BUY BUY BUY!!! Uber-Authors' Doomsday Book Debuts on Amazon.com

Woot! If you didn't believe it before, now you can actually feast your eyes: The Doomsday book recently penned by uber-authors Peter Ludlow and Mark Wallace in a flurry of champagne, clattering typewriter keys and cigar smoke is now available for pre-order on Amazon.com.

For those who aren't already aware, the book recounts the adventures of virtual journalist Urizenus Sklar, who founded this very newspaper in The Sims Online only to be bounced out of the game once Electronic Arts got wind of the revealing stories the Herald was publishing. Bringing the reader all the way up through the Herald's recent history, Ludlow and Wallace take a revealing look at what really goes on in the virtual world of massively multiplayer online games and environments like Second Life, and even dare to peek forward into the future.

This is oh so wrong: the sexy machinima of Warcraft!

I thought machinima had probed the limits of my psyche with the Ed Wood film festival in Second Life.  But no, now we have *this*… this… well it’s best if you just look.

A Chat in the Desert

Cooperative gameplay, Egyptian-style

Andrew Tepper, pharaoh of Egypt (or at least of the massively multiplayer online world of A Tale in the Desert) has something say, and he wants you to listen. He also wants you to get in his game, and is re-opening free trial accounts to anyone who's interested, even if you've already run through a trial in the past.

Apparently concerned about the large number of citizens who leave his virtual Egypt once they get through the early stages of the game, Tepper is holding "a significant chat" tomorrow on possible upcoming changes in the society-building VW, and he wants you to listen in.

Sex, Fame and PC Baangs

Games journo Jim Rossignol recently traveled to Korea, and has brought back the first really in-depth story about PC gaming culture in that country, which he wrote for PC Gamer (UK) but which is currently available on Jim's own site. For anyone even marginally interested in the future of gaming and virtual worlds, it's a must-read. Rossignol hits the heart of the hard core -- or wait, it's all hardcore in Korea. Because the country has PC and broadband penetration levels to shame anything found in the U.S. or Europe, gaming and virtual worlds are woven into the fabric of daily life in a way most of us in the West only dream about (even if it's in some people's nightmares). We know it's hard to read anything but the Herald, but we urge you to cast an eyeball or two over Jim's piece. Our only quibble: it's Asia now, Rossignol, not the Orient. Sheesh.

Six Swell Sick Sim Sex Sites

Our pal at Terra Nova, Ren Renolds, was kind enought to collate the new virtual platforms that are dedicated to cyber.  Yowzers, I'm begining to lose count!  But for the record we have...

Heavenly Bodies

Naughty America: The Game

Rapture Online

Red Light District

Spend the Night

3Feelonline

Sociolotron (actually already out of Beta)

And this ain't counting those sexy skyboxes in SL!

Last Call: Asheron's Call II to Close Doors on Dec. 30

Clive Thompson has a good article in Wired on the impending close of Asheron's Call II. It's a tough business, what can I say.

Naughty America: the Game. OK, now who needs SL?

Yes, its true, there is now an online game that has latched onto the essence of Second Life and built their platform and marketed it with one thing in mind: Cyber. Called Naughty America: the Game, it seems more upfront about the role of cyber than either TSO or SL, but seems tamer than Sociolotron (no rape, for example). There is a brief interview with game developer Noah Dudley in Sex and Games.

I think I'll sit this one out and wait for Naughty Denmark: The Real Deal.

A Merry Denominational Xmas to You!

Happy Hannukah! Joyous Kwanzaa! Lovely Diwali! Have a nice Ramadan! Merrrrrry Christmas!!!!1!

That's what Blizzard Entertainment, the corporate cog behind World of Warcraft, is saying to their 4 million-plus players this holiday season. A new holiday patch released this week adds some fun new content to the game, in the form of a big Christmas tree in a number of Azeroth's cities, reindeer mounts, some holiday quests that can turn you into a Christmas gnome (or earn you about 5 gold at the Auction House, if you choose to sell your gingerbread cookies there), mistletoe you can kiss under and snowballs that can be purchased from Santa's helpers and actually thrown at other players. Of course, none of the NPC Orcs and Gnomes call it by name, but gone missing among all the fun stuff is any nod to a fantasy religion resembling anything other than Christmas.

While the Herald likes Christmas as much as the next virtual newspaper (and really likes virtual snowballs), the oversight has left some players at a loss. There's hardly a groundswell of discontent, but chatter could be heard here and there this week indicating that Blizzard's choice of holiday might not be everyone's. Of course, players heard to complain in the main chat channel were generally laughed off the server by their teenaged peers. But it does leave one wondering how WoW's substantial Asian population feels about the choice, for instance, or how it strikes the guys named UAEtoon and similar things.

You may feel that Christmas is by now a non-denominational holiday in itself, having had all religious content commercialized right out of it. But not everyone agrees. Worth a discrimination lawsuit? Let's hope not. But it is worth noting, for better or worse, that in a world in which political correctness has many people choking on their kwanzaa pie, Blizzard has chosen to take the straight and simple route and nod only to the Santa set.

And then there's the alarming amount of leg certain NPCs have taken to showing under the mistletoe! Shocking! (See below.)

Not easily mistaken for a Hannukah elf

The Furni Whores of Habbo Hotel

I must live under a rock. So many scandals and incidents of elemental weirdness manage to just pass me by. Yet, now and then I get a chance to play catch-up. Last night it was in an underground dive bar known as the 8-Ball, and a kindly grad student told me about the "furni whores" of Habbo Hotel. It seems that on Habbo the only thing you actually have to pay for is furniture, and there is a TSO-quality culture that has arisen where kids will scam people for furniture and yes, cyber for furniture. Since Habbo has a draconian chat filter, the preferred invitation is something like this: "I will babbo for furniture." There is a nice discussion of the phenomenon in this post on the BBC web site.

And I quote: When you hear a female habbo say, "I WILL BOBBA FOR FURNI," then you've met your first virtual furniture whore. This behavio(u)r is quite against the rules of Habbo, but it would not take much to find a quiet room somewhere, or create your own room, then get your groove on with the furni whore. It's not like the little cartoons are programmed to fornicate, or even touch each other, but she'll offer to reply in character to your one-handed typing of what you want to do to her. She may not be acting out the words, but it's enough for some people to imagine that this female knows what you're doing with one hand under your keyboard. It must be a very compelling situation for a lonely person, if you can ignore the possibility that the female avatar named "Cumilla" may be operated by a 67 year old man.

Unleash Your Inner Hordeling

If you've grown tired of the burdens that accompany membership in that most august group of Second Life residents, the Feted Inner Core, now there's a solution. Just VW-hop on over to World of Warcraft and join the Feted Inner Horde, a new guild on WoW's Lightninghoof server composed entirely of Second Life residents, complete with a cool-looking custom guild tabard and a membership already numbering in the low dozens.

Though the FIH has yet to gain complete control over the Lightninghoof server, it seems things are moving fast, with SL residents ReallyRick Metropolitan (Huna, in WoW), Cristiano Midnight (Pequeno), Psyra Extraordinaire (Psyra) and RacerX Gullwing (RacerX), among others too numerous to mention (sorry), already working their virtual magic. While Philip Linden has yet to show up on the FIH membership list, it's clearly only a matter of time before the VW wunderkind is seduced by the Tauren toons of Azeroth.

Realm domination may still be some ways away, as it seems the FIH Web page is still under construction, so join now to get a front-row seat as the newest uberguild sets out to strike down the forces of light. No word yet on whether a rival Alliance guild has been formed to combat the FIH on Lightninghoof, which is a role-playing player-vs.-player server where open combat between factions is allowed in most zones. So for now, it's For the (inner) Horde!

EVE Extra: Deep-Space Outpost Goes Public in $8,100 Deal

It's no mistake that EVE Online's player organizations are known as corporations. Though Second Life has seen a number of start-ups that have required resident stakeholding and investment, a recent IPO by EVE corp Interstellar Starbase Syndicate has set a new mark for virtual-world business dealings, having raised 36 billion in InterStellar Kredits, the equivalent of a whopping $8,100 at current eBay prices.

ISS, a well established "carebear" corp (i.e., not a military outfit), has built an enormous player-operated oupost (pictured above) deep in the reaches of lawless space, where player factions war for control of valuable resources. The outpost will be neutral, and players of any alliance will be able to dock there to refit their ships and sell their booty. Though the outpost has just recently gone online, ISS did an IPO back in October to raise money to get the thing up and running. The 3,600 shares they sold brought in a total of $8,100. Shares are now