For example, I have a friend in the Gorean sim (Gor is a world of its own created by author John Norman in his series of books). Members of the sim participate in role-play… she had to do some reading up on Gor and take some kind of test to become a physician. Physicians are summoned to “heal” the warriors who are injured in wars. I told her it sounded like too much work. Then there are the slaves, or ‘kajira’ as they call them, who follow their masters everywhere and do whatever the masters tell them to do. Also too much work.

I haven’t yet found a place to belong, which means I don’t have anything to do in Second Life apart from flit around aimlessly, exploring. This is getting boring fast. And lag is very annoying. So I don’t know how long I’ll last. I don’t exactly want to participate in a normal sim with shopping malls and residential areas and go to work every day (a lot of Second Life people do have jobs). I already do that in real life, cannot figure out why I would want to duplicate that in Second Life!

The idea of questing actually I find more appealing – at least there is something to rally behind; a purpose. In SL it seems the larger purpose is just buying stuff, making stuff to sell. There’s a lot of ads in there, too, which I find a turn off.

Anyhow, the idea of virtual reality is a seductive one. My critique has been at Second Life specifically, not the concept of virtual worlds. There’s no question, eventually technology will catch up to the concept, and it will be awesome when a really immersive virtual world happens. But I wouldn’t bet on Linden Labs being the one to make it happen. Things change in tech so fast – companies come and go.

I actually think a gaming company has a better shot at creating the next virtual world and a virtual world economy than Second Life.

For example, weren’t there like 2 million copies of Burning Crusade sold already? That’s huge!

Much less lag and probably more refined gameplay. Though if you’re looking for holodeck level quality, you won’t find it. But who knows, it might be a step up from Second Life (which sounded a bit problematic from you reviews — I’ve never tried it myself).

Of course it is crack. So I cannot in good conscience give a full recommendation since I’ve been “clean” (from WoW) for well over a year now.