WoW is the new Second Life

What's that you say? A conference in World of Warcraft? What fun! Apparently between sessions on virtual worlds and the like, they'll do raids. The swag bag apparently includes cash, and a pet. Cool!

define: game

Warning: Philosophy ahead.

OK - you were warned. There's an article up over on the New York Times about new 3D chat rooms with avatars, etc. WoW is explicitly mentioned in the article. But of course, in an online chat room there's no game.

But there are avatars. And a virtual world.

How many of the rules of the game have to be set down by the developers before it's a 'massive game' instead of a 'virtual world' or whatever the term of the month is? Because if the answer is nearly zero, these chat rooms, like Second Life, will qualify.

That said, I've never thought second life was a game. Or at least not a fun one. It has crafting. It has player housing. In fact, if they could open up some kind of facebook API it could even have minigames.

And let's be fair: why do you keep going back to your massive game of choice? Is it for the PvE? Maybe sometimes, but I honestly think the split is more often on the side of the social aspects of massive games. So what happens if you start with social, rather than with game? At what point does it become a MMORPG from the other side? Everyone is role playing in an online environment. The only question is the word 'game'.

So long, farewell, auf Wiedersehen, goodbye

Probably not as a reaction to Darren's 'Dear Massively' post, Massively (the blog that stole my name, except they had probably been planning it longer, but I still got to press first, and anyway it's kind of a lame name and I really ought to come up with something better for this blog, and they really ought to come up with something better for theirs, except not the same thing as I come up with (again)) is moving second life content off the front page. Hooray.

Second Life for Linux

I'm pretty excited about this one, even if I don't currently have a linux box (or use Second Life): Massively is reporting that Second Life has released a beta of their viewer for linux. Even more interesting is the note that it seems to be faster than the windows version.