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From the Editor: Moving Weekend and Seeking Reader Input for MMO/Virtual World List

June 15th, 2007 by Benjamin Duranske

Second Life Forklift at Freebie Warehouse (Burns 103, 175, 86)My wife and I are moving into our new house over the weekend. (Yes, for those keeping score at home, that’s two moves in five months. This is the last one for a long time though, and that’s a nice feeling.) Regular posting will resume next week.

In the meantime, I’ve got a question for VB readers: can you help me come up with a current list of virtual worlds? I’m going to do a series of posts over the next few months comparing Terms of Service. I want to include any place where user-created or manipulated content remains available to other users after individual users log off. So games count, if they match that criteria. By this criteria, World of Warcraft is barely on the list (I end up including it because of the guilds, but it’s a very close call), Ultima Online obviously goes on the list (because of the ability to own and customize property); and Second Life and There are clearly included.

I know there are probably a dozen more that have at least some popularity out there, but there are only so many hours in the day and I haven’t checked them all out. Help me out here, readers? Just drop a quick note in the comments or shoot me an email to tell me about any virtual world (or MMO game with virtual world attributes) that you know of. If you know of a semi-comprehensive list that someone else has compiled, that would be great too, though I haven’t found anything other than this, and it’s not clear to me what their criteria is (for example, I know the most popular kids site is Club Penguin, and that isn’t on there — maybe Club Penguin doesn’t have static content? Dunno. That’s the kind of question I’m hoping you can help me with).

See you all in a few days.

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7 Responses to “From the Editor: Moving Weekend and Seeking Reader Input for MMO/Virtual World List”

  1. on 15 Jun 2007 at 8:27 am1 Ilsoap

    Virtual World Review, as you can see in the “What’s New” data, had its last update early last year, when Club Penguin was still only a few months old and not publicly known.

    For some good current lists, MMOGData.com has a large list (although Club Penguin isn’t there either, oddly enough). Raph Koster’s blog (www.raphkoster.com) is constantly mentioning new ones and links to MMO news. And really, do a Google news search for one of the more popular MMOs and you’ll likely find a few others referenced by association (I believe that’s how I found this site in the first place).

  2. on 15 Jun 2007 at 1:01 pm2 Matt Mihaly

    There are a ton of text-based virtual worlds/MMOs that fit your bill, but if you want to exclude the non-commercial ones you’re still left with, at least:

    Dragonrealms
    Gemstone
    Achaea
    Aetolia
    Imperian
    Lusternia

    and probably a bunch of others that I can’t quite vouch for including Materia Magica, Threshold, and Medievia.

    The ones I’m sure about above (disclaimer: four of them are made by my company) have user created content that ranges from player housing that’s far more customizable than UO to the ability to craft everything from custom furniture and jewelry to statues, and so on.

    –matt

  3. on 15 Jun 2007 at 1:01 pm3 Raph

    These days, WoW is an exception in not allowing virtually owned property. EQ2, Vanguard, UO, EvE, SWG — any game with player housing will have it.

  4. on 15 Jun 2007 at 1:27 pm4 Ashcroft Burnham

    Best wishes on the move :-)

  5. on 15 Jun 2007 at 7:55 pm5 Kate

    Terra Nova has a pretty long list along the bottom left side of the site — you’ve probably seen that one though.

    http://terranova.blogs.com/

  6. on 17 Jun 2007 at 11:23 am6 Linda

    SL Games has a list of worlds (all included on list previously mentioned lists) but it references only those that are most “sl like” based on three attributes: real economy, users must be able to create and own IP and, world must be persistent and able to change it.

    http://slgames.wordpress.com/2007/04/12/alternatives-to-second-life-uber-edition/

  7. on 22 Jun 2007 at 11:46 am7 Benjamin Duranske

    Thanks for the comments and emails, everybody. Look for an article comparing the TOS of some of these places in the next month or so.

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