“online, offline, it’s the same life”

I learned that from you in a car driving from Austin to Dallas, and it is still the most important take away I have from my 14 months of spending waaaaay too much time in a virtual world.

There are only 24 hours in a day, and time in one world is time not in the other world…..but just as Hiro Protagonist did in Snowcrash, moving from one to the other is seeming more fluid all the time, and I can find most of my friends in either place.

“online, offline, it’s the same life”

Great post, Ninmah.

Owen – I’m intrigued by your solution. I would love to know how it works. It seems that making it harder for griefers to get places might at least limit the places that get griefed. Also, you mention a time when building will be done, and limiting scripting, both of which will make it more challenging to come up with effective griefs. But does that also mean that visitors can’t contribute to the world? Not passing judgement at all, just askin’.

We regard switching off flying as switching on a sense of distance, and so it will be an advantage for residents for many reasons: the transport systems will be functional not decorative, and so on. For griefers it will just lower the enjoyment value.

I see this as keeping the garden open (which I believe is completely necessary) while spraying the entire area with a benign weedkiller.

:)

It doesn’t matter which model of virtual worlds you use – centralised database, client/server or p2p – they will all face this problem.

And I don’t think having invitation-only spaces would solve the problem anyway, because even trusted friends or colleagues can still stuff things up inadvertently.