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The Virtual Whirl: A brief history of Second Life, the middle years
This week, we cover the second installment of our summarized history of Second Life and Linden Lab (or check out part one, if you missed it). From 2005, there's an impossible amount of material to cover, but there are some interesting stories lurking among it all. Join us as we work our way through some of the interesting highlights from 2005, 2006 and 2007.
Cinemassively: Persephone Milk interview
In real life, Tim O'Connor plays his keyboard, hoping to catch a break someday as a musician. In Second Life, however, he is Persephone Milk, a piano crafter. A local Fox station in Florida interviewed Tim to find out why he was in SL and whether it pays off emotionally and financially. While we applaud the news station for highlighting entrepreneurial residents, we do take issue with how easy they make it sound.Ever since the Anshe Chung press release announcing that she was a millionaire from SL profits, we've faced a barrage of sensational news reports about people making money. Sure, there are some residents who actually make a nice living off of the virtual world, but that's not even one percent of the population right now. The rest just scrape by, if they make anything at all. Of course, I'm sure most have realized that by now and continue to log in for the social interaction. We can only hope!If you have machinima or movie suggestions from any MMO, please send them to machinima AT massively DOT com, along with any information you might have about them.
Will WSE ever reappear in Second Life? If it does, will it survive?
The World Stock Exchange (WSE) closed on 4th January 2008 for one month for "upgrades." As many coders who play the money market or read the news wondered, why the long shut down? Consider Linden Lab: they roll out upgrades across thousands of servers in a few hours of downtime, because they prepare and test the code in the background. Although we all cross our fingers the number of problematic upgrades is actually very small, and their code is millions of times more complicated.Since then, WSE has decided to stop trading in Linden Dollars altogether, and reasserted the statement it is simply a game. This, despite having several people, including Anshe Chung, who are rather regarded as heavy-weight business people rather than merely players. There have been ongoing stories about businesses being delisted for bad-mouthing the WSE, even now it's closed - apparently blogging that you are considering leaving is enough to get you delisted.
Second Life millionaire pummeled with penises
Anshe Chung, the avatar for Second Life millionaire (in real money, not Linden Bucks) Ailin Graef, was giving an interview to CNET at their virtual offices when a griefer sent "animated flying penises" at the building for 15 minutes. After relocating to Chung's own theater, the Prick Assault followed and managed to crash the server.While the perpetrator's intentions are unknown, the article speculates that Chung, who has turned virtual real estate into an extremely profitable venture, has made many enemies in her rise.We don't have any images from the incident, nor do we know the identity of the griefer, but here's an idea. We could put up wanted posters all over Second Life: Have you seen this prick? Report immediately to CNET's Daniel Terdiman . Do not attempt to apprehend this prick, as it is armed and dangerous. It was last seen hanging out at Anshe Chung's theater.[Update 1: SomethingAwful has more on the event, including -- drum roll please -- pictures and video!]
