Thursday, February 18, 2010

Deja What Again?

From Virtual World News:

Richard Garriott's Portalarium Aiming At A More Mainstream Second Life?

Later in 2010 the company plans to release CenterPort, "the virtual world social hub for the OpenLife ecosystem, a broad yet fully integrated meta-community." CenterPort will start as a social network app, though the company promises that it "will be more graphically advanced than what you see out there on social networks today." It will include a persistent avatar and "a semi-3D world" where users can buy virtual clothes, housing, accessories, and more. Currency can be acquired either through ad-supported mini-games or direct purchases.

Some of the development features may be new, but the general description of their product sounds, well, like another game I'm pretty familiar with, right down to the poker game.

When Ultima 3 came out, Richard "Lord British" Garriott was THE rockstar of game developers. Also, he more or less invented the MMORPG with Ultima Online.

Maybe the report is missing important details, but I don't see the innovation here. With Flash 10 coming, even moving away from Flash seems like an odd move. Still, the dude's got a worthy track record. I for one will stay tuned.

Adam!!!
http://gameguts.blogspot.com/

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

Dantes Internet


Not sure where this came from, but I love it.

-Adam!!!

The Volunteer Train - CHOO CHOO!!!!

Somebody gets a lot more traffic than I do! One of the more popular ourWorld blogs must have posted about the volunteer program because over the weekend I have received hundreds of new requests from ourWorld players who want to be volunteers. As most of the requests have come from qualified players (over 13 years old and over level 30) it looks like there will be lots more volunteers in the next day or so.

This is very good news, as we'll want a lot of volunteers to make our new Helper program work.

Following the next update (scheduled for Wednesday, Feb 24th) all the volunteers will have the option to help other players. If they turn on the Helper tool, they will get alerts when somebody requests 'Live Help'. The system will transport them to the players room and they will (hopefully) be able to answer questions. It's a pretty simple system, but if our volunteers do half the job I think they can do, it'll be a great boon to new players trying to sort out our game, which has become quite complex as it has grown.

Adam!!!
www.gameguts.blogspot.com