[...] reported by Raph Koster and Gameology, a Second Life user, Laukosargas Svarog, is creating a functioning ecosystem in that [...]

[...] It reminds me that article about the simulated world in Second Life. That’s a place you visit. It’s not a place where you stay and play. [...]

[...] The result of a year’s work, Laukosargas Svarog’s island of Svarga (direct portal here) is a fully-functioning ecosystem, adding life or something like it to the verdant-looking but arid pallette Linden Lab offers with its world. It begins with her artificial clouds, which are pushed along by Linden’s internal wind system. "If I was to turn off the clouds the whole system would die in about six hours," she tells me. "Turn off the bees and [the plants stop] growing, because nothing gets pollinated. And it’s the transfer of pollen that signals the plants to drop seeds. The seeds blow in the wind, and if they land on good ground according to different rules for each species, they grow when they receive rain water from the clouds. It’s all interdependent." Source: Raph: Way Cool [...]

[...] Way coolOver in Second Life, a user has created an emergent artificial life simulation that grows plants, rains, and so on. This sort of thing is, to my mind, the future of dynamic world environments; in order to get away from static worlds, … [...]

[...] It reminds me that article about the simulated world in Second Life. That’s a place you visit. It’s not a place where you stay and play. [...]

[...] Via Raph Koster, a user in Second Life has created an artificial ecology, complete with unplanned evolution of new plant species, etc. Even bees that carry pollen from plant to plant, fueling the cycle. Lovely! I agree with Raph — this sort of thing is the future of MMOs. I can’t think of any other (comparably satisfying) way to keep the environment from feeling static and unnatural over time. [...]

[...] {Update: I’ve found that Raph Koster has posted about this as well – Link. Read the comments.} [...]

[...]    - SL Resident Rik Riel posted a fascinating meditation on the relation between Svaraga and Al Gore’s new documentary, An Inconvenient Truth.   - Renowned game developer Raph Koster (Ultima Online, Star Wars Galaxies) dubbed Svarga "the future of dynamic world environments".  I hope the deep impact of Raph’s post is grasped: one of the top MMORPG designers working now is taking cues from the content creation of a Second Life resident.And remember, if you have an event coming up in the next seven days and want to suggest it for NWN Events of the Week, read the submission guidelines, and send it my way. [...]

[...] Recently, some readers asked for posts that were more game-design centered. Since there was talk recently of the virtual ecological modeling that a Second Life user created, I thought I might talk a little bit about how the original resource system in Ultima Online worked. It’s more virtual world design than game design, but it has a lot of implications for game systems. Pretty much everything I am writing here has been published before in one place or another, but a lot of the old UO interviews and articles are not on the Internet, so it’s all been lost, and I imagine folks newer to the whole virtual world thing may never have heard about it. [...]

I didn’t say it was a bad thing. I don’t play World of Warcraft. Never have, briefly considered it (mostly so I could have scenery to go with the Elwynn Forest music), and never will. I predicted bad things about it long before it came out, and don’t anticipate fixes to them any time soon.

I do play Dragonrealms, and maintenance is typically behind the scenes. Every now and then, a router goes kaboom and a time zone goes away for half an hour and people come and drag their corpses to me for resurrection.

*shrugs*

I know nothing about maintenance and such on these newfangled graphical gizmos. First graphical I actually “played” was Second Life; haven’t downloaded any others since. Seems like the coders need to l33t up a bit more, since their fancy shmancies can’t keep up a 24/7. Never mind that Simutronics ought to do maintenance days instead of random explosions that send the onsite staff scrambling. =P They all suck. *shrugs again* Not that I’m complaining, since I’m at the point of “I play because my friends do.”

I’m rambling now. Someone go write a law banning bugs.