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A perfect storm

September 19th, 2007

One kind of perfect storm is BoingBoing, the BBC, and Slashdot all linking to a site at the same time. :)

Another kind is the kabillions of questions scattered all over the Net that I have no hope of answering piecemeal. We’re going to be doing regular blog posts over at Metaplace.com and expanding the FAQ based on the stuff we see. but I can’t possibly keep pace with everything everyone is asking… so please be patient. Answers will emerge given time…!

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12 Responses to “A perfect storm”

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    1. Amaranthar said on

      That’s OK. Quite understandable. But you didn’t answer my questions! (I assume not anyways, since I didn’t actually look yet.)

    2. Amaranthar said on

      Err, joking, btw.

    3. Robin said on

      Congrats, Raph!

    4. Moocat said on

      Ok, so I just read up on the KTR site (kill ten rats) about this new thing you’ve got going on. I’ve been following your work on and off for quite a while now and I remember you saying something a long time back about how you were going to create something new but couldn’t talk about it. I’ve got lots of questions which hopefully will be answered soon on one of your sites, but meanwhile I’ll try to ask them here (although I realize you are busy and may not be able to answer, or are already typing up responses/FAQ on your main site):

      -What is the engine written in where you can “create” MMOs on the fly (from what it sounds like)? Java web start?
      -How advanced will the options for the scripting engine be? Are we talking drag and drop if statements or full on access to make plugins? (also, will it be a new language or the language it was built in?)
      -Are we talking MMO like WoW, Lineage, EVE Online, Freespace, Maplestory, one of those “dress up an avatar in a chatroom” or none of the above?
      -Will there be any models for people to make money off their designs or is this open source city? Are you going to introduce any new models such as allowing people to sell modules? If so, what type of security are you integrating?
      -Browser specific?
      -Targeted age range?
      -Parrots?

    5. TheAmazin said on

      Can I build a WoW to play in a MySpace page? Sweet. How do you guys feel about copyright infringement in the worlds we build? Can we stream in stolen MP3s? How about play video of movies not even in the theater yet? Can I implement a game with RvR, or is Mark Jacobs going to sue me (or you)? Are you guys gonna police the worlds we make?

      Those are MY big questions, anyway.

    6. Thee said on

      Hah! Thanks for the new links, Raph! Been browsing around leeching everything but I haven’t come across the BoingBoing one yet. :-)

      Personally, I am wondering:

      Is Metaplace coming with a graphic engine integrated and what are the specs for it? What can people expect graphically? Well, before anyone replies… I agree: Gameplay is king, but that’s something people will be able to work on, so I’d love to know how they are limited graphically…

    7. Gene Endrody said on

      The Communications Decency Act of 1996 states that no provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another content provider. In other words, you’re putting yourself at risk of copyright infringement. This doesn’t stop Prince from attempting to sue YouTube, however there is precedent on this that provides some protection for Areae. Much of the moderation around copyright is voluntary. This type of legal protection doesn’t exist in other jurisdictions – England, for example.

    8. HanClinto said on

      So I’ve been wanting to sign up for the alpha all day, but it was either down from the slashdotting, or now the apply link is 404. With all of these people applying for the testing, how much of a chance do new applicants have of being accepted to the alpha?

      Congratulations!

    9. rootdown said on

      I think the first thing I would like to build with Metaplace’s tools is a nice little garden. With walls. :D

    10. Ola Fosheim Grøstad said on

      My questions:

      1. Will you make some preliminary documentation on the custom parts of the client-protocol available? I understand that the protocol will change, but it would give me a rough idea of whether I can build what I have in mind with your system.

      2. Will you cater for flash-clients? Flash has a peculiar security model (which I only vaguely remember) where the server you contact must cotain some kind of list of hosts which it accepts requests from. I guess you could serve this list dynamically with only one entry (“yourhost.com”) as a result of some kind of handshaking, but I don’t quite know what is possible. Certain aspects of Flash are somewhat ugly…

      3. How can builders gain access to the micropayment system which I suspect you will have in place?

    11. Trevel said on

      My question is — how can you hope to build a Web 2.0 infrastructure and game-development world when you don’t even appear to have an RSS link for your metaplace.com blog?

      ;)

      Looking to see if something has updated yet is SO web 1.0…

    12. Raph said on

      Heh, the RSS is incoming. It actually exists via Feedburner — we’re just missing the link on the actual page.

      http://feeds.feedburner.com/metaplace

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