[...] There are a whole bunch of ‘customisable’ Social Virtual World engines/services springing up that are trying to knock good ole Second Life of it’s pretty prim perch. Most fall into the ‘create anything and do what you want camp’ such as Metaplace, Vastpark, OpenLife, HiPiHi or Multiverse etc: Quite a few fall into the ‘fixed and/or branded’ space such as There.com, Habbo, Nictropolis or Webkinz. Incidentally Raph Koster’s Metaplace went public a few days ago. [...]

Also, I hope you won’t bring IRC culture with your IRC-like chat.

80 avatars are what you can get comfortably on the Second Life private island servers — even 100. At a four-corner sim set-up, that’s 400 people. And that’s ok. I really don’t think there has to be this hysterical chasing of numbers. You don’t need a football field. You need a reasonably sized class auditorium, at most. Otherwise people can’t really talk meaningfully anyway.

[...] Update: here’s Raph’s post on the public “sneak peak” of Metaplace with links to other coverage and [...]

Would it be wrong to import UO’s art files into a metaplace world? Would it even work?

I’m always a little embarrassed when folk have to admit that their massively multi-player platform isn’t suited to having very many people interact with one another.

Heh. kudos.