Year: 2007

VirtualWorldlets is reporting that the bank that provided the service has been dropped from the larger MasterCard network. Therefore, Entropia can’t use them as an ATM provider anymore. The reason?

MasterCard’s action came after the New York Community Credit Union and the card provider, CardOne Plus, had a series of run-ins with a regulatory body, the Financial Institutions Commission of British Columbia, which, in its fourth and last action, a penalty order, called North York a “rogue financial institution” having “shown complete disregard for the laws of British Columbia.”

According to the article, MindArk is in talks with another bank to get up and running with the ATM cards again.

3pointd.com reports that a Second Life server emu is out there, raising the question of what the world looks like when there’s multiple servers to log into. There’s already been some discussion of what happens to the current Linden business model on the day that there’s lots of hosting choices — sort of like a much more sober version of the issues that arose after the CopyBot scandal.

Read More “A clash of models”

The Moscow Times reports that a Virtual Conflict Ends in Real Death, as a leading Lineage II player allegedly stomps another to death. Ironically, the person who died was trying to break up the fight, which started because the two player clans were rivals or something.

This isn’t the first time this has happened, of course, though it’s the first time I’ve seen it reported in Russia. There have been Korean and Chinese cases previously. I guess it’s spreading.

It’s going to be interesting over the next few years to watch good and bad press about virtual worlds try to outrace each other in different territories.

I’m with Tide’s Horizon on this one — it’s about time that more developers embraced the web the way LOTRO plans to.

More interesting is that the game is going to support extensive and complex community functions that twine with the actual gameplay. A Google Maps version of Middle-earth will be accessible to subscribers. Each character you create will get his or her own page on the game’s official website, and you’ll be able to blog it. Minigames on the website will affect your real progression in (currently unspecified) ways. The site will also feature an online Wiki encyclopedia of info about the LOTR Online universe. All in all, it sounds like a very robust package of community tools.

Read More “Next gen community relations”