Seems like a busy day for legal stuff.

Over here we have a complaint against IGE by a class of World of Warcraft players. In short, they claim that

• IGE causes spamming, conspires with gold farmers, and does so against the TOS
• IGE is also financially hurting the other players by devaluing their gold.

Read More “Class action suit against IGE”

I am not a lawyer.

But this court ruling regarding the Bragg/Linden case (pdf) seems to me to have some serious implications for how virtual worlds do business.

Let’s walk through the bare bones in plain language, as I understand it:

• Read More “TOSes in trouble?”

Good news for Bill Turpin, Corey Bridges, et al. Multiverse is definitely one of the most interesting plays going on right now in virtual worlds.

More and more of these open networked platforms for shared 3d spaces keep popping up on my radar. Here’s a list of three new ones to add to the likes of OpenCroquet and Ogoglio.

• Muse is an oldie that I had forgotten about, but I’m linking it here for completists’ sake — it’s has been around since 1998. And it looks like the site hasn’t been updated since 2003. But there’s an SDK to download!
• Interreality’s Virtual Object System. Dates from … 1999. Their FAQ states that it’s compatible with Wndows 2000, which means, I guess, that they haven’t updated their site in a while either.
• On the other hand, Uni-Verse seems to be a going concern, and has the backing of some universities.

What else is out there lurking? Outback Online hasn’t announced specifics of what they’re doing yet, but they do have a nice list of what they’re not. 🙂

Edits from readers:

• Warb which seems to have a site over at PocketRealms
• OpenSim
• Open Source Metaverse Project
• M.U.P.P.E.T.S.

Our remote correspondent Andrés Chilkowski says:

Just a quick report of Latin American MMO developments as Raph Requested!
Read More “Mundos Virtuales en Latinoamerica”