Er, beg to differ slightly. For some people, it IS like that – a giant chat room.
For others, you can craft things in Second Life. It’s got its own scripting language, plus a whole system of building blocks (known as ‘prims’) so you can do things like create fireworks, build your own Helm’s Deep / Zen monastery / giant house where you feel like you’re on the set of ‘Honey I Shrunk the Kids’ / Japantown / Kingdom Hearts / aerodome / cathedral / etc.
You can craft clothes, cars, accessories, houses, sculptures, and hock them to the suckers that drift along. There have been some frankly aweinspiring examples of prim art.
I fall more into the category of building cool things just because I can. Unfortunately, there aren’t as many of the old school creative free spirits these days, so I’ve gotten to where I only log in once in a while since many people I knew have vanished. It’s harder to find new friends to have spontaneous craziness with such as boarding a flying ship to see what the world looks like from up above, for example.
Not really. Mining Barges were most certainly in the game when I left. I just wasn’t a power player, and I stuck to 0.8+ space except when doing trading runs. Believe me, I worked out the math, and concluded that a barge just wasn’t going to do me much good in that case. Were I part of a corporation that did organized mining in 0.0 space, a barge would probably be a necessity, but an Osprey kitted out with good mining lasers pulled in enough ore in one night to finance my ventures. 2 million ISK isn’t much in the grand scheme of things, but when you stick to Frigates and Destroyers, it actually goes a very long way.
I had a lot more skills pushed up to 4 and 5, but EVE’s website doesn’t allow you to access game specific details unless you have an active account, and I don’t care to pony up $15 just to look at my character’s details. Those are the primary skills I got use out of and can remember off the top of my head.
ETA: I can access my account details, and I deactivated the account June '07. So there you go.
I second “everyone is different.” I love WoW, but the last thing I want to do is sit around chatting in the game.
For me, I enjoy exploration. I like seeing new corners of the game, finding out how new powers work, and getting new stuff. Now, I know this isn’t real stuff, but to me, it’s interesting to see how this stuff works in the context of the game.
For my friend, it’s all about numbers. Everything in a game has numbers- you, enemies, even the landscape. He likes to figure out those numbers and how to use them to his advantage. It’s a big pretty math problem.
When the first movies came out, they were displayed to show off the projector, not the movie. It took years to realize that what was actually being projected was interesting. It took even more years to realize you could use this to tell a story. To get to the point that movies are now- full fledged art forms that are capable of affecting people on a mass scale- too decades of tiny steps and changes in the way people think.
And I think this is happening now with video games. I, for one, enjoy seeing how things are progressing.
With WoW, I hang out on a regular basis with a couple dozen people from a bunch of different countries. Our guild includes members in Australia, Argentina, and a bunch from Mexico. Even if I could afford to get all those people here to LA, could I fit them all into the living room to play games? Instead we have The Magic Of The Internets, allowing all of us to play together in small groups (and, twice a week, one big group) and just to chat.
Sometimes I have WoW open as a kind of over-graphicy chat client, it’s true. But most of the time I’m playing, or trying out new skills and techniques, or working on improving stuff, or fighting through dungeons of varying levels of difficulty (and with random rewards). We use voice chat, so we can have a good conversation while we’re pewpewing elves or whatever. I’m too physically fragile to regularly play real-life team sports; instead, I play online team games. It’s fun; we’re constantly challenging ourselves to try to accomplish harder and harder goals in the game, and a lot of us have become great friends. Plus I’ve learned a lot about life in other countries.
And I’ve learned a few Spanish vocabulary words, but they’re not for polite company.
I play Second Life. A lot. Specifically, though, I play a MMORPG within Second Life called “The City of Lost Angel’s” (sic, and, yes, it drives me nuts, too). That game has its own Second Life-based combat system, its own backstory, its own universe. . .it’s like WoW, except much, much, much smaller. And it’s based in the future rather than the past. And the emphasis is on RP, not combat or levels.
And, really, for me the size of the thing is part of the appeal. Within that game, everyone knows each other, or is at least familiar with each other. It’s a small, fairly tight-knit community.
There are also people who like the opportuinity to be someone or something they can’t be IRL. There are people who like to sit in clubs and chat and dance. There are people who just like to create stuff (and, really, creating things ISL is both really simple and frustratingly difficult). Most of these people, I don’t really get, 'cause I’ve never seen the point of endless socializing.
But. . .imagine being able to club in your underwear. Or something. It’s life and socialization for lazy people. Whoopdee-shit, you know?
But for those who RP. . .SL (and CoLA ) is free. WoW and other, similar games are not.
You’re right, of course, and I thought I alluded to as much, but apparently not. All I was aiming at was that Second Life is the ultimate sort of sandbox game, unlike WoW or even EVE, where the NPC-granted missions set your objectives and guide your actions.
(As for the crafting, I recall coming across a news conference in which a company – don’t remember which one, but it was a big national corporation – actually set up a branch in Second Life as an experiment. Given the articles I’ve read on the seedier side of SL, this cracked me up. I love virtual worlds.)
There have been some frankly aweinspiring examples of prim art.
It’s harder to find new friends to have spontaneous craziness with such as boarding a flying ship to see what the world looks like from up above, for example.